Ever since I got back into backpacking 3 years ago, I've been eyeing a trip to the wind river range. There have been many reasons it took this long to go and eventually I decided to just go solo rather than delaying it even further after 2 friends had to back out. Life's too short, make the most of it.
I will say, I had a lot of time to think on this trip and during planning about a trend I've noticed where people go on backpacking trips that are cookie cutter routes. In discussing with others, THE Skurka wind river high route or THE cirque of the towers loop kept coming up. There were people I met going out of the Big Sandy trailhead who'd never heard of major destinations like Baptiste or Grave Lake that are arguably most easily accessed from that trailhead. Now, these were friendly conversations and all is meant well, but if it's my first time in this mountain range and your fifth and I have a better feel for where everything is located, then are you really exploring and adventuring? Also, God forbid, are you equipping yourself to extract yourself if something were to go wrong? It's just odd to me that there seems to be a large number of people that do these major hikes seemingly for the bragging rights of having followed an established "Joe mountain" published route and I think they're robbing themselves of an authentic wilderness experience. On the other hand, that meant that I didn't see another person for a 40, 25, and 20 hr period respectively during this trip despite the trailhead being packed because everyone else was jam packed on certain trails I avoided.
Now that that rant is over....
The good: this hike went spectacularly according to plan and one of the two off trail sections was the most beautiful valley I'd ever seen and I had the whole place to myself. I caught my personal best cutthroat and brook trout on this trip. I pretty much caught every fish I saw.
The bad: the extremely windy conditions days 3-6 forced me to spend more time than desired looking for sheltered sites than my satellite imagery scouting afforded. Between that lost time and the wind itself hampering my ability to scout, fishing was less stellar than it could have been otherwise due to only getting to spend ~10 hrs on the water and it prevented me from fishing Grave Lake except for a feeble 20 minute attempt. Nothing could prepare me for the pass on day 6, though. Winds had to exceed 100+ mph up there. There was 0 chance of filming that. One gust almost knocked me over, I caught myself with my trekking pole only to realize 200 yds later that doing so had collapsed one of the sections. My ear drums felt like they were going to burst!!! I also may have broken my foot because, now that I'm off the trail, that foot continues to swell and can hardly put any weight on it. I first noticed the pain on Day 2, then put 5 more days and 50 more miles on it. I've got an appointment on Tuesday for diagnosis.
I brought my warbonnet Blackbird xlc, wooki 20*, and 12' HG Journey tarp with doors on the trip which all held up as well as can be expected. The linelocs on the tarp ridgeline slipped several times when the wind gusts were over 40 mph. I think that's excusable. I eventually had to throw in a slippery half hitch on my 5th night to get any sleep and then ended up praying nothing would break when gusts were coming through strong enough to blow the sides of the tarp into the hammock with enough strength to move the hammock. Basically only got a half night's sleep between night 4 and 5 because of the wind and rain and that's after hiking an extra mile or two each night to find the most sheltered site.
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Originally Posted by tinktheman12
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