Backpacking in the Wind Rivers

Mike took me to the Wind Rivers for my first time! For my longest ever backpacking trip: 5 nights!! My friends Rob and Lindsey and Rob's sister, Lizzie, joined us for the first 3 nights. 

We drove up to the trail head Wednesday night before Labor Day weekend. Just as we were getting started on the really long dirt road, the front driver-side wheel started making a crazy loud metal-on-metal screeching sound! We thought it might be dirt or a rock in the rotor or brakes so we tried to drive around forward and in reverse for a little while, but it didn't help. We didn't feel good about driving 15 or so more miles on the dirt road with this noise for fear it might be something serious and strand us out in the middle of nowhere, so we went back in to Lander, Wyoming, to have it checked out. We camped out in a local campground in town and had a shop look at it Thursday morning and thankfully nothing was wrong with it - our guess of dirt or rock in the rotor/brake was probably accurate. So we got a little bit of a later start than planned, but it wasn't bad. It was only delayed by a couple hours.

Mike planned an awesome itinerary for us. Smith Lakes area, Cliff Lake area, and the Cirque of Towers. Mike had planned on doing each destination in that order, but we discussed with our friends if they wanted to do the Cirque of Towers first since that was more popular and famous. But they were game to do Smith Lakes first. So we hiked in there first and found a pretty nice spot to set up camp. Then all of us headed off to Cook Lake for a little exploration, and then Mike and I bolted for Mendarrin Lake before it got dark.

On Friday we set off to climb to the top of the Cathedral peak we were camping under. While on our way up there, past Cathedral Lake, we heard a huff from across a meadow we were next to. We all thought it might be bear so we started talking loudly to make our presence known, but we never saw anything to confirm what made the noise. So we hiked on. We played around a pretty cool waterfall and ate lunch at a pretty little pond. And then we looked up the mountain to see what we had to climb up to get to ridge and thought we could do it. Well . . . the boulder field we saw ended up being a lot harder than we anticipated - huge boulders! with several steep ridges. And it was getting later in the afternoon and big, dark clouds were rolling in . . . so we abandoned the plan and headed back down to camp. It took us just as long to come down the boulder field as it took us to climb up it.

Do you see little Mike in the bottom of the shot in green?

 

The next morning we had some hail as we packed up camp to hike to our next destination: Cliff Lake.   This area was totally devoid of other hikers. We immediately loved Cliff Lake because of a beautiful waterfall coming down in to the lake. There was a pretty awesome area to set up near Cliff Lake, but we decided to hike up to High Meadow Lake and see if there was anything there to contend for a better campground and there surely was not! It was so terribly windy up there! We were guessing there were gusts of wind up to 40 mph!

We only spent one night at Cliff Lake and then that's when our party split up - Mike and I headed on to the Cirque of Towers area and Rob, Lindsey, and Lizzie headed back to their car for home. We lost a lot of elevation heading down to the Popo Agie River and we had to cross the river but we found a pretty awesome campsite about 6 miles down from the Cirque of Towers. We set up camp then we took a little but very cold bath in the river! and headed out to fish along the river a little. Once it started hitting about 6:30, now that it was just to the two of us, I was getting pretty nervous! I wanted to get dinner done, brush our teeth, and hang the bear bags before it got dark! Mike always wanted a fire so we'd have a fire but come 9:00, I was usually done and ready to hit the sack. Yes, I was scared of the dark and the critters lurking in the dark!

Our little bath spot.

The next day we did a long day hike into Papoose Lake and the Cirque of Towers. It was pretty easy going other than having to cross the river so many times! One of the crossings was across a fairly skinny log and that always makes me nervous because I get a little bit of vertigo when I see the water running under the long. But the Cirque was worth it! Even to see it 2 miles away was amazing. But we still hiked all the way into Lonesome Lake in the Cirque and ate lunch there. We hiked back to camp after that and grabbed our pads and sleeping bags and enjoyed some warm hammock time before we had to begin our making dinner, brushing teeth, and hanging the bear bag ritual.

Papoose Lake

Cirque of Towers

We saw these little mystery purple spots on a lot of rocks in the trail!

After spending two nights at our Popo Agie River camp, we hiked out leaving pretty early the next day because we had to get to our car by around noon if we could so we'd have plenty of time drive back home to Utah. This hike was pretty easy for the first few miles since it was going down the river but we had to cross the river a couple times again except this time there weren't any logs or rocks to skip across so we took off our boots and waded across in our camp shoes. But after that we had quite a bit of elevation to gain before reaching our car.

We got to our car (Hallelujah!) and a couple bow hunters started chatting with us . . . asking us where we'd gone and if we'd seen any animals. And that's when whey revealed they had heard a rumor that rangers were reporting a sighting of a GRIZZLY BEAR & CUB in the SMITH LAKES area! Holy freak. I'm glad I didn't know that before hand. And that must of have been the huff we heard. And! I'm so so so glad that we took our bigger group into Smith Lakes first rather than end with it when it was just Mike and I and one can of bear spray. But alls well that ends well!

We drove to Lander, got some lunch, and then drove home to Utah! Overall it was a great trip. I'm glad we only saw a couple deer and a bunch of birds and squirrels. Mike and I did pretty awesome with our packing because even with nearly 11 pounds of food in my pack (for 5 nights!) my pack only weighed about 31 pounds, and Mike's weighed 34 pounds (he's my hero cuz he carries the stove, fuel, water purifier, and tent for us).