Backpackingblogger

Adventures in the Wind Rivers

Episode 2

We got a late start Sunday morning, it wasn't until 10 am that we hit the trail. While filtering our water we saw some strange type of sucker in the lake and I threw out the "the fish at Mary's lake suck" pun. For those of you who know me I enjoy throwing around puns; I consider myself very "punny". Not only that but I was told to "keep my day job" if I had a tie on I would have tightened it and declared "I can't get no respect!". Any way, we hit the trail!

Around 11:20 we made it to this trail junction, the sign was no longer attached to the pole and was just sitting there on the ground. Again I started snapping pictures.

Greg did find a horse shoe on the sign pole and started goofing around with it and put it back upside down. It rained pretty heavy the next two days! Hmmm!

We did put it back up right but the damage evidently had already been done!

We stopped for lunch at Pole Creek after trying to find a drier crossing, it isn't very fun to hike with wet feet!

After a little searching and bushwhacking we made it across!

We even managed to catch some fish, Coltin is getting quite good on the fly rod!

And then tragedy struck, Greg caught a beautiful Golden trout, the main reason we came to the winds. As I was rushing over with the camera, the damn fish came unbuttoned and back into the depths of pole creek. If I wouldn't have been surrounded by the boys I would have laid down in the fetal position and started sucking my thumb! *Cough, cough*, I mean cursed out loud, yeah that's it, disregard my previous statement! Greg was just as upset as I was and Dawnette was quick to say that she didn't see it therefore it did not happen. Greg and I did recover, it took a while, but we did it! We had lunch and caught some more fish.

I am pretty sure we were close to 50 fish at that point, most of them were Greg's of course. He will never admit that he is an incredibly talented fisherman. After lunch we hit the trail again.

Angel pass! Not sure why it's called Angel pass, it could be an angel is needed to climb it safely!

We broke trail and started a two mile bushwhack up to Spider lake, just under Angel pass. The plan was to tackle the pass and head into the Fitzpatrick Wilderness area the next morning. We arrived at Spider lake around 5:30 pm and the skies cleared; we set camp. The bushwhack to the camping spot was not easy at all and required boulder scrambling. We were all beat after our 7 mile journey. The scenery was worth the effort--for me at least.

Spider lake below Angel pass.

Even I like to ham it up, this is my Adonis pose. It's a reoccurring theme with me so get used to it. A boy can dream can't he?

After setting camp we fished, well it was more of a "slay fest" as Greg would call it, to me it was a medieval beating! There was so many fish caught that I am sure no one kept track. The fish would hit anything thrown in the water. I didn't take many pictures since the fishing was awesome!