Big Horn Mountains

After much belatedness, I'm finally about ready to go do my Wyoming hiking. First, there's a family reunion of sorts in Boise, then another family reunion of sorts at Bear Lake, and then to drop my daughter-in-law and my grandchildren back at my oldest son's house in Boise again... at which point I pick up my daughter's boyfriend, who'll be flying in, and drop off my wife at the airport. This whole process is the big variable right now; I don't know how long it will take, but ideally I'll be able to get to Worland WY from Boise (about a ten hour drive, and that's assuming no stopping near the Tetons for any exploration) before it's too dark on airport day, and then we can drive up to the West Tensleep Trailhead and start hiking the next morning. Of course, another alternative is that we stay close to the Teton area if it takes longer to get out of Boise, and I'll just have to drive a bit more on the next morning before we start hiking. That's not actually the worst thing in the world, as my itinerary for the first day isn't very intense. ~6 miles tops, to get from the Trailhead to the Lost Twin Lakes. And if we're really late getting out that morning, we don't even have to go that far; we could stop at Mirror Lake at ~ 3 miles. The second day I'm a little worried about. We'd backtrack out of the Lost Twin Lakes area, and then instead of going back to the car (although being nearly back at the car) we'd turn north up towards Lake Helen and Mistymoon Lake. To Helen is about 4.5 miles, and to Mistymoon is about 6. But not from Lost Twin Lakes, from the fork in the trail. I can't get to either of them without hiking a good 10 miles or even more the second day, which is probably a bit more than we're in the mood for. Maybe we'll just do it anyway, because we have the whole next day with nothing on the itinerary except exploration. Or maybe we do it anyway, and if we plop down our tents somewhere not quite at Helen Lake, then that's OK too because we've got all next day to play around. 

Then after that third day, we get back to the car and make for Rapid City. We'd come out through the slightly slower and more scenic Crazy Woman Canyon drive, because why not, and then if there's time I'd like to go back to Devil's Tower and the Sylvan Lake and Needles section of the Black Hills in Custer State Park. But if we don't have time, at least I've done those before once. 

The idea situation is that I can get to Worland or near Worland on the Sunday afternoon, but I'm concerned that I might have to make that drive on Monday instead. If so, I won't get back until the next Sunday evening, and I'd prefer to get back on Saturday evening and go to church like normal. But we'll see. Too many variables that I don't know yet, most specifically the times that I'd need to be at the airport. If I can hit the road from Boise by early afternoon, then I can do it all on Sunday. If not, I'll have to either cut a day from my itinerary or not get back until Sunday evening. 

My son is also apparently trying to hold me to an offhand comment I made that I'd like to head up to Stanley and see the Sawtooths in the summer of 2023. I would like to do that, but whether I really will or not was something that I hadn't taken too seriously until he obviously remembered that comment and was hoping to get involved with that trip as well. 

Anyway, I nabbed this from a GIS, but it's someone else's hike to the Lost Twin Lakes area. It's curious that this is what most of the pictures look like. Does nobody go to the second of the lost twin lakes?

Pictured Rocks

The summer got away from me with way too much going on. Never got out to the Bighorns, sadly. Maybe next summer. However, it looks like I'll be able to spend a short time at Picture Rocks National Lakeshore in a couple of weeks, hopefully for peak fall color but not yet very cold weather. 

I'm going with a hiking buddy, my daughter's boyfriend, who hasn't ever really been hiking before, but who has wanted to for a long time. I don't know yet exactly what we're going to do, but I've been noodling with a few ideas. I think of it as his trip that I'm kinda long for the ride on, but the reality is that because its his first time, I suspect he's going to hope and expect me to kind of take the lead on a lot of things. Anyway, we'll work it out. I don't want to tell him where to go if he's already done his own research, but if he hasn't, I've got some ideas.

It seems like a pretty last minute thing; we're going in about a week, and we don't have backcountry campsite reservations yet or a route. But if we do my proposal, we'll start out at the Miners Falls parking lot, go see the Miners Falls, come back to the car and roadwalk (or drive, I suppose. No reason why not) to Miner's Beach and Miner's Castle parking lot, and use that as our trailhead. It's only about 6-7 or so miles to Mosquito River campsite. While I dislike the name of that place, I suspect that by a little bit later in October (not to mention the higher latitude) there hopefully won't actually be any mosquitos. 

From there, we can actually leave our tents up two days, and do two day-hiking routes; the Chapel Lake area and the Beaver Basin area. We'll drive up and stay the night on Wednesday, do the initial hike in on Thursday, hike all around on Friday, hike out on Saturday and get back very late Saturday night. Not the most impressive trip, but a good quickie. I long weekend (sorta) away, and an introduction to a first-time hiker. Friday might be relatively big miles (by relatively I mean maybe more than 10) but given that we can do that with just little day packs for some food, water and a handful of essentials, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Some route noodling

I know that I have a terrible tendency to overdo my routes. There are too many things that I want to see, and I end up planning big routes where I'm forced to walk ten miles or more a day in the mountains, climbing thousands of feet, and I end up not doing it, because I get tired, altitude sickness, and just not in the mood, or a combination of all of the above. That said, this "route" includes more options than I'm liable to be able to use, by a long shot.

It's really two routes; either the Lost Twin Lakes destination via Mirror Lake, or the Florence Lake/Bomber Mountain destination via Helen, Marion, Mistymoon and Gunboat lakes. I do kind of like the second of those, but it's obviously about 50% or so longer than the other option.

Anyway, here's the link to the Caltopo I drew for it.

https://caltopo.com/m/3KG0

And here's an image or two to keep us inspired.

Cloud Peak Wilderness

Although it's crazy to me that I might be hiking in August and it's July 2nd, and I still have no idea what I'm going to do, I... well, I'll probably be hiking in August for a week and I still have no idea what I'm going to do. What I'm leaning towards strongly now is the Cloud Peak Wilderness in the Bighorn Mountains of Central Wyoming for about three or four days followed by a couple of days of scenic roadtripping around the Bighorn Basin. (I had thought about going back to the Uintas, but I really want to branch out; I've spent way too much time in that range while other locations should have been commanding my attention for more diversity of experience.)

The Bighorns are kind of like the Wind Rivers little brother; on the other side of the basin, no grizzly bears, similar scenery, but just a tad more subdued. It also comes with the benefit that it hasn't become a hiker/climber magnet, so it's a place of likely solitude other than some hikers and fly fishersmen who are most likely locals. 

Another contender was the Lost Creek Wilderness in southern Colorado, which has a very unique look to it. That's a short-lister for a late September or early October hike, if the weather cooperates. Maybe even this year! (Sigh. I have two weeks of vacation that are unaccounted for and I don't want to waste it frittering away my time on the computer, or watching TV or something stupid at home. Especially if the rest of the family are going to be here all over the house anyway.)

Whether I take any of my sons with me remains to be seen, but it's looking somewhat unlikely, at least for this first trip. My oldest son will have a new baby, will be moving, and working. My next oldest will still be in NoCal on his mission. My youngest wants to come, but his availability due to his job is iffy. Plus, he doesn't really want to backpack so much as he wants to do the scenic roadtripping portion of the trip. Which is fine, because the two portions might end up being close to a 50/50 split. But his availability is still iffy.

Anyway, I have the Trails Illustrated map on order, but it will come in while I'm out of town, so I won't be able to look at it until about the 20th of July. Less than a month before I actually go hiking, I presume. Yikes. I tend to like to be more prepared than that, but then again, why? Why not show up with only a vague idea of where I'm going and do what I'm feeling like? What I really need to spend more time on is figuring out what to see while driving around in the basin. For the backpacking, I'll probably just head up to one of the "popular" destinations, like the Pouch Lake area or something, and play it somewhat by ear.

Anyway, while I won't be posting while out of town, I'll probably have some posts to make as I wrap up my preparations for the trip, and of course, after I come back. More activity on this blog is coming soon...

Uinta High Route

Lodging this link away for future reference...

https://danransom.com/2019/06/backpacking-uinta-high-route/

Checking in...

2020 was weird for everyone, no doubt, but I did no backpacking or major hiking trip the entire year. The Isle Royale trip, already documented here was the most recent that I've done. I'm not yet sure what 2021 holds either; we have lots of uncertainty about our schedule in particular and things we need to do. Although no doubt, I'll visit a number of beautiful outdoorsey locations, whether I get to hike in them or not is TBD.

To be fair, in 2020 I did that as well. I got to check a number of places off of my list that I'd never been before, some of them having been at the top of my list for the better part of 40 years. I saw Yellowstone. I saw the Grand Tetons. I saw Pilot and Index Peaks. I saw Mt. Rushmore and Custer State park, and much of the rest of the Black Hills. I saw Badlands National Park. I saw Promontory Utah and the Golden Spike area. I saw the Devil's Tower (I did actually do the inner loop hike there; it's small enough that other than the somewhat bigger outer loop, which no doubt doesn't look too much different, I don't have a ton of other options anyway.)

But in no case did I have the opportunity to do more than a few day hikes or drive up and look kind of things. The longest hike that I managed to talk my family into doing with me when I had them with me was a little beyond Inspiration Point at the Tetons. Everyone actually said that they liked the Tetons better than Yellowstone, which I think nobody expected (except for me, maybe.)

Anyway; it's been over a year since I've made a post, so I thought I'd just do a check in. I don't have any specific plans to announce, unfortunately. I'll be going out West at least twice yet this year, but I don't anticipate being able to do more than a few days of outdoorsy sightseeing while out there. We're actually trying to get all the way to the West Coast and maybe see the Redwoods, but when we do, it will likely be in the winter. In the summer, we'll head to Boise and maybe see some stuff either on the way or on the way back.

And it'll be "drive up to a place and maybe spend a few hours there" too, not backpacking for several days, sadly. But that's what I know for sure I can do. If I can fit another trip for me in, I will. I just don't know that I can yet.

Isle Royale

Well, the experiment was done.  It was successful in some ways, but less so in others.  Notably;

• I didn't like the big group hiking.  In part because I am very susceptible to heat exhaustion and heat stress (something that would probably be much less of an issue were I less overweight, I agree—but not entirely.  My dad used to have this problem at boot camp in the 70s when he was still really thin, for instance.) I really kind of need to go my own pace.  I ended up getting locked into a schedule that was not at my pace, and it ended up being really difficult to keep up, because I did have to stop to cool down once or twice, and frankly, we had at least one day, possibly two, where we just had too many hard miles planned.  Nobody really much liked it, but I was one that had the hardest time with it.  Again, were I on my own, I not only wouldn't have over-planned, but I could have much more easily managed my pace and my timing.  This has never been an issue before for me on my own, but only when I'm trying to stick to someone else's pace in the face of a difficult trail.  Other than that, the social aspect of it wasn't bad, and in fact I often kind of enjoyed it.  But that said, we didn't get that much of it, because during the day we ended up stringing out into several groups moving at variable paces.  (I was always with the slowest group.)
• I ended up admitting defeat the last day.  I was so tired and sore after our longest day that I had no appetite for the last eight miles that we were to do on the last morning to get to the seaplane dock, so we hired a boat ferry to take us from the dock we were already at to the end.  My wife was even more defeated than I was and demoralized, so the two of us went back via boat—after waiting for several hours on the dock, which wasn't really all that unpleasant, to be honest.  So rather than the full 45 mile or so hike, we cut 7-8 miles off of the end.  Two long days in a row left me much more battered and bruised than I expected, but it was some of the younger guys that almost had worse injuries and soreness.  One guy in his late twenties, my friend's son-in-law, had an ankle swollen to twice its normal size.  My 17 year old son was limping on a gimpy knee.  It took several days for us to all be able to walk normally, and my son is still limping a bit (in some ways, so am I).  So yeah—I'm not the most aggressive hiker out there, but even the really thin, young and athletic people had a tough time with this itinerary.  It was way too aggressive.
• I really prefer hiking in the more wild national forests and wilderness areas than the more developed national parks.  Part of the reason for the overly aggressive itinerary was the need to hit certain campsites that are spaced as they are spaced.  Yeah; in a pinch, we could have just set up camp in the woods, but we weren't supposed to, and I don't really like that lack of flexibility.
• Also; eastern hiking just doesn't really appeal to me very much.  I like walking through the woods as much as the next guy, but when only two or three mediocre views are your entire payoff for nearly a week of almost fifty miles of hiking, that doesn't seem like a great experience to me.  I guess I'm just a western hiker at heart, and the more open spaces of real mountain meadows and deserts and badlands are what I love.
• My wife hated it.  She put on a good face most of the time, and didn't mind the hanging out at camp with our friends and our boys, but she didn't sleep well, hated walking with a pack on, was footsore and hot and sweaty all the time and hated that, she's convinced that she was "attacked" by a fox and that I was going to drop dead and die in the woods because my heat exhaustion got to the point at the end of the long day where I threw up.  At one point she said that it was like a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from, and while that may have been said a little bit in the extremity of demoralization, it does pretty much describe her take-away from the experience.  Even if it's a trip that I plan under better circumstances, I doubt I'll be able to talk her into ever going again.  On the other hand, my boys are up for some excursions in the mountains next summer, or the desert at spring break or whatever.  Of course, one of my boys will be leaving for his mission long before next summer comes along, so he won't be hiking with us anyway.  But meanwhile, maybe my older married son will be available to go in his place next summer, especially if we go hiking in the Wind Rivers, or go see the Tetons and Yellowstone, etc.

My biggest lessons learned are, therefore, twofold:  1) I really would do better if I were in better shape; I need to get serious about both losing some weight and developing more endurance, and 2) I really don't like aggressive death march type hiking anyway, though.  I want to relax, go out in the wilderness, and just enjoy being there, which means actually minimizing the backpacking, quite honestly.  I like backpacking because I like getting somewhere that I'm away from the roads, not because I like the backpacking for its own right.  My trip during spring break where I went hiking without backpacking and enjoyed it quite a bit was a big deal; I might well do much more of this kind of thing in the future.  After all, although I stayed in an official campsite at Colorado National Monument, there's no reason I couldn't have stayed in a hotel in Fruita or Grand Junction and done exactly the same thing that I did do except with restaurants, showers and sleeping in a bed at night.  Which means... maybe I'll get my wife to participate after all.

Having landed at Isle Royale National Park...

Windigo; our starting point for the hike

I don't actually know where this is, but here's the guys on the trail.  The last fellow with the blue camping pad is one of my sons.

Almost the full group; missing one person who's taking the picture

My boys on either side; my friend's son in the middle

Some of us.  I'm on the far left, my friend on the far right; our teenaged boys and his wife in the middle

My two sons looking at one of the few decent views on this hike.

On top of the Greenstone Ridge trail.  This is the long day.

The older of my two younger boys and one of my friends' older sons (who's about the same age and pretty good friends my oldest, married son, actually.)

My wife on the trail

Arrived at trail's end at Rock Harbor!  This picture is almost everyone except my friends' one son who ran off somewhere and couldn't be found for this picture.  He may have just been in the bathroom; I can't remember now.

On the other dock, waiting for the sea planes that will take us back to the mainland.