NOLS Lightweight Backpacking 7/20-8/2/08
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I just got back from a great trip into the winds.
This greeted us the first night in the mountains
We went in at Boulder lake Wy into the wind river range. Eight students and two instructors. lightest pack with a 7.5 day ration, fuel and water was 22.3# and heaviest was 28 something, I'll have to look back at the paperwork to get exact #'s.
Word from people coming out of the mountains was that the bugs were bad due to a high snow year and a late melt, so we compromised with our weight vs. camping comfort a bit by taking mega lights w/ mega bugs as shelter for the students, and a golite hut one for th e instructors that I quickly modified with some bug net before heading out.
The mega lites w/ the bug net only came out to 24 oz. weight penalty over golite Hut 2's w/o bug net, it turned out to be a good decision. The one off Hut one worked well with a bit of mosquito tolerance, and a head net.
We cooked on Caldera Cones for the 1.5 oz. MSR tian pots.
Note the hoods – that's to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
By day four we were above tree line in the Angel pass area, west of the divide. To get to this basin, we climbed three passes, crossing the diviide twice during the day. The cooler temps and much fewer bugs were quickly appreciated.
We kept moving, climbing Angel Pass the next day and looking back on it during dinner by the cook lakes.
More to come…
The day before we reached the cook lakes, we climbed 3 passes to reach Angel basin. After the first, we contoured around Timico lake keeping it below us. Only two to go…
This is coming up over the divide from Timico lake, taking the fall creek drainage over Fall Creek pass, the lower of two passes to cross the continental divide into angel basin.
There was plenty of snow up high still, and even some ice on the lakes as we climbed angel pass the next day.
We split into two groups to cross the boulder fields up to Angel pass and met at the top for the descent. We couldn't resist this shot.
We then traveled off trail to the cook lakes heading NNW from angel pass to drop down to the lakes. All off trail with students practicing navigation. This is about five days in.
Photos courtesy Janeen Hutchins.
After camping at cook lakes and doing some fishing in the evening, where Kate, one of the students caught her first fish on fly gear, one of our members decided to be evacuated due to a tweeked knee. It had been bothering him from the start of his the course, and we had an opportunity to get him out of the mountains with some horse packers from the NOLS 3 Peaks Ranch. It was hard to see him go, but we had a long way to go to get to our re-ration site at the Green River Lakes trail head. The remaining group said our goodbyes and continued up to lower Jean lake, crushing the remaining miles on trail.
The sun began to fall low in the sky as we climbed to the high lakes.
We had stopped for a quick start style dinner and some more fishing some miles back at Fremont crossing. The river crossing over the outlet of Island Lake took some scouting, but after a while we found an appropriate spot, and using good river crossing technique, made it across safely. ;)
We decided to camp as darkness fell, crossing this last stream before setting up camp and hanging our food from a cliff.
After watching these trout swim in the flowing stream, there was some talk of evening fishing, but we decided to let these fellas enjoy the evening, after the chilly river crossing brought us back to our senses.
The next day, we continued past Upper Jean Lake, towards Stroud Peak.
We hoped to climb Stroud in the morning and continue on a number of miles, over Shannon pass to find a place to camp beyond the headwaters of the Green River.
We climbed the grassy south western slopes of Stroud to just below the rocky southern ridge. Our travels took longer than we had hoped, and the big day before left many in our group more tired than not. We had a wonderful discussion on Judgment and Decision Making on the shoulder of Stroud Peak. Having many miles to go, we turned back and headed North towards Shannon pass and the Peak Lake Cirque.
On the way down the pass, a student with a history of meniscal surgery has his knee give out. With our light weight gear it was a simple task to take weight from his pack, and indeed his pack as well. He soldiered on another five miles and two more passes before we made camp.
Travel was slow in the rugged terrain, with recent snow melt running down and obscuring the trail. At Cube Rock Pass, this curious marmot stopped his evening chores to check us out.
Coming over Cube rock pass from Dale Lake, the headwaters of the Green River, we crossed some steep snow, where one one student took a short ride and executed an excellent self arrest.
We camped that night at beautiful Trail Creek Park, tired and with eleven miles to reach our re-ration the next day.The next morning we sent a small team ahead to meat our re-ration at Green river lakes trail head. We changed our plans to camp at the USFS campground there that night after the rest of the course arrived, taking thier time walking out with the injured student. Along the way I contacted the school via satellite phone to arrange a ride back to Lander for our friend. He pushed on the eleven miles to the road head, keeping us laughing despite his obvious discomfort along the way. When we arrived a driver was waiting with a vehicle and promises of dinner out in Pinedale for Greg.
The next morning we slept in a bit and did some leadership classes in the afternoon, waiting for the sun to drop a bit in the sky and temperatures to cool a bit before we headed off to the Roaring fork basin to the north. We traveled the five miles quickly in the late afternoon and ate well for longer off trail days the next two days.
Photos courtesy Janeen Hutchins
Having only four more days left of the course, we broke our travel into what we thought would be two mid length days and a short day at the end. We traveled up to Gunsight pass from the roaring fork basin, looking forward to a spectacular ridge hike that would take us to Dad's Lake and set us up for our final crossing of the divide.
by this point, Students were honing their off trail route finding and map reading, picking the route from the basin up to Dad's lake.
We snuck our shelters between the rocks, well away from the shore, and not too exposed if the fire we saw building to the south and west began to influence the weather.
Our high elevation and windy conditions were a great test of the Caldera cone and our students wind blocking abilities. Both performed flawlessly, though we did notice a bit higher fuel consumption.
We had a pattering of rain around 3am, but nothing ever built.
Photos courtesy of Janeen Hutchins
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