My hiking trips in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains started before I began to regularly take trip notes in a dedicated field notebook. Up to that time, I generally kept organized notes for longer trips, such as my five day loop around the Bighorns (1986 Bighorns Trip) in 1986. But for day trips or weekend trips I often just made a few notes scrawled on a loose notebook sheet, or scribbled on the back of a map. My three trips to the Bighorns in 87 and 88 have sparse notes, so I’m combining those notes into one blog.
7-2/4-87
Sherd Lake Loop and Darton Peak
On
my first trip to the Bighorns after the 1986 trip, I started at Circle Park Trailhead
on the east side of the range and hiked the 11 mile Sherd Lake Loop, with a middle
day climb of Darton Peak. For the trail sections I followed the instructions in
the Michael Melius trail guide, which Craig and I had found so useful in our
five day loop. I have some slides, and had sketched my route on a copy of the USGS
Lake Angeline Quad.
The
hike started with a two mile feeder trail to Sherd Lake. I then turned south to
hike the loop clockwise. I’d cross the South Fork, a bridge, and then Duck
Creek before reaching Trigger Lake on the south end of the loop. From there it
was an easy walk to the side trail to Old Crow Lake, which had nice campsites.
I walked the 0.5 mile side trail, then headed north to camp by Rainy Lake. My
later notes indicate that I might also have hiked the side trail to Willow
Lake, but I think that note was just a suggestion left over from my “to do”
list notes. I think that Rainy Lake, at about 8 miles in, was my campsite.
Bighorn Peak from South Fork Pond.
Day
two was an off trail climb of Darton Peak (12,324’) via its east ridge. I
followed the trail to Willow Lake until it left the ridge crest, I could see
two sets of prints heading toward Willow Lake. Then I followed the ridge all
the way to the summit keeping on the crest to stay out of the boulders that
littered the slopes. Of the major peaks in the Bighorns only Cloud Peak had an
established route, all the others I would visit in the range would be long off
trail routes through the alpine zone. The weather on top of Darton looked bad,
and I got a little bit of corn snow. So, there was no chance of adding a longer
trip to Bighorn Peak after climbing Darton. The climb took about 2 ½ hours up,
and 2 ¾ down, and so was about ten miles round trip. For my first solo, off
trail ascent in the Bighorns things had gone very well.
Lost Twin Lakes from Darton Peak.
I
retraced my route back to Rainy Lake with only a slight diversion to the south
on the upper mountain, presumably to avoid boulder fields.
Bighorn and Darton from Rainy Lake.
My
notes indicate hard rain at Rainy Lake, but not when that occurred.
View of Cloud Peak from Darton.
I
have no notes for the final day, but I presume that I packed up to finish the
Sherd Lake Loop, and hiked back to the Circle Park TH via the connector trail,
probably covering about four miles total.
Sherd Lake Loop and route to Darton.
6-4-88
Lost Twin Lakes
This
weekend was my first time over to the Bighorns to run the Buffalo Triathlon at
the local YMCA. I went over with my friends Craig and Stacey to race on
Saturday, and then to enjoy some hiking on Sunday. The race went well for me. I
finished the 4.2 mile road run, 20K road bike, and half mile pool swim in
1:33:03, good for 11th place out of 41 solo racers. Craig and I also
entered as a team and finished in 1:29:47 amidst a host of other teams.
After
the race we drove into the mountains to stay at the Bighorn National Forest
West Tensleep Campground. The campground is the starting point for hikes toward
Lake Helen and Cloud Peak, and was always a busy place. From the campground I
took a roughly 1.5 mile roundtrip hike south on Trail 65 to West Tensleep
Falls, then extended the hike to just short of the Deer Park Campground before
turning around.
The
next day we hiked the 13 miles out and back to Lost Twin Lakes on Trail 65
heading north and east. Craig and I had bypassed the lakes on our 1986
backpacking trip, so this was the first visit for all three of us. From the
West Tensleep Trailhead we followed the Tensleep Trail (BNF 65) past Mirror
Lake. The trail was trashed by horses to Mirror Lake, but seemed little used
beyond there. Next we had to ford the outlet stream for the Lost Twin Lakes,
but waited to do so until we were close to the lake to avoid high water in the
stream and some boggy areas around it. We stayed on the trail past the
intersection with our 1986 route coming in cross country from the pass above
Lake Angeline. We went a little past the trail, then ascended a prominent gully
to the west side. The final stretch was bushwhacking through snow patches to
the lower lake.
Lost
Twin was frozen over. The settling was magnificent, with high near vertical
walls all around us. There was little I could aspire to climb in the cirque
itself, but it looked like easy routes existed out of each side of the opening.
The cirque has many fine campsites, and I would stay here twice on later trips,
as the Lost Twins held their place as one of my favorite areas in the Bighorns.
We
had lunch at the lake before turning back and heading for home. The trail was
easy to follow, but the flat areas were still boggy with winter snowmelt, and
the creeks were high and difficult to cross. We spotted the unnumbered trail
leading east to Elk Lake, starting just a bit north of the West Tensleep
Trailhead. The out and back hike covered 13 miles. 
Bighorn Peak and Lost Twins from Bald Ridge.
7-2-88
Penrose Peak from the Elk Lake Loop
After
our June trip, Craig and I assumed that all the snow would be out of the
Bighorns, so we planned a three day trip to range, hoping to climb Penrose Peak
(12,460’) on the middle day. Karl was able to join us. My notes for this trip
are very sparse, but I did sketch the route on my topo maps.
We
must have driven over on Friday and camped at the Hunters Corral Trailhead as
we were underway at 7:30 AM on Saturday. Surprisingly my notes show us
approaching the lake from the Solitude Trail (38) rather than via the shorter
route from Soldier Park and Triangle Park. I’m not sure if we used Buffalo Park
or Soldier Park to reach the Solitude Loop north of Seven Brothers lakes. The
first half mile of the trail was drivable, but rough beyond that. There was no
snow, and abundant campsites all the way to the wilderness boundary. We reached
Elk Lake about 2PM after 9 miles, and found a campsite on the north shore. We
had passed four other hiking groups.
The
flowers were in full bloom, and my hay fever was bad. This may also be the trip
where the mosquitos were nearly intolerable. If so, Craig had chosen not to
cram in the tent with Karl and I, and got badly bitten up in his unprotected
bivvy. In the afternoon I went back to the north shore and took a quick swim to
clean up. In true Bighorns fashion, we got a little rain just after dinner. We
were camped by what I described as a new trail between Elk Lake and Bighorn (?)
Reservoir, marked as two miles long. The reservoir was a lot further away than
two miles, so I suspect the two miles was just for some type of connector on
the way to it.
Penrose
turned out to be a very long day. We started at 7AM and were not back until
6PM. It was a long tiring loop, mostly over boulders or moraine, with an
estimated distance of ten miles. We had just a short section of trail to Cloud
Peak Reservoir, then all the rest was off trail with much boulder hopping. My
hay fever did not bother me that day, but I did get badly sunburned from being
out for so long. From the Reservoir we climbed the southeast ridge of Penrose
via point 11,414’. The peak sits east of some of the ruggedest terrain in the
Bighorns around Black Tooth and Woolsey. From the 12,460’ summit we followed
the ridgeline south to a higher unnamed peak 12,644’. To return to camp we
headed south toward Lake 10,850, and then followed that chain of lakes back to
Elk Lake. In those days backcountry campsites were relatively clean and free of
rodents or birds, and bears weren’t an issue, so leaving a campsite untended was
no problem.
I
took no notes at all after our third day, which I assume was just a hike back
on our inbound route. 
Our Penrose Peak Route.
Here’s
a link to a 1999 article I wrote about the Bighorns for Backpacker Magazine,
that amazingly is still on their web site: (1999 Bighorns
Backpacker Article).
