Adventures in the Wind Rivers

Episode 3 and 4 (the double feature)

Last night we had discussed the original plan to climb the 1000ft Angel pass to reach the Fitzpatrick Wilderness. At the mention of the thousand foot climb several of the boys looked at us like we had just sucker punched them. All of the adults were in different degrees of pain and some of us felt a little nauseous. We found out later it was from eating the dehydrated meals, but Greg at the time wasn't comfortable with crossing over the pass if any of us had altitude sickness. The prescribed remedy for it is to get to a lower elevation as quickly as possible. We were thirteen miles in and well over 10000ft so we decided to forgo the Fitzpatrick wilderness and stay on the west side of the Winds. We fished a little, broke camp and hit the trail around 10 am.

I did manager a few pictures of Trevyn with one of the fish he caught before we left Spider lake.

 With a new course plotted, we set off towards Cook Lakes, home to the World and Wyoming record Golden trout.

 Greg liked this pretty flower, so I snapped a picture as I was struggling to keep up!

 

Before rejoining the trail from yesterday we took a group photo.

 

And a goofy one!

It was only 10:30 and it was already getting hot, it may have only been 65* but with a heavy pack you'll get hot quickly. As the photos below illustrate!

We made it to the Cook lakes trail junction around 11:20 am and headed north east parallel to pole creek.

We made it to the second largest Cook lake around noon and made camp just in time! Hurricane Griswold hit us shortly there after. Luckily it lasted only 15 minutes! Little did we know what was coming!

The skies cleared for a few hours and everyone but Dawnette went fishing. This is where Coltin may have caught the second and last Golden of the trip. He believes it was 7 to 8 inches and by his description of the fish it does sound like he did catch a Golden, however we can't be sure. We all had a great time fishing the lake and Pole creek below. Even I, managed a few!

We fished until about 3:30 pm and as bad as Hurricane Griswold was it paled in comparison to the next storm, The Wrath of Kahn! It rained and hailed for 50 loud, lightning filled minutes! After Kahn passed we tried the portable basin to wash some clothing. It worked very well even with fishy water. In order to save a little weight we only brought three pairs of socks each, this decision required us to wash clothing every couple of days. The Wilderness wash we used worked quite well at neutralizing the boys funk. After a little laundry most of us fished until around 5:45 pm, unfortunately this is when Kahn came back for round II. The sound of the rain was deafening inside the tents. We were thankful for the headaches that kept us from going over Angel pass. We would have been caught in all three of these storms trying to cross that pass! Funny how things work out, huh? 

We were all feeling the effects of being at 10000ft and very glad to be safely in out tents and not a rock covered pass with nowhere to hide from the lightning! It was quite surreal sheltering in my tent and scribbling in my note book. I was thankful for the nausea and headaches that prevented us from going higher that day. It could have been Greg's fault for playing with the horse shoe or maybe--was it divine intervention?

 I lost track of how long Kahn ravaged our camp, but we eventually emerged from our tents for dinner. We even cooked a few brook trout on some rocks next to the fire and at one point we began teasing Dawnette about how the fish were cooking and the eyes would bulge from the heads of the fish as they cooked. Greg began bartering with Coltin to eat one of the fish’s eyeballs for a Reese peanut butter cup. Now being 10 miles in a wilderness area, chocolate is worth its weight in gold. Coltin won that Reese cup after swallowing the eye even as Dawnette protested and gagged! 

This is also the evening that we all began to feel the effects of the dehydrated food. Something in the meals was upsetting Dawnette's stomach and plagued me gastric distress! Well it was affecting everyone else more than me, especially Coltin! He had to share the tent with me! As with most of the nights up there we all retired early.

The next morning brought us relief from Kahn's forth visit, it allowed me to take this!

This has to be the best picture I have ever taken! Man was it beautiful that morning; I usually awoke an hour or so before everyone else and took pictures. As everyone was getting out of their tents the sun finally reached our camp and brought us a visitor.

I found this while retrieving our hanging bear bags! This inspired us to name this camp site Moosehorn!

As you can see, Kahn had a way of beating the tension out of our tents!

A nice smoky fire to keep the bugs at bay!

I think some of the kids were sick of me taking their picture!

The Kool-Aid mustache!

" I am not looking up so leave me alone!"

"Really!"

Funky!

We even had a Doe wander through camp.

Two days before, we had spoken to a couple about their fishing and they told us they had caught some Golden trout at Tommy lake a few miles from where we had made camp.  So after breakfast we headed that direction. Along the trail we had the feeling we were being watched, we just didn't realize it was Theodore the Chipmunk! We just didn't recognize him without the green shirt!

More sights along the trail!

Pretty sure this is the remnants of Kahn!

 

 

We made it to Tommy's lake around 1 pm and ate lunch, we fished for a few minutes and a storm rolled over us for about twenty minutes. Only brook trout were caught so we were dubious about the information we received! Oh well it was a nice hike and the views were awesome!



 

Photo bomb!

That's Angel pass in the background, it was hard to believe we were just there!

We made it back to camp around 5 pm and struggled to get a fire started, due to the heavy humidity in the air. Greg was undaunted and was able to get a nice fire going for dinner. We hit the bags early after selecting 1000 Island Lake as our next stop. I, of course suggested visiting Ranch or Italian vinaigrette instead just to be a smart...!

To be continued...