Wind River Range
Traveling into Wyoming’s Wind River Range with longtime friends brought excitement -- I had trained for this trip, the only activity for which I’d ever trained, by hopping on my climbing gym’s stair climber with a 60 lb kettlebell in my backpack and staying on until NPR ran out of words. Ira Glass’s voice still makes me stand up straight and activate my glutes.
The region’s glacially-carved lakes made the Cirque of the Towers loop a priority. Not being a national park, the area had been off my radar until we started researching destinations. By the third day of hiking it had matched the beauty of any of the national parks I’ve had the privilege of visiting.
Much as a theme of the trip as a whole was “lake-plunging’” we granted micro-themes to certain sections of the traverse, e.g. “openness”, “flabbergast”, “temporary discomfort”, and “wind”. For example, anyone could declare that, “The theme of the next five minutes is ‘perspicacity’,” and so it would be.
The sun shone on us every day, and mosquitoes emerged every dawn and dusk
adopt friend (billy)
encounter other groups in the backcountry, a church group with pack horses
texas pass -- no horse can traverse, transit through the day, a rest atop
peace, emptiness, no others for quite some time
feelings of reluctance to leave. a cold windy exit
when the birds paused, silence enough to hear a cloud pass overhead
We were in grizzly country, requiring each of us to carry a can of bear spray at all times. Post-swim, this made for stylish outfits -- sunning on the rocks in boxer briefs with bear spray strapped at the hip. Not pictured.
Photo timestamps indicate about 45 minutes of ascent on Texas Pass, pictured above, but it felt closer to a lifetime.