A Transect of Winds

The Wind River Range

This is as far as my brain really got on this trip – back to the original end destination for a previous epic horseback adventure that ended in chaos.

Hiking into known, deeply familiar territory was both satisfying and disorienting. It felt like Three Peaks Ranch – the lifestyle and job site left last spring- should be the end point…time to go back to work because this is what we do; we get to Three Peaks and go to work.

Surreal to be a guest where, for so many years, we have worked. Fantastic to see friends and feel the cheerful energy radiating off the place.

Transecting the Winds – from South to North, a nine-day slice in two sections, through old memories (this is where that darn horse ran away down the trail, and that is where I saw my first Arctic Greyling fish) to unexplored vistas.

The Winds are still magical, and even after all the country we have covered, and all the time we have previously spent in them, both Jeff and I recounted almost daily that we could see why they were the favorite section for most CDT thru-hikers.

Alpine cirques of snowfields, glacially-carved granite drama, wildflowers and leaping fish on lakes.
On the southern end, we were chasing snorting antelope across fields of sage and islands of five-needled limber pine. Then we disappeared into the thicket of lodgepole pine – a half dead forest of beetle-infested trees that still teems with life among the wartleberry undergrowth and yellow and purple monkey flowers along meadow stream-banks.

Squirrels scold us with their chatter as we head into the high meadows and cathedral peaks of the alpine, along elk trails where their heavy, sweet musk lingers in the air.

We watch the red fins of cutthroat as they leap from ice-blue water – gracelessly belly flopping on their way back in – to catch caddis flys dropping their eggs onto the water’s rippled surface.
Down the Green River – an improbable turquoise hue for water as the glacial till heads down valley, past enormous spruce trees in an ancient, secretive forest where huckleberry ripen and their sweet tang lingers on our tongues.

The high meadows of the extreme northern end of the Winds are drier, a little less mosquito heavy, but in the evening light a grizzly bear wandering across the meadow spooks two adult moose, who canter across our path with huge, ground-eating strides.
Talk about legs!

At night, the burned forest the rings the meadow edge crackles and pops at intervals, as if it is still aflame.

And now, a photographic tour…

The Winds were full of people. We ran into our first south-bound CDT hikers, (and after roughly a thousand miles, missed the group of three hikers we wanted to see by an hour on a side trail…go figure), and have a few thank-you’s to make:

Thank you Maggie Rose and crew for all your fabulous tread and trail clearing…

Thank you Plumber Joe and posse for a cold beer on a really hot stretch of two-track. May all future french bread loaves be kind to your teeth…

And, of course, Three Peaks and Crew – go Mighty Mustangs!