Adventures in the Wind Rivers

Episode 1

We started the day early at Our Saviors and boy was I excited, I had been planning this trip for eight months. It was very surreal waiting for every one and packing the vehicles. The kids looked excited, well rested and ready for anything. We had a long drive ahead of us and I was ready for anything, or so I thought!

 

The good times started early!

 

Both vehicles were loaded and we pointed the vehicles north. Dawnette, Coltin, Russell and I went in my car. Trevyn, Layne, and Garrick rode with Greg in his truck. I am not sure when we left but our goal was to meet up with the rest of the troop in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Troop 17 has a place we always stop at when we go through the area. Joe (the greatest scoutmaster ever) was coming back from Camp New Fork, he had spent a week there with the rest of the troop. Dawnette was excited to see her two other boys, they too went to New Fork with Joe. After a brief reunion we were back on the road, man it was a long drive! We arrived at the Pole Creek trail head shorty before 4 pm and began strapping on our packs. We hit the trail late because Greg had vehicle issues outside of Pinedale. After the tow truck finally showed up and brought the truck into town I was able to shuttle everyone up to the trail head. I will cover the truck issue later in the story.

 The uphill started slowly and gradually; a very good way to start a hike!

After this sign I really started snapping pictures, not as many as I planned but 888 ended up being the total. I am glad I brought the extra battery.

Meet Russell, A.K.A., Wet boots,

 

Layne,  A.K.A., Eeyore,



 Garrick,  A.K.A., Hair of Funk,

Coltin,   A.K.A., Koolaid the Mountain Goat,

Trevyn,   A.K.A., Wounded Knee,

Dawnette and Russell,

We made it to the Bridger Wilderness boundary at 5:35 pm.

This is the next interesting feature we ran into, a large pine tree growing from a crack in a large boulder. Wow!

The entire ride up from Roy was plagued by rain, luckily we just had heavy cloud cover for the start of the hike.

The next stop was Photographers point, and it is just as the name implies.

We had dinner at Photographer's point and ran into a couple fellas from Tennessee, they also wanted to spend time in this magical place. Every one was enjoying the view and dreading putting our heavy packs back on. I avoided doing this as long as possible and just continued snapping pictures.

We made the next lake, Elklund at 8:15. 

We finally reached our destination at 8:30 pm. Mary's lake. No pictures of Mary's lake, mostly due to fatigue and frustration. I had been dreaming about the fishing in the winds and our first stop had some type of small sucker in it. So I began my running joke about how the fishing "sucked" at Mary's lake. I got a few chuckles at the time. This concluded our first day and we hiked a total of six and a half miles.

To be continued...