Adventures in the Wind Rivers

Episode 7

Friday, one more day left. After the monster storm had passed, I awoke around 6 am and just laid there in my sleeping bag contemplating life, love, and the fact I was nuts for wanting to punish my body by hiking 30 miles into a remote wilderness with a 50lb pack. Ah well, I guess I am crazy, because I didn't want to leave. I know most of the kids and Dawnette wanted nothing more than to go home, but I really wanted to stay. After about thirty minutes of just lying there, nature's call was beginning to drown out all of my other thoughts. I scrambled out of the tent and I was amazed at the amount of water on the rain cover. The rain was brutal last night but the skies were clear! Nothing was in the sky, nothing not even a contrail from a high flying plane. The greatest part of this particular morning was the mist, it was completely blanketing the area around us and the waterfall, sorry no picture, the camera was in the tent and I wasn't going to get any more of that cold water on my back, by climbing back into the tent. Even with a picture it would have been hard to capture the beauty of that morning.

Morning like these are one of the main reasons I enjoy backpacking, there has to be a reason for putting myself through this. While I was waiting for everyone to get up, I just sat on a large boulder and scribbled my thoughts down in the same spiral note book I dragged with us all over the Winds.

Everyone eventually emerged from their tents and we choked down our second to last breakfast of the trip. We broke camp and began planning our exit strategy, which included a lesson in off trail navigation and a little bush whacking!

I did manage a few videos on this trip, here is one of the Pole Creek waterfall. Sorry for the quality, it seems that they want you to upload videos, but they can't handle big files so they degrade the quality!

 

 

Our plan was to hike around the south eastern shore of 1000 island and up the inlet to an unnamed lake above. It wasn't more than a mile, but a little tough with weight on your back. We bid a Farewell to 1000 Island lake and off we went.

 

There isn't one thousand islands at this lake so I am not sure why it's called 1000 island lake. I would have gone with Italian vinaigrette or Ranch, personally.

 

 



We made it to the no named lake above 1000 Island and ran into a scout troop from Ogden, one of the leaders works with Dawnette at ORMC. Quite a small world, it seams there are other crazy scout leaders in Northern Utah! While she was talking to them we decided to do a little fishing.

This lake had quite a few patches of lily pads, so lets refer to it as lily lake.

Even Russell got in to the action and caught his biggest fish of the trip, after a week of small brook trout, these were huge!

We fished for a little while and Dawnette managed to procure some trail mix, snack bars and candy from her colleague. She was quite excited to have something other tan Mountain house to eat! We continued our backpacking adventure and negotiated over hill and dale to the next lake, Middle Sweeney.

This is a strange site, below is a circle of  trees that are all dead. Greg and I guessed that lightning hit in the center of these trees and killed them.

Here's a mushroom for you, a big mushroom!

Middle Sweeney.

We had lunch and threw a couple lures and caught absolutely nothing. We decided that if the fishing stunk here we were going to move on to the next lake. Heading to the next lake would put us two miles closer to the trailhead, so we hit the trail again.

Along the way we ran into these remnants of a small cabin. I am guessing it belonged to someone named Sweeney.

One last look back at Sweeney.

We arrived at Miller lake and set camp near the outlet, Greg and I took advantage of having Dawnette with us again and hit the water. One fish was caught but we had fun. Here's a few pictures.

Greg took a few of me.

 I almost look like a professional angler! A boy can dream can't he?

After walking the whole lake we came back to camp and found that Russell had made fire. We teased everyone when we arrived that since we were only four miles from the trailhead, Greg and I were going for a burger and would be back later. They didn't think it was very funny! After dinner we did a roses and thorns for the trip and discussed the adventure we had just lived the last seven days. Everyone was anxious to get back to the car and we all were having dreams of eating a hot pizza. I suggested we get up very early and get out of there, no one seemed too excited about the early part.

Tune in next time for our exciting conclusion...