A Week in Wyoming's Wind River Range

Return via Summit Lake

We reached Elbow Lake by lunchtime and decided that to be a fitting venue for lunch. We dropped the packs and carried lunch down to the edge of the lake, where we sat munching contendedly on cheese and crackers.

The trail wound up and down, weaving its way between numerous lakelets. We passed by two Outward Bound groups, each carrying their topo maps in enormous cylinders protruding from their leaders' backpacks. We heard that two bears were feeding on the carcass of a dead cow at Summit Lake. Fortunately, we knew that there were only black bears in the Winds, no grizzlies.

We reached Summit Lake but saw no sign of either the bears or the dead cow. Slightly disappointed, we headed on and soon lost the trail. Strange, the trail had been very well defined until now. I consulted the topo and looked around. Hmm. The trail should go up here. I set off in the presumed direction and soon came across a cairn, then another and finally the vestiges of a trail again. Evidently it was a common occurrence for the trail to disappear in this spot. I waited for Patsy and Carl to catch up and we all three set off together again.

We crossed the intersection with the Highline Trail and continued on ... and up. We passed by No Name Lakes and Cutthroat Lakes, both of which we knew to be famous for the profusion of trout that they contained. We could even see the trout jumping out of the water. Prior to the trip we had suggested to Carl that he might be getting too old for all this climbing and maybe he'd be happier fishing (i.e., catching us dinner) but he'd have none of this. Too bad! We knew from Mitchell's guide and other sources that the lakes in the Winds were teeming with succulent trout, dinners that were orders of magnitude better than those we had left in our packs. Passing by all these frisky trout was almost too much to bear but we carried on nevertheless. None of us knew what to do with a fishing rod, let alone a fish with ... guts!

We finally stopped and made camp at the top of a ridge by an unnamed lake above Dean Lake. From here we had a spectacular view back east toward the Continental Divide. For one last night we watched the sun set over the Wind River range.

Day 7

There was a dramatic change in scenery after we left the vicinity of Doubletop Mountain. The ground was covered in shit, all kinds of shit, horse shit and cow shit. When we reached Rainbow Lake, a spot in which we had thought we might eat lunch, we found a large pack train in residence. Horse flies were everywhere. We hurriedly moved on, stopping to eat lunch instead by the side of the trail.

The closer we came to New Fork Lakes, the more shit was on the ground. But we had been warned that this was not going to be a pleasant end to our week-long sojourn. We hiked irresolutely on trying to ignore the depradations. Shortly after we hit the intersection with the Lowline Trail, we were caught in an afternoon thunderstorm, the worst that we had experienced during the entire trip. Well, we had been lucky, no doubt about that!

We donned our raingear and marched on. Crossing the New Fork River without getting soaked was a challenge but we made it, amusedly watching the ducks scurrying around on the river.

A little later we reached the Bronco. The parking lot was just as full as when we had arrived, yet we had hardly seen a soul. And what of the mouse? I dug around in the back of the Bronco and found that the mouse had indeed been caught in one of the two traps that I laid. The poor little bugger had dragged the trap up and over two crates and had finally lain down to die in one of my sneakers.

Part of a Los Alpinistas story. Text and photographs by Richard J. Hughes.