Highway 28 to Elkhart Trailhead: August 22nd

* Day 0: Zero day in Lander. Motel breakfast is a little sad but the bagels do the job - we'll have second breakfast anyway. But first stop is literally just on the other side of the highway - new clothes! I'm shopping for a new sun shirt because the one I've used for the last 1,000+ miles can't hold itself together anymore. We both pick up new insoles for our shoes. Susan exchanges a pair of my old Darn Tough socks for new ones. That's because I didn't know this store did the exchange, and I have 3 new pairs of socks waiting for me at the post office. That package also has new pants for Susan - she's lost so much weight that her original pants are loose and floppy enough to take off without undoing the button or zipper. She can put the old ones on over her 2-sizes-smaller new ones and still stretch out a bunch of slack. Spend a little time working on the tent, because one of the zippers acts up when you try to close it all the way. Then we go to the next gear shop and I see that I should have just bought my shirt from the first one, but I do still get some new underwear. About time we replaced a few things. Get lunch at Lincoln Street Bakery, one of 3 bakeries/cafés all within about 3 blocks of each other. Any small town that loves bread and pastries enough to support that many bakeries is a good place in my book. Lander is a neat place, almost like a sort of mini-Bozeman, a haven for outdoor enthusiasts with a share of slightly pretentious shops and restaurants but also genuinely kind people. And it's still cheaper than Colorado. Instead of MSU there's the big NOLS campus and world headquarters. Like magic, the Safeway pharmacy filled my prescriptions after I called last week and asked to transfer them from a Nebraska Walgreens; the pharmacist has a friendly chat with the person in front of me, whom he seems to know, but then has just as friendly of a chat with me and even prints us a coupon for 20% off our groceries. Sweet! Time to pick up all our food for the next 6 days in the mountains. Schlep all that food back across town, and I make it back to the first outfitter before they close and pick up a cornmeal-yellow Pata-gucci sun hoody. So excited not to wear that ratty silver one, tacky from miles and miles worth of sweat and dust and dirt and sunscreen, again. Susan gets an alert from the CDTC about the Dollar Lake fire, burning totally out of control in the Green River Lakes area. Although the CDT itself skirts the closure area, the trailhead and road up there are closed, which could be a major problem because that's the area we were supposed to backpack with our friends over Labor Day. And then there's the whole smoke issue. Finish up the Dominos pizzas and more chores before moving on to microwaved meals from the Safeway deli - eating so much food in bar form on the trail is one thing, but the microwave diet in town is starting to make us a little sad. Watch Guy Fieri eat a bunch of really good looking food and dream of having an income again. The grass is always greener...

Looking out across Lander, towards the Winds in the distance

Susan wearing her old pants over her new pants

I hope my grocery cart never looks like this again after this trip

* Day 1: Snag breakfast, shoulder our heavy packs swollen with five-and-a-half days worth of food, and head across the highway to start hitching. It doesn't take long before a couple visiting from the Denver area pull over and shift some bags around so we can squeeze in the back seat; they're heading up for sport climbing at Wild Iris but totally don't mind driving us farther along the highway first. Pass about 6 southbounders hitching just a bit farther out of town, I guess we cut in line a little. Oops! We didn't know, I swear! The driver asks us how we manage to take care of our feet while thru-hiking. Shortly after they drop us off at the non-descript dirt road that angles off from the highway a pickup with a horse trailer pulls up and four of the 6 southbounders we saw earlier pile out. The two older women in the truck offer to drive us past the roads to where the trail really starts, and we're happy to jump 3 miles along the dirt two-track. They're out here to do a little light trail work, brushing the first part to make it a little more horse-friendly. NPR is on the radio, and they understand the whole concept that Wyoming takes in way more federal tax dollars than they contribute, so they should probably cool it on the anti-California attitude. Our kind of people. They pull off at their parking and we finish up along a bit more dusty roads to the trail proper. 3 miles in by 10:30 AM, not bad for a hitchhiking day. We expected to dive right into the mountains, but instead the trail takes us mostly west, skirting around the toe of the far southern end of the Wind River Range. The familiar Rocky Mountain blend of lodgepole and spruce alternates with patches of exposed sage and scrub; the occasional aspen stands out, but they're getting more scarce. Some aspens already sport a few yellow leaves, and most of the lupine blossoms have turned from supple violet to beige and crunchy - summer's ending. The terrain serves as a nice counterpoint to our first day out of Encampment, when we dropped from the high country down to Wyoming's Red Desert, a sort of reflection to remind us that the mountains don't just spring out of nothing. Craggy light-grey peaks peer above the trees, holding promise of the dramatic landscapes that await after this fuzzy transition zone. We pass several creeks where water flows free and clear from hidden sources up high, a welcome change from the endless dry expanse of the Basin, even when we have to slow down to rock-hop or log-balance our way across. The shadows get long and cast the south face of Mount Nystrom in dramatic relief, the first major peak we've seen; it breaches far above treeline, a bowl of exposed, slabby rock facing southeast where a glacier ground away a giant scoop of earth. Thanks to the extra ride we make it 20 trail-miles to a BLM campground by the upper Sweetwater River. Bear boxes, vault toilets, and picnic tables, all clean and in good repair - the next best thing to a hotel. It's warm enough that we don't even have to put on any extra layers before bed, and the potential afternoon storms never materialized. We soak it in and enjoy the sunset, because the upcoming forecast is rough and we know the cold always finds you above 10,000 feet.

Starting selfie in the hotel mirror, big packs!

Ben is excited for his new sun shirt

Hiking toward the mountains at first

Early views of Mount Nystrom

This isn't a a problem we've had in the desert

Dynamic evening light on Mt. Nystrom

A hare at camp

* Day 2: Start with a sunrise in hues of vibrant orange and calm blue; golden morning light slowly spreads across the broad flanks of Mount Nystrom. It still takes nearly 6 miles before we're up to the saddle on Nystrom's shoulder, looking down to Little Sandy lake. The gentle rolls of the foothills lie behind us, now, as through evergreens and burnt forest skeletons we start to catch glimpses of the sharp, towering, sheer summits that dominate the glaciated wild heart of the Wind River mountains. All across the skyline, steep grey cliffs terminate abruptly in knife-edge ridges and spearhead peaks. Standing on the shores of Little Sandy drives the point home; two rock obelisks rise nearly 2,000 feet almost directly from the water, lonely against the sky, and this is the sort of place where those towers don't even have names. Round the bend, start hiking up the Little Sandy Creek drainage, and the scenery keeps on coming. First, the dark, gnarled edges of a high plateau to the east, a massive cleft splitting the rock into 2 stately towers that drop steeply to the lush valley floor, and I think of the Quicksilver Plateau and that this place will be on the scale of the Beartooths. Further up the great "U"-shaped glacier scar a series of toothy, jagged spires come into view, abrupt reddish-tan faces breaking off and dropping at odd angles that shift as we hike further alongside them and gain new perspectives. "OK," I think, "that's really cool, this must be part of the main event". Yet as we ascend higher towards Temple Pass, and Temple Peak itself starts to come into view, I quickly realize that whatever's coming up dwarfs the inspiring towers we just passed. Along the way we stop and pull a weather forecast to help make some decisions: storms this afternoon, rain potentially all day tomorrow, cloudy but maybe a break from precip on Tuesday... Not much sunshine to be found. I had really wanted to go up East Temple Peak, but today has already been long and the weather deteriorates tonight, so it'll have to wait for another time. Finish the climb up Temple Pass as the skies get dark and a cold wind whips up. The east face of Temple Peak rises 1,500 feet as a complex ridge punctuated by a series of pinnacles that has me muttering aloud thoughts of awe. And as we reach the pass and descend the other side my words of compulsive amazement become more vocal - "Holy crap!" and "What the hell is going on here??" The north face juts more than 2,000 feet up from the floor of its cirque, the dominant feature of a massive amphiteater ringed by 1,000-foot precipitous, solid cliffs that would offer any climber years of adventure and heartache. We can feel the storm brewing, see the darkness in the distance, but I just can't bring myself to hurry along, so busy craning my neck and snapping photos. As we continue descending the vertiginous (I'm having to dig deep to come up with enough different words to describe these mountains) northwest face of East Temple Peak comes into view; the mountain rises in an impossible shape, like a mighty stone blade swung deep into the earth, intimidating flanks left exposed to remind of the danger the now-buried edge once held. It's really cool. I love these sort of craggy mountains, exquisite headstones carved by glaciers whose ghosts still haunt the range. For me, right up there with the mountain scenery of the famous Alpine regions we toured in Europe - the Écrins, Mont Blanc, the Dolomites. At any rate, thunder cracks, the storm rolls in, and it isn't long before we have to stop our very fast walk downhill to put on all the rain gear and batten down the hatches - jacket, rain pants, gloves, pack cover. But there's something different. After a bit I catch a few whiffs of burning wood, and then abruptly the visibility drops and our lungs fill with the acrid sort of smoke that plumes up when you dump a bucket on a campfire. So it wasn't heavy rain blurring out the distant peaks. Visibility plummets to maybe a quarter-mile; it's hard to catch my breath and I start to get a headache, while Susan fights her asthma for control of her windpipe. We don't hike much farther. Somehow the heavy rain and the smoke and the gusty wind coexist in a mix I'd never had the ill-fortune to experience until now. Try to descend a little more and find a nice spot between a giant boulder and a sheltering whitebark pine. Setting up the tent in the tight spot takes some ingenuity and compromises but we get it up and the rainfly on before it catches too much rain. White flecks of ash settle on the rainfly. But then the rain lets up so we get to make dinner mostly dry; the smoke lifts a little, too, and once again we can make out the fuzzy silhouette of Schiestler Peak a short distance across the lake. It's a little miserable. We both agree that if this is going to be normal for the coming days, we're gonna need to bail early.

Mountain sunrise

First glimpses of the sky-scraping scenery to come

Towers over Little Sandy Lake

Looking down the Little Sandy basin

More in-"spire"-ing scenery

Early views of Temple Peak

A hiding marmot

Heading towards Temple Pass

Temple Peak changes shape as we ascend

Susan at Temple Pass, our first glimpse of the Cirque of the Towers in the distance

The enormous north face of Temple Peak

Ben with East Temple and Temple behind

Temple Pass area pano

* Day 3: By the time we break camp there's light in the sky and despite some haze wide swaths of blue separate the light clouds; much nicer than the rain we'd expected to wake up to. The air doesn't burn like it did yesterday evening we can make out the cracked features of Schiestler's broken face. Finish descending from Temple Pass to Big Sandy Lake; the sharp pyramid of War Bonnet Peak dominates the approaching skyline. Yesterday we only passed by a few other hikers heading out, but when we hit the trails around Big Sandy that immediately changes; campers amble around their sites and try to air the condensation out of their homes while a few other hikers go down and up the trail, groups of week-end backpackers and a pair of climbers and a couple quick-moving solo folks. We're all here for the same thing - up from Big Sandy lake, over Jackass Pass, through the gap between War Bonnet and Mitchell peaks, lies the Cirque of the Towers. It's one of those places legendary among the outdoorsy crowd, a place people talk about with either wistful awe as they conjure memories of fantastical mountain spires, or with reluctant longing as they try to come up with reasons they haven't made it there yet. I'm excited to move from the latter to the former. This remote area of Wyoming isn't exactly on the way to many places, and part of the appeal of the CDT was always having the Winds on a concrete itinerary. So it's good motivation as we plod up the steep grades leading over Jackass Pass. Above Arrowhead Lake the broken pinnacles of War Bonnet rearrange themselves and reveal the truly massive relief of the 2,000 foot nearly-vertical east face. Pingora's solid summit starts to peak out above the pass. We crest over Jackass and our jaws drop as the Cirque of the Towers comes into full view - the spectacular scenery we've seen over the past 10 miles condensed into one tight space, jagged spire after jagged spire terminating in sheer cliffs that drop 1,000 or more feet to the sparse trees that ring the blue lakes at the base of the basin. Wolf's Head, Lizard Head, Warrior Peaks, and of course Pingora, the uncompromising stone guardian of the entire cirque, who stands alone directly above Lonesome Lake, a granite Colossus marking the traveler's passage into the wild alpine. As we wrap through the cirque the thin clouds and mild sunshine we enjoyed all morning are shifting into dark, threatening billows, but I'm too dumbstruck to care, still stopping every few minutes to snap five more pictures. We go by maybe 20 other hikers and backpackers and even a trio of llamas. Sadly, Lonesome Lake and the Cirque are victims of their own beauty - we're careful not to pick up any water from the lake because it has a reputation for high concentrations of human fecal matter. On the far side we start ascending Texas Pass, a bigger climb than our first one that will take us back over 11,000 feet. Thunder crashes, a signal for the clouds to open, and sleet and rain start to pelt from the sky as we stop to don our hiker-armor. Well over a dozen hikers come by on their way down from the pass, some in full jackets and pants like us, some in short-shorts and neon rain jackets, some in ponchos, and one older woman in short-shorts and what might be a cotton t-shirt. She looked cold. On the other side a very steep, thigh-burning descent takes us toward a couple of turquoise lakes nestled beneath another sharp rock triangle; the scenery would be remarkable except for what we just passed through. The rain continues steadily, interspersed with rolls of thunder that echo endlessly off the mountain walls, and it's really about time for a break, so we crawl under a big, overhanging boulder and hide out to have a snack. We hike out from this valley along Washakie Creek and then past Shadow Lake, which must have another 100 people camping around it; tents are tucked back in every clearing through the trees. But we can see why - one more amazing panorama keeps me moving slow, as not only do the massive walls of Elizabeth Peak dwarf the campers, but in the distance we catch a proper view of the incredible west side of some of the Cirque's other spires. Overhanging Tower stands bulky and blocky compared to the 1,000-foot elegant sweep of clean rock that leads to the impossibly sharp summit of Shark's Nose, a proper "aiguille" that looks as though it could have been teleported here from Chamonix. The terrain here just doesn't quit. But the trail takes us farther from the high heart of the mountains, towards the foothills and benches along the southwest slopes, which honestly is OK because the rain keeps coming and going and it's warmer down here, with occasional tree cover. Haze moves back in, too, and soon the drama of the Cirque has faded to an obscured toothy ridgeline under grey-blue clouds. We're aiming for another tight campsite that appears just before a stream, nestled between giant half-buried boulders. As we arrive at 7 PM three southbounders cross the creek and come by, at least one somewhat sadly checking his phone; I feel bad that maybe they were hoping for this spot, but also very grateful that we arrived first. Rain lets up in time for us to have a dry dinner. We expected worse weather today - very grateful, again, that so far the tent and my sleeping bag are still dry and warm, and that we had excellent views of the Cirque of the Towers today. Susan and I have been around a lot of mountains and this ranks with the best scenery we've seen - Torres del Paine, Fitz Roy, the Tetons, Glacier National Park, Mt. Ranier, the North Cascades, the Beartooths, the Écrins, the Dolomites, Mt. Blanc and all its satellites, Lofoten, Romsdal, Barskoon and the Altai peaks of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Ben Nevis, the Sawtooths - the Winds stand proud compared to any spot on that list. We need to come back someday.

Schiestler Peak in the morning

War Bonnet Peak stands tall in morning haze

Hazy reflections.at Big Sandy Lake

War Bonnet and the Sudance Pinnacle

Pingora starts to show over the pass

At Jackass Pass

Jaw-dropping scenery

Cirque of the Towers

Pano of War Bonnet and the Cirque

Slabby Mitchell Peak

Views from the cirque floor

Susan stands under soaring Pingora

Pingora from the north

Heading up Texas Pass

Ben at Texas Pass

Trying to hide from the rain

Just another marmot ;)

More spiky peaks

Looking back towards the Shark's Nose

Different views ahead

Looking back towards the Cirque

* Day 4: Cold when we wake up, but a few hopeful patches of blue do break up the blankets of clouds. The morning sun warms the broad back of yet another stone leviathan. But the hiking today is quite a bit different; we've left behind the gnarled core of the highest peaks and deepest basins to follow the trail across part of the long granite bench that defines the western foothills. Through gently rolling terrain we pass lakes of all shapes and sizes. Small and round and stretched and long and squiggly and big, pockets of scooped out bedrock the water can't escape. Rusty tan meadows alternate with forests of spruce and white bark pine as we alternate between between bowls and the low rises that separate them. On the eastern skyline we catch occasional glimpses of the spiky, hulking, brooding peaks that define the high crest of the range. Sometimes bare rock breaches from the foothill-bench in dark butresses sporting webs of cracks from when they once cleaved the rivers of ice that flowed down from the higher mountains. We go by a few other people but the backcountry is deserted compared to yesterday. I can't blame people - low clouds threatening rain hang around all day. I'm grateful for the robust breeze, even though it brings a chill the hidden sun can't fight, because it at least lets us dry out our tent and sleeping bags, wet with condensation and light rain that came the night before. Once we finally come up to a knoll where the grass and <plants> have shed the morning dew, the wind does a lot more work on the moist tent than expected. I'm stoked to have dry sleeping arrangements again to start tonight. Every so often the clouds open and allow light showers to drizzle down on the landscape, so spare at times that I have to look for the ripples of raindrops in the lakes to know for sure; it'll make a big difference to be able to get in a dry sleeping bag later. Eventually the trail takes us up and over Hat Pass, our most sustained climb that day, but the 900 feet seem pretty inconsequential after the two tall ones from yesterday. It's getting late, so shortly on the other side we pull over along a lake and find some good camping a little ways uphill, sheltered by a suite of white bark pine thick enough that the space around their trunks is still dry. Again, rain dissipates just in time for us to venture out and have dinner; I can't belive how often I've been able to eat while staying dry. We remember to message a trail angel who lives in Pinedale about a pickup from the trailhead tomorrow and to our delight she agrees to meet us at 6 PM. Perfect, because we had our doubts about being able to hitchhike on what's predicted to be a soggy and cold Wednesday evening. Makes it easier to go to sleep, with the patter of small rain drops against the tent.

Funny pile of boulders and an old pine

Jagged peaks higher up

Nice alpine lake break

More stepping stones

Tall peaks of bare rock

Another pretty lake

And another

Heading up Hat Pass

Rolling alpine tundra

Nestled tent

* Day 5: About 4:30 AM the rain starts, and it continues in earnest through the buzzing of the alarm at 5:30. I dawdle even more than normal because it's really hard to scrape together the motivation to trade a warm, dry shelter for huddling up in rain gear under the thickest tree canopy we can find among the sparse pines. Perhaps most convincingly, my belly rumbles empty and all the food is outside the tent. My sleeping bag is damp from my sweat and the cool air at 100% humidity. My pants are still damp from yesterday. We roll up the tent, stuffing the sopping rainfly into a plastic grocery bag so that it's a little contained from everything else; the main tent body is pretty wet and bleeds little damp spots through its bag. Everything is damp or wet or soaked. We had packed enough food to be out for 6 days, but between making good mileage yesterday and the lousy weather today we're ready to hike out in only 5. Deviating slightly from the Red Line to get to Elkhart Trailhead, the primary backcountry portal for the northern Winds. One route stays higher for longer while the other descends sooner, and despite the wind and the rain I can't pass up the chance to see more of the high peaks. Susan is tired and still coughing and not super excited for the extra ascent. So we agree to split up, come up with a meeting place & time and a backup meeting place & time and how to communicate if one of us doesn't make it, and then I turn right and Susan turns left. My trail takes me over one shoulder, drops a little, then over another shoulder, then drops again, then climbs for a final time toward a pass on the side of Mt. Baldy (every self-respecting mountain range has to have at least one Baldy). The rain doesn't let up, and my feet squish with every step, but I'm treated to the last mountain vista I hoped for: a wide basin spreads out below, mounds of stone standing over a few grey lakes and browning meadows that culminate in the elegant swoop of the ridges of Angel Peak. Silhouettes of toothy ridges and sharp summits pop in and out of visibility in the distance, as globs of cloud rise and swirl and snag around the mountaintops. I take a lot of photos even though the rain is getting on my phone. As the trail starts its descent I notice my phone battery losing percentages by the minute. Feeling good about my pace I stop to filter water during a break in the rain and try charging my phone a little, only for it to show a message that there's water in the USB port. The battery drops all the way to 0. Hrm. Guess I really better make my rendezvous with Susan. The rain starts again. The trail is mostly a series of muddy puddles, except for the parts where it's an actively flowing stream; despite my already-soaked shoes I still do my best to avoid sloshing through the water, bouncing between stones and banks of the trail instead. At Pole Creek I even rock-hop across, instead of just wading right through, which is fine until I accidentally end up in the boulder field across the way and take a spill while dancing around the rocks, bashing my shin. I'm almost out of time but have to sit for a minute. When I come around the last bend Susan is there peering down the trail, really hoping she doesn't have to go to our contingency plan. Back together, we tell each other about our different hikes, maybe the most time we've spent apart in the last 3 months, and keep plodding through the rain. One more uphill and then downhill leads to nice views of the rounded granite foothills through the mist so I steal Susan's phone for some pictures. We're making pretty good time but don't bother stopping because we don't feel like hanging out longer in the rain. At Photographer's Point, one of the best lookouts in the range, we see nothing but a wall of grey. Susan gets a little bit of cell signal to message our ride that we're on schedule, maybe even a half hour early, and they respond that most hikers can finish this last part in an hour and a half but she'll give us 2. It's still like 4.5 miles. Sigh, guess we're not getting a break. The trail is easy to follow through spruce and whitebark forest, gentle and flat. We finally start to see a few other folks as we get closer to the trailhead; a pair debating in the drizzle if they should just turn around and go back, a young guy with a big orange backpack who says he's been better but can make it to his car, and the older man who comes jogging by us in total zombie mode, eyes dark and knees swollen. The hiking drags on as we hit 10 miles without a break, until finally the massive Elkhart parking lot appears, and Irish pulls up in her blue Toyota 4Runner just as we finish using the vault toilet. She brought us hot tea and towels and even a blanket if we need it. Irish lived in Jackson for nearly 30 years before getting sick of the billionaires' playground that the town turned into, taking advantage of her very-inflated home value to buy a place and relocate to Pinedale with money left over. I guess quite a few "Jackson refugees" have made that move over the last 5 - 7 years; she makes it sound like there's some tension over it but the transplants do their best to be good community members. That just might mean something different to them, though. Although she tells us horror stories about the Ridley's grocery store (expired items, recycled deli food, etc.) and pines for the upscale grocers she got used to in Jackson. Irish is a thru-hiker herself, and we're lucky we caught her because she's leaving next week to do a 300-mile trail in northern Minnesota. She gives us a tour from one end of Pinedale to the other, mostly pointing out restaurants (she knows what we want). Sadly the motel we booked for the next two nights doesn't have any vacancy so she drops us at the Jackalope Motor Lodge, where they convert a couple rooms into hostel-dorms during hiking season, and we manage to get a couple beds for only $90. Lucky to catch this as well, since next weekend they're turning it back into a regular motel room; yes, yes, we're far behind all the other hikers and all these services are winding down. Shower, get laundry going, swing by the grocery store. We only have one other roommate, a Frenchman on a year-long bike trip from Calgary, Alberta to Santiago, Chile. He plays bike videos on the TV while we eat our completos; the freezer food at Ridley's was all so unappealing that we decided to go with a hotdog dinner, because at least that's something different and the communal fridge at the Jackalope is stocked with all sorts of abandoned condiments. They also have the nicest bunk beds I've ever been in, a twin mattress' worth of your own private room. Don't get everything dry because the sun's going down and a little more rain moves through Pinedale and it'd be rude to hang our tent above the Frenchman's bed, but at least the rainfly has improved from "dripping" to "clammy". We're spending too much money but after hours in the chilly rain a warm, dry bed and a double zero in Pinedale sound like the only way we're going to have the wherewithal to get out and hike again.