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.
