Wind Rivers (2009) Winds April 2nd through April 13th of 2009

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Snapping off a bunch of pictures and quickly eating a hearty breakfast, we soon set off with pulks in tow heading back up our broken trail to Eklund Lake.

 It seemed a completely different world with the views we were getting without the clouds we’d had the previous day. We quickly made it to the Photographer’s Point area but decided we should press on instead of stopping for pictures as it was a ways off the route and we thought it wise to use the good weather for traveling and building our new igloo.

Onward we pressed and soon reached the large meadow with the Sweeney Creek and Eklund Lake trail junction where we stopped for a quick snack and a few pictures of the fantastic views of Freemont Peak and Titcomb Basin area.

Eklund Lake wasn’t far and we soon crossed it and started climbing the steep grade to Two Top Lakes.

Chris had been breaking trail across the lake and up the beginning of the steep grade and he began to slow down so I took over the trail breaking to give him a break. I’d noticed that he didn’t hop in right behind me and though he was getting a drink of water or something, so onward I pressed. I’d noticed that the pulk was pulling a bit hard and I attributed it to the steep grade and the deep powdery snow. It was after all, a northern exposure and that suns angle to the snow didn’t appear obtuse enough to let the sun melt the snow. It was really heavenly snow with a solid base deep down and the going should have been easier but onward I pressed. I had gained a large hump in the open slope and was headed up a second hump when I got a good view of Chris, still taking a break below me.

I had just made a sharp turn back when I got this view and had slowed down in the turn but the turn was easy as it was a relatively flat area.

I knew that Chris isn’t slacker and he was taking a long break which caused me concern, so I figured I’d go to the top of the next steep hump and wait for him there or find our what problem he was having.

Funny thing though… I was about to find out on my own what problems he was having as I had just left the flat turn area and was heading up the steep side of the hump and the angle to the sun became rather acute and the pulk really started dragging. My legs were feeling strong, so I powered my way up to the top of the hump before looking back at what was happening. Upon looking back at my pulk, I saw it was pushing about a foot of snow in front of it.

I figured the solution was to shift my load to the rear of the pulk, so I stopped and rearranged my load. I then hooked myself up to the pulk to try out my fix before heading back down to see if Chris needed help.

Surprise, surprise…. The fix didn’t work and I realized that the bottom of the pulk had frozen up so bad that it had 6 inches of snow stuck to the bottom of it and was now pushing two feet of snow in front of it. It took everything I had to get it to move at all!

I again unhooked from the pulk to begin cleaning the snow off the bottom of the pulk to find a layer of ice on the bottom of the pulk.

I began chipping the ice off the pulk and exposed the bottom more directly to the sun in hopes it would also help melt the ice off the cold aluminum fins. The ice chipped off the plastic pulk very easily but the fins took a bit of chipping and melting from the sun. I also ended up rubbing my warm fingers on them to help.

I finished removing the ice and started putting some suntan lotion on the pulk’s bottom to prevent more icing about the time I saw Chris approaching. He had had the same problem and had waxed the bottom of his pulk.

Both fixes worked just fine but they had caused a good half hour delay.

The rest of the slope to the first lake of Two Top Lakes was much easier and we took a short breather at the lake to look over the last 130 ft. of gain to the knob summit. We were so close that we couldn’t see a best route due to the trees on the knob but I’d remembered a bit of a gully going up it, starting a bit further south along the lake from looking at Google Earth when doing the trip planning.

Chris headed up through the trees while traversing over to the gully and then took a right up the gully heading toward the summit. Chris had quite a head of steam ever since the freezing up pulk incident and I was having a hard time keeping up with him. The going was steep but interestingly beautiful and we soon reached a saddle below the actual knob summit. Chris dug out his camera as I pressed on to the summit.

What a surprise, the summit was way shorter than it looked from the saddle. I’ve had that experience many times when reaching false summits or peaks but I was surprised how the little knob had fooled me.

I was a beautiful sunny day on top of the knob with perfect wet and warm snow for building an igloo.

We very quickly ate a lunch while probing the snow depth looking for the perfect spot to build the igloo and soon had a foundation packed down for the igloo. The igloo building was easy as Chris could just pick up the snow and put it into the form and I could pack it as fast as he could put it into the form.

The first and second layers of the igloo went very fast but that used up all the close fresh snow and Chris ran into a deeper layer of ice that needed to be broken up and mixed with the deeper snow so I could pack it well.

This slowed us down some but we still made good time and it also started SNOWING. Yep, some clouds had moved in and we had a winter storm upon us giving us a lovely atmosphere for igloo building. Steadily we built until finishing the fifth layer of the igloo when the skies cleared off and we witness the beginning of a beautiful sunset.

It was too much to resist so we stopped building the igloo, took pictures and watch the clouds peeling off the higher peaks. It was truly breathtaking with all the colors and the speed at which it was clearing up.

It didn’t take long though before the sun set behind some distant clouds in the west and the skies started clouding up again, so back to igloo building we went. We finished the igloo before dark and moved into our cozy home for the evening. We checked the weather many times that evening but it didn’t clear up again.

It had been an easy trip from our second campsite and the igloo building had gone very easy leaving us tired but not fatigued as we slept well hoping for clear skies in the morning.

It was a bit clearer in the morning but there was still a general high cloudiness that gave flat light for pictures, so we did enjoyed the sunrise and clear views of the peaks from our lofty home.

Breakfast was great as well as the hot chocolate I had from my favorite mug before we headed out for a short day ski to keep the muscles loosened up and enjoy the day.

We stopped at the saddle when leaving for the day and looked back up at the summit that looked so huge and ominous the day before but seemed small now with the igloo there to give some perspective.

The snow was very nice with it being heavy enough that we only sank in about 10 inches but it was not too heavy to ski and also didn’t have a crust on it. We skied south towards the next major glacial knob south while descending and traversing the knob we were on until we arrived at a pass between the two knobs. We then ascended that knob by weaving in and around rocky projections covered with snow.

The top of the knob had a few to many trees to give a good view of our igloo but we came across a dead tree that had a huge burl on it. The tree itself was amazing but the burl looked like a brain.

We got back to camp in early afternoon and hung out watching the clouds roll through the peaks and relaxing until sunset when we saw some colors in the clouds far to the west.

I waited until the moon came up to see if I could get a glowing igloo picture before going to bed.

Our plan was to ski back to our second campsite the next day and then out from there the following day. We once again went to bed hoping for clear skies in the morning.

I awoke the next morning feeling so good that I fell back asleep only to wake up as the sun was rising. I hurriedly got dressed while grabbing the camera to go out and catch the sunrise.

I was pleasantly surprised to see clear skies other than just enough clouds to make a good picture. Had I slept another five minutes, I would have missed the colors in the clouds.

Beings it was a few days after the full moon, the moon was still up in the west as the clouds glowed with color.

We stared in amazement, as the sun got higher, changing the shadows on the peaks at a rate that made it feel like we were watching a movie.

It didn’t take long for the sun to burn off what few clouds were still hiding in the cold shadows of the mountains giving us perfectly clear skies.

With the clear skies and having already passed Photographer’s Point three times without going over to take photographs, we knew this was the day to stop by on our way back to our second campsite. We also knew it wouldn’t take long as it was mostly downhill.

We ate breakfast, dubbed on sunscreen and packed up leisurely while enjoying our last views from our wonderful vantage point.

The snow hadn’t changed a bit since our short ski the day before as we skied down through the small open glades of the steep knob with pulk in tow. The pulk was hardly noticeable as I checked my speed while cresting the scattered snow covered rock swells of the knob giving me plenty of control for a couple turns going down the steep side of the swells.

It didn’t take long, seemed to short again, to reach Two Top Lakes where we headed down the gully and snowfield that had cause us so much trouble on our trip in with the pulks freezing up.

The gully and large snowfield was perfect as we skied down it with me figure eighting some of Chris’s turns in the steeper section but I bailed out before reaching the lake to traverse out of the gully and end up at the far side of Eklund Lake.

Chris was able to hop on my tracks and soon we were standing on the far side of the lake putting our skins on and waxing them for the traverse over to the Photographer’s Point area.

We took a short break at the pass in the P.P. area to figure out how we were going to get to the point and decided to head down the pass a ways before dropping the pulks off and heading to the point by traversing along the lower side of the knob. The traverse was a bit longer than expected but we were soon at P.P. gazing into the abyss of Freemont Canyon with Freemont Creek some 2,000 ft. below us.

Even though it was only mid afternoon and we knew it wouldn’t take long to reach camp, we headed back to our pulks and took our skins off. The descent from this point to camp was steep enough that we cruised fast, nearly making it across the few short flat sections of the descent.

We were back at camp very quickly and found our igloo to be in fine shape, which gave us a very relaxing evening at camp.

We went to bed early knowing we had a long day ahead of us with driving back to Colorado.

Awaking early, we found overcast skies with high clouds hiding the tops of the peaks and we set off booting the 70 ft. gain to Miller Pass where we put our skis on and cruised to the Wilderness Boundary where we found that a snowmobile had been up to the day before giving us a broken trail for quite some distance.

We followed the tracks to the Pole Creek/Winter Pines trail junction and saw that the snowmobile had come up the ski trail.

We didn’t intend to go back to our first camp but instead had planned on going down the Surveyor Park Trail and the sight of the tracks pleased us. We followed the tracks and they followed the trail blazes for a long time before leaving the blazed trail and heading off in the direction of Elkhart Park. The trail was steep enough that we could ski it from this point in the spring slush that had developed since the skies started clearing a few hours before.

It was a long descent down the trail but it went fast and we were soon on the ski area run at the bottom of the creek. It was indeed spring conditions as the ground was appearing and the easy run became a bit of a trudge through the few inches of slush on the run.

We stopped at the brewery in Pinedale for a quick burger before heading off to Colorado and home. We got home at 11:15 pm very tired but still excited about the trip.

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