Sage Creek Backpack, Badlands NP, 11-24-88

Not long after I moved to the Black Hills in 1987 I got interested in exploring some of the other nearby outdoor areas. There were plenty of great place both in the Black Hills (the Bearlodge Mountains, Devils Tower, Jewel Cave, and Wind Cave), and close enough for weekend trips (the Bighorns and Theodore Roosevelt National Park). But one of my first trips was to Badlands National Park, about two hours away.

Rainbow (now Conata Basin) Overlook in Feb., 1986

Badlands is an unusual park. Its huge, almost 250,000 acres, but has almost no hiking trails. The park has three units, two of which are very rarely visited. Almost all visitors stick to SD 240. the park’s scenic road. Most of those simply stop at an overlook or two, go into the visitors center, and then drive on through. The park has five short interpretive trails, but only one decent length trail hike, the Castle-Medicine Root Loop.

1981 version of the Castle Trail map (without Medicine Root Trail).

On my first trip to Badlands, I went with my friends Craig and Eric from work. We hiked out and back on the Castle Trail with 11 miles of easy walking skirting the northern edge of the Badlands Wall (The Medicine Root Trail wouldn’t be opened until 1989.) Getting a taste of the badlands without having to navigate through them. It was a good day for wildlife watching with an antelope, den of rattle snakes, rabbits, chipmunks, and meadowlarks. Later in the day we hiked the Door and Fossil Exhibit trails. We’d planned to camp, but a full day of exposure to the Badlands sun and wind sent us to a motel in Wall.

Castle Trail 1987.

For the next day we’d planned to hike a loop out of the campground in Sage Creek. We were using the blue-covered 1:50,000 map 1981 Badlands NP which showed two loop trails leaving the campground. We lost the trail almost immediately and ended up just walking the south fork of Sage Creek, making a small loop at its head, while we tried to find the campground shown on our map. I was told later by BNP rangers that they considered the trail abandoned as it had succumbed to erosion and was indistinguishable from a maze of bison trails by the mid-1980s. We had seen bison on the road driving in, but saw none on the hike, despite crossing three prairie dog towns. We saw a group of 10-12 deer.

Eric in the Sage Creek WIlderness.

There were some especially colorful bread loaf-shaped outcrops of Chadron Formation (Yellow Mounds?), and we could see the effect of wind erosion on the underlying Pierre Shale. There was up to a foot of water in the south fork of Sage Creek, but we were always able to find easy places to cross. The wind was gusting to ~30mph, enough to make walking upwind difficult on our return.

Sage Creek Wilderness Trails from the 1981 map.

I would go back to the badlands one more time that year, this time by myself. On the first  (10-24-87) day my main trip was from east end of the Castle Trail to the Saddle Pass TH and back.

Badlands near Sadddle Pass.

Then I hiked the Notch Trail, with its stupendous ladder climb.

Ladder on the Notch Trail.

For part 3, I tried to access the badlands from the west side of the Fossil Exhibit Trailhead, but found the terrain too steep to do so safely. Instead, I went to The Bigfoot Overlook and hiked hike about 2.5 miles south down the wall on the abandoned Bigfoot Road before being turned around by a sea of wet gumbo. I would eventually lose the precious paper 1:50K BNP sheet I was using for my base map, so my exact route from Bigfoot Pass would be the first of a few off trail routes lost with it.

Sunset from old Bigfoot Pass Road.

I’d talked with the rangers the previous day and they may have given me the idea to try for Deer Haven the next day. The basic route is straightforward. I parked at the Conata PC area and looped around one buttress of the wall and then passed a dried pond beside rolls of fencing. I went through one gap in the buttes then past two draws leading north before coming to opening headed by Deer Haven.

BNP Deer Haven.

There were old fenceposts here leading WSW off to an old silo. At the head of the draw, I could see signs of horses and pickups, though this was part of the wilderness. The geology of Deer Haven is similar to Cliff Shelf. Deer Haven is a large slump block. The slumping breaks up the poorly consolidated bedrock and allows it to hold enough water for trees to go. Animals use the trees for shelter and graze on the more abundant grasses and forbs that grow in the wetter area.

Look closely for bighorn sheep in center of photo.

I walked around the head of the slump block to the east end of Deer Haven where it was cut by an extremely steep gully. I went up a small notch leading to the plateau above Deer Haven and scared up a group of five bighorn sheep, including two rams. Exploring more around the canyon at the east end I found abundant sheep scat. To the north I hit another very steep canyon. My route gets a bit muddled from here (I have only an old xerox of my field map), but I ended up having to descend my ascent route to reach the valley floor below Deer Haven. I was back after 11 miles in six hours, not having seen any other hikers.

Gully at the east end of Deer Haven.

All this background is to build myself some credibility for planning a trip that could have gone wrong, a winter, solo, off trail backpacking loop through the heart of the Sage Creek Wilderness. Well, maybe not completely solo, I was dog sitting my friend Karl’s dog, so I brought Nitro along. And maybe not really winter, it was only Thanksgiving.

Pinnacles Overlook 1987.

To get a good start I drove over to Interior to stay in the campground the night before. When I took Nitro out for an evening walk since it was bright enough to walk without a light, and warm enough to walk in a T-shirt. A front was expected for the next day. Some of the gullies were filled with snow, a good sign since that might give us extra water beyond what I could carry for the two days.

For the backpack we would start at Conata Picnic Area. My field maps covered three sheets and I tried to take good notes. Though my 1:50K master map is gone, luckily the notes and field sheets have survived, and I have a rough idea of the route. The hike started from the Conata Picnic Area., I saw deer and pronghorn on the drive in. This time I hiked past Deer Haven another mile before turning north and having a tough 45 minute climb up the Badlands Wall, the main divide between the upper grasslands and the lower badlands. After lunch I did a short loop hike in the valley northwest of Deer Haven. The most remarkable sight was human footprints on a buffalo trail. We’d spotted rabbits and bison on the hike, Nitro behaved well around both.

Nitro on bison trail.

I found a nice spot in a clump of trees and set up camp shortly after noon. Once I had the fly on the tent ,it started sprinkling. I pulled two big burrs off Nitro; he’d had a tough morning. He didn’t like the climb up the wall at all. I’d carried his pack a short ways, and lifted him across one particularly deep gulley.

Campsite, Sage Creek Wilderness.

Later in the afternoon we did a loop hike around the butte to our south. We had great scrambling and scenery, but it started to drizzle again around 4:30. It got dark quick, My stove was not working (Was this the end of my old Svea from the AT?) I barely had time for hot chocolate in camp, and didn’t get my stew completely cooked. I had planned a three day trip, but was now looking at options for a one night trip.

Our water froze overnight, and with the stove not working, breakfast was cold. But fast hiking would warm us up. Nitro was cold, thirsty, and hungry. I’d originally planned for him to sleep in the vestibule of my clip flashlight, but pulled him into the tent at night to keep us both warm. We started west across the open Sage Creek Basin to round the north end of Hay Butte (aka “Butte 22/26” after the sections it occupied). We saw two sets of footprints along the way and spooked one herd of bison. It was eerie to hear their hooves drumming as they moved away.

We hiked south around the west side of Hay Butte reaching Sage Creek Pass at about 11:30. I made a note that a further westward route would have avoided climbing in and out of the drainages. We saw two deer just after leaving the pass. We passed more bison and two prairie dog towns, and the weather was clearing and warming. The gumbo had starting thawing by late morning, making some areas slow going. We saw scattered stock ponds and the remains of old fences. Nitro was curious about the prairie dog towns. A notch at the Section 35/36 fence line made a good short cut.

We joined our outbound route just before passing south of Conata Basin. After 7 hours of walking, we were back at the Conata Picnic Area after ~20 miles (according to a later GPS plot of our route).

When it became time (1992) to write up Badlands National Park trails for the first edition of my hiking guide I realized that it would be futile to try to include a specific route at Sage Creek. In those pre-GPS days few folks could have followed a route like this through the Badlands. So, I limited my entry for Sage Creek to strategies for off trail hiking in the Badlands, and a few suggestions on places to go.

Reconstructed Sage Creek map with 1988 trip in yellow.

The park currently (2023) has an “Open Park” policy, meaning that hikers are free to go where they want, on or off trail. Pets are no longer permitted in the backcountry. The hike from Conata Picnic Area to Deer Haven seems well known, but is still not a marked trail. There are a lot of online references to BNP hiking, but the one that caught my interest is on the Hiking Project website. It has an entry that describes closely my Thanksgiving loop with Nitro, with the exception of an initial climb up the Badlands Wall at Deer Haven. Maybe the more things change...

Sage Creek Wilderness route from Hiking Project 2017.

Sand Creek WY , MB, Skiing, and Hiking BHNF 10-23-1988

Even compared to the rest of the Black Hills, the Wyoming side of the range is a quiet place. There are no towns in the hills across the border, and the nearest communities of Sundance and Beulah are smaller than their South Dakota neighbors. But just as on the South Dakota side there is plenty of great hiking, biking, and skiing. In those days the SD School of Mines and Technology held their summer geology field camp at Ranch A, south of Beulah at the northern edge of what’s called the Grand Canyon. We’d heard stories of how pretty the area was from some of coworkers, so Karl, Bob, Dick, Jim (from the Two Wheeler Dealer in Spearfish), Nitro, and I headed out to see it for ourselves.

The Sand Creek Mountain Biking team.

We rode south on gravel BHNF Road 863 for 16 miles down the canyon and returned the same way. These days that would qualify as a gravel ride, all on a maintained gravel road. But we were still riding bikes with no shocks, so riding roads was no hardship for us as long as the traffic was light, or nonexistent as in our case.

Sand Creek Mountain Bike Route, 10-23-88

We started the ride from Ranch A, which was a fish hatchery, as well as a venue for events like the School of Mines field camp. The ride was what we expected, a good gravel surface, very gentle grades, and almost no traffic. We rode to the south end of the Grand Canyon, a short way past Williams Gulch and the junction with BHNF Road 868. The canyon was only slightly less deep than its neighbor, the much better known Spearfish Canyon. We saw lots of deer and wild turkey. There was probably much more wildlife, five bikes and a golden retriever crunching down a gravel road aren’t going to sneak up on anything. We passed one arch in the canyon wall.

Arch in canyon wall Sand Creek, WY.

The next spring, I returned for a  24 mile solo ride on 5-21-89. But it would be a few more years before my next visit. By then the local group of the Sierra Club had evaluated the Black Hills for potential Wilderness designation. The Black Hills Group, and a coalition of other conservation organizations, were recommending five areas for Wilderness: Breakneck on the Centennial Trail in the northeast hills, Black Fox around Swede Gulch, Pilger Mountain in the southern hills, an addition to the Black Elk Wilderness, and Sand Creek. I was helping the Group by scouting of these areas, and managed to visit each one. I would next visit Sand Creek (on skis!) to scout the area, and followed that up by leading a Sierra Club hike there in June.

1-25-92, Cross-country Ski Loop, Solo

It was unusual for me to scout a hike on skis, and this was a day that it would have been better to be on foot. Even after a couple years of skiing in the hills I misjudged the snow depth and the temperature that I’d experience during the day. I drove in past Ranch A on BHNF 863 and parked at the crossing of Sand Creek. There was 6” of crusty base snow, with a skiff of new snow on top, and a temp of 40F. My plan was to ski up Sand Creek to the junction with Corral Creek, ski to the head of Corral, and then from Sand Creek Crossing follow Sand Creek back to the truck. Another volunteer, Nancy, had already checked out the area and I had a copy of her map.

Sand Creek ski route 1-25-92.

At the start I noticed some placer claims, not a surprise since Sand Creek was downstream of the Tinton mining district. It took half an hour to reach Corral Creek, then another hour and a half to reach its main fork. It was slow going on skis over a rocky creek bottom in a canyon choked with pine, aspen, and brush. The main attraction of Sand Creek as Wilderness was its importance as a floral crossroads, but I would see none of that plant life on this trip. Corral Creek had plenty of deer tracks, and a few old benches that looked like they might have once been logging road spurs. By the head of Corral Creek, the snow was warm and sticky.

I’d gotten a relatively late start and the going was slower than anticipated, so I abandoned my plan of skiing all the way to Sand Creek Crossing. I walked uphill to an overgrown two track road on the top of the dividing ridge between Corral and Sand creeks. There was only about 40% snow coverage with a 3” max base on the ridge top. Stumps indicating an old logging road here, but I was able to confirm a sighting by Nancy of old yellow bark pines. The temperature was close to 50F already. I was able to ski part way down into Sand Creek before it got steep and brushy enough to require hiking. But once along the creek I found the skiing briefly better than in Corral Creek. But when the canyon got prettier, the skiing got rougher. There was an obstacle course of boulders on the canyon floor, but some beautiful shear limestone walls. At one spot the canyon narrowed to become 10’ wide.

In Sand Creek rock cairns marked placer claims. Beyond the fourth cairn, and just short of the Sand/Corral junction, was a collapsed cabin and an old ore car. Despite the mining heritage of the hills, artifacts like that were rare finds. At the junction I skied back up Corral Creek far enough to recover a polypropylene shirt that I had dropped on the way in. By the time I was nearing the truck it was getting cold enough to freeze the snowpack, which meant I was finally getting some good glide.

My bottom line was that this was too long with too little snow for reliable skiing, but likely would make a great hiking route.

Sierra Club hike to Sand Creek.

I’d come back to lead a hike for the Sierra Club on 6-14-92. From BHNF 863 we hiked up Sand Creek just above the confluence with Corral Creek, then went cross country up and over the dividing ridge to Corral Creek and back via the confluence. In late spring conditions it was a fantastic hike, and we had wildflower experts along to identify the various species. I thought enough of Sand Creek to include the route in the first two editions of my hiking guide, with detail on its biodiversity. But by the early 2000s the BHNF had constructed the nearby Dugout Gulch Trail, and I decided to swap the Sand Creek Route for the maintained trails at Dugout Creek.

Sierra Club hike to Sand Creek.

Ultimately Sand Creek did not receive Wilderness designation. Of the five areas that had been proposed by conservationists, only the Black Elk Wilderness addition was approved. 

Cliff scrambling at Sand Creek.

For more information on Ranch A: rancha.com

1988, 7-15 Wind River Range Traverse

 For our second trip into Wyoming’s Wind River Range in 1988 Buddy and I planned a much more ambitious trip, hoping to hike the length of the range from the south end at Big Sandy Opening to the north end at Green River Lake in a week. The traverse would require a long car shuttle, and more route finding that we had needed on our 1984 visit. We also hoped to have better weather than on our soggy 1984 trip. We planned to visit Cirque of the Towers and Titcomb Basin, and then to follow the Highline Trail for most of the rest, but we ended up using the Fremont Trail for much of the southern part of the hike.

Joining us were my friend John from Dartmouth, Pete and Otto, two friends of Buddy’s from Denver with their dogs, and Buddy’s friend John from Nashville. John and I hadn’t hiked together for ten years when we were in college. Overall, our weather was much better. 1988 was the year of the great Yellowstone fires and few ranges in the arid mountain west were spared their own fires. The Wind River Mountains Fire that year incorporated all four of the Greek elements into its name. Back home in the Black Hills, the massive Galena Fire burned 17,000 acres around Custer State Park.

7-15-88

I left Lead, SD around 2 PM and drove to Pinedale, WY via Newcastle, Wright, Casper, Riverton, and South Pass to arrive at about 11PM. The rest of the group arrived at the Wagon Wheel Motel by midnight.

Wagon Wheel Motel, Pinedale

7-16-88

We spent the morning repacking and having breakfast in town. Then John and John drove south to Big Sandy Trailhead, while the rest of us drove north to drop two pickup trucks off at Green River Lake Trailhead. The 50 mile, 90 minute trip to the Green River TH gave me my first views of the west side of the range and of iconic Squaretop. We dropped Pete’s and my trucks at the trailhead and piled into Otto’s pickup. Unfortunately, Otto’s rig started to have engine trouble, and we barely made it back to Pinedale. At one point we had dropped Pete off to hitchhike back to his pickup, but retrieved him when Otto’s started to run better. We dropped the truck off at the Sinclair in Pinedale and went for beer and pizza. With no way to contact John and John, they were likely getting worried as we went well past our expected arrival time. Most of that afternoon featured clouds and thunderstorms over the mountains.

By 5:30PM the problem was diagnosed (water in the gas?) and we were back on the road. We made it to the Big Sandy TH at 7:15 to find John and John setting up camp. We decided to cook and eat at the TH, rather than trying to make up a few late miles. But we would have to move well over the next few days to make up for the lost time. After dinner we climbed some cliffs just west of the campground and enjoyed some great views of the sunset.

Big Sandy Campground, 0 miles

7-17-88

We were up at 6:45 and even the two dogs seemed eager to go. We took about two hours to reach Big Sandy Lake, which looked like a popular campsite. I was unused to the weight of my old Kelty Tioga external frame pack with its week’s worth of food, and spent much time adjusting the straps and belt trying to get the load to sit right. My pack was so heavy that I had decided to leave my camera behind, so no pictures for this post. It took another two hours to go less than three miles up to Jackass Pass where we ate lunch. Jackass Pass gives hikers their first view into the Cirque of the Towers and of Pingora, the iconic peak in the center of the cirque. With a ring of formidable peaks circling Pingora, the cirque is the pinnacle of alpine landscapes. We had stopped here to camp in 1984, but this time just filled up with water at Lonesome Lake and headed on.

I missed the trail leading to Texas Pass and needed to do some bushwhacking to rejoin the group at a small subcirque above the lake. One of the dogs was having troubles losing its pack until I tightened up the straps for it. We chose to leave the cirque via New York Pass to cut off some distance, thus starting the first of our many off trail portions of the route. The climb was steep, but had little snow. Regardless, I was nearly spent by the time we reached the base of the talus slope below the pass. The talus was slippery and loose, but we took a long break at the top.

The descent on the north side proved even steeper than the climb. Pete’s dog’s pack kept sliding down on her head, and with her view blocked she wouldn’t move on until he climbed about 1/3 the way back toward the pass to help her out. But all the effort proved worthwhile when we found a great campsite along the southwest shore of Billys Lake on a grassy plain. We could see many of the peaks on the back side of the Cirque, and further west toward Mt Bonneville. We felt that the valley was the equal of the Cirque, and the views form New York Pass superior to even Jackass Pass. Despite starting at ~9,000’ and camping at 10,600’ we thought we’d climbed nearly 4,000’ for the day with the two passes.

Billy’s Lake, 13 miles

7-18-88

We woke up at 7AM but weren’t on the move to 9, mostly as a result of my stove being slow to boil water. The day started clear and crisp, we were in the start of the long dry spell that would later lead to the massive fire season. I’d gotten a little sunburned on the prior day and began to ration my sunscreen. We were using the original Sierra Club Guide to Winds by Kelsey and navigating by our Handymaps, reduced version of the USGS topos printed on plastic paper. We weren’t always hiking together so often parts of the group would wander off course while the others waited for them to arrive. Not the best way to go, but with a group of six people and two dogs, it was tough to keep everyone together.

It took about an hour to hike west to the Pyramid Lake Trail. We found a quick cut off to the west and were on the Fremont Trail the rest of the day. Pete and Otto missed this cut off but caught up to us by the East Fork River. In contrast to Day 1 we were having an easy walk through a series of creek valleys marred only by herd of ~500 sheep grazing just below Shadow Lake. From Shadow Lake it was an easy traverse across a broad ridge SW on Giecke-Bonneville divide which had views back to the Cirque and to New York Pass. Buddy and I swam at a lake at the next trail junction. It was clear by then that sunburn, rather than rain, would be our biggest foe on this trip. With the high elevation we were all fried after only two days on the trail.

We pulled into a campsite on the north side of Raid Lake. We were lucky to have a long, but comparatively easy day with little climbing. I was still struggling with the weight of my pack. While our stoves were not performing well, the water purifiers were doing great and I decided I’d need to get one for myself. This may have been the last trip for my 1970s-era Svea 123 stove. I found even though I’d been hiking often in the Bighorns, that the Winds were much more rugged, and scenic. So far, we had seen few people since leaving Lonesome Lake. We had little trouble with bugs, using repellent only in the late evening. Otto cooked up a fantastic dinner based on Lipton Creamy Noodles, already our insatiable hiker hungers had started. We had decided to try having one person cook the main meal each night. That left some free time in the evening for the rest of us, but also was less fair for those who cooked the last few nights of the trip as they carried their dinner-for-all for almost the full length of the trip.

Raid Lake, 14 miles

7-19-88

We continued hiking northwest on the Fremont Trail. We expected an 8.5 mile hike, but it ended up taking 4.5 hours on a gentle, easy trail. Sandpoint Lake looked ideal for camping, and the valleys opened up to offer broader views beyond it. We talked to two girls who were using food drops for a 19-day trip, and a horseman who barely spoke English. A Pipestem Lake we cut west to Divide (?) Lake, where we had decided to have lunch. After some of our separation yesterday, we decided to make sure we were all together at lunchtime at least.

Lunch proved to be the end of our long easy walk. Buddy and I missed a junction at North Fork Lake until John caught up with us. We passed by August and Rambeud lakes, then apparently lost the trail by going too far northeast. Luckily, the whole group was together for diversion, or we would have had a tough time getting back together. We had followed a narrow drainage past North Fork Peak before realizing our error. Our discovery was followed by a lot of language best restricted to predicaments like this. It took a while to confirm our error and then relocate ourselves on the map.

Rather than turning back, or descending into the valley to the east, we decided to head west for a small tarn in a hanging valley. The weather was starting to look shaky for the first time in the trip, and the valley looked to give us potential shelter. The temperature was much cooler as well, possibly a result of higher elevation (~11,000’) It proved a beautiful, and possibly unique campsite with views of nearby peaks including Round Top and Victor. The cirque walls were too steep to be climbable, especially with full packs.

We were frustrated to have gotten lost, but everyone seemed in good spirits and in good shape. We were still hoping to climb at least one peak along the way, but our late start and extra miles were putting that goal in jeopardy. Buddy and I hiked back to the pass where we’d done our recon to retrieve a pair of binoculars that he’d left there. I made a few geology notes here, including that we’d moved from a granitic to a gneissic terrain. Despite a bit of rain-snow-slush in the evening, three of us slept out under the stars.

Buddys Lake, 13.5 miles

Part of our 1988 route showing our unintended detour.

7-20-88

Our plan for the day was to bushwhack to the north to intersect a trail south of Timico Lake and then follow it back to the Fremont Trail. It took about 1:20 to reach the pass and the trail, then another hour past Timico Lake to reach the Fremont Trail. The cross country hiking went well, but the Fremont Trail wasn’t well marked, and part of the group took a lower route via the Baldy Lakes. A bit further north we ran into some hikers heading south to the Baldy Lakes and they were able to relay a message to get our hikers back on track and we were able to regroup at the next pass.

We descended through the Split Lakes and then stopped at the Cook Lakes to filter water and take a short swim. We had another clear hot, sunny, and day and needed the chance to wash off. At the Cook Lakes we had finally joined the Highline Trail, and would follow it up Lester Pass. Our original idea for this trip was to walk the Highline, but we soon realized that it would not necessarily be the best route, and had improvised our overall route so far. With our trip to Cirque of the Towers and our visit to Buddy’s Lake, it had taken us four days to even reach the Highline.

Lester Pass offers a gorgeous preview of Titcomb Basin with the highest peaks of the Winds looming above it. The walls of the basin looked vertical, and I wondered how any of the peaks ahead could be climbable. Much of the basin was now obscured by smoke form the Wind River range fire, and when the wind was right, we could still smell smoke. We camped for the night on the pass and enjoy a beautiful sunset courtesy of the fire. Our progress was still a concern as we wanted to hike through Titcomb Basin and over Knapsack Col, but we still needed to be out by Saturday afternoon, and we’d failed to hit any of our objectives so far. Six people were proving to be too many, it seemed we were constantly separating and getting lost on the trail. The dogs were not helping either. They’d always walk with the first person, usually me, and then be constantly underfoot.

Lester Pass, 11.5 miles

7-21-88

In the morning we immediately left the Highline Trail to traverse north cross country due north toward Island Lake. It seemed our best traverse yet, easy walking to a small lake then an easy descent to Island Lake. At the lake John and John split off, taking the Highline Trail around to Peak Lake to avoid the climb over Knapsack Col.

The walk through Titcomb Basin with sheer cliffs all around was amazing. We saw a lot of campsites, but only about a dozen people, most were likely off climbing. Our subgroup was moving well, reaching Knapsack Col at around 1:45. Mid July was early for the Col to be open, we found mostly snow and a little talus. Otto was feeling bad at the Col from the altitude, but Buddy, Pete, and I decided to try to climb Twin Peaks on the north side of the Col. We traversed over from the pass with Pete leading some climbing that made me a little nervous. The climb was rated class 3 and we had no equipment, so we were surprised to find ourselves on steep snow and ice on an upper part of Twins Glacier. There were at least two crevasses, one that we didn’t see until we were past it. Pete tried climbing on the rocks, but made little headway. Buddy and I tried for the top of the snowfield, but then reached a spot where someone had left a belay sling. We decided to call it quits there.

We were able to down climb the snowfield to Pete, then tried some tough down climbing on the rock. Next, we decided to glissade the snowfield. I went last and went about 10’ on my feet, and then fell on my ass and completely lost control. I was headed toward two sharp rocks poking thru the ice, but managed to pass between them somehow. Finally, I was able to dig my heels in enough to stop, and we were able to traverse back to the Col.

Meanwhile, Otto had napped away his altitude sickness. Taking stock of our party, Pete had a large raspberry on his butt from his slide and I had strained my right thumb and rubbed most of the skin off my left ass cheek and abraded a three inch diameter hole in the seat of my wool pants. We were able to bandage me up enough that the abrasion wasn’t an issue for the rest of the trip.

Our next trip to the Winds in 1993 would prove far more successful for peak bagging. Along with our main objective of Granite Peak, we would also climb Winifred on the south side of Knapsack Col, and Stroud Peak, just to the south of Peak Lake on a loop through Titcomb Basin launched from Elkhart Park.

From the Col, we descended off trail down to the northwest shore of Peak Lake. Views of Sulphur and Brimstone were great. The walk was easy, but not the grassy slopes that the guidebook described. We met up with John and John and ended up sharing the lake with two other large groups. Everyone was really tired, and unfortunately it was my night to cook. I whipped up ramen noodles, freeze dried corn, and minute rice with chicken and water chestnuts.

Peak Lake 11 miles

7-22-88

After our tiring day we slept in a bit before starting our hike. We followed the Highline Trail northwest after crossing a short section of trail that had been buried in an avalanche. I found Vista Pass misnamed, partially overgrown and inferior to numerous other passes we’d seen. But Vista marked our highpoint, and the hike was downhill from there. This section of trail was heavily maintained and used by many horse packers.

But long downhill hikes usually mean the end of a trip. This traverse really brought home the length of the range to me and the innumerable climbing and exploration options here. What would it be like to be Finis Mitchell and live your life in these mountains, with infinite opportunities to explore? A steep descent beyond Trail Creek brought us to the headwaters of the Green River. We tried bathing in the creek at lunch, but the aquamarine water was too cold for us.

The end of our 1988 route at Green River Lakes.

The lower Green had abundant campsites. Pete and Otto got a little off course and headed briefly toward Granite Lake before getting back on track. We camped along the Green, north of Squaretop Mtn. at 8200’, our lowest elevation of the trip so far. To our dismay, the wind dropped after dinner and the mosquitos came out in force.

Green River, 9 miles

7-23-88

After a warm, buggy night we had a quick rush to break our last camp. Buddy and John were the most motivated as they had a plane to catch the next morning. All that remained was a three hour, ~ eight mile hike past the upper and lower Green River lakes to the trailhead, enlivened by the siting of a bull moose early on Our proximity to the trailhead was marked by the presence of sagebrush along the trail. We learned that the fire we had been seeing was up Clear Creek. The fire had burned most of the basin and was started by a campfire.

Our toughest route finding of the trip was between the end of the Highline Trail and the parking lot. There were about 200 firefighters stationed there, and Pete described it as looking like the circus was in town. We took a quick dip in the lower lake to rinse off, then headed to Pinedale for beer and pizza. Next, we returned to Big Sandy to fetch our vehicles. The trailhead was now full, and we were grateful to have gone in with less of a crowd.

John and I drove to Lander and got a motel room.

Lander, 8 miles

7-24-88

After breakfast, John headed north to visit Yellowstone, and I drove home to Lead.