The third morning was the chilliest. The ground was
frozen, a thin layer of glass, and Melody and I struggled to put our
hiking clothes on over our underwear. Our toes thawed out in our shoes as we
moved around, packing icy gear and shoveling cold cereal into our
mouths. It was a fairy tale walk through a thin spruce forest with the lower
Cook Lake to the east and large peaks making themselves more visible as we slowly
climbed toward Lester Pass, our twelve and a half thousand foot highpoint for
the trip. The terrain became increasingly alpine- scree fields, short shrubbery
and bunchgrasses, tarns everywhere. One such lake was built into the very tip-top
of a mountain.
On the pass, we encountered the best vantage
point of the trip. Granite peaks in every direction but the
valley west. To the north were the tallest peaks in Wyoming, many 13ers. Most easily identifiable were Gannett Peak and Fremont Peak, the
first and third largest peaks in the state. In Logan, the mountains are
relatively easy to identify from the valley- all that is needed is an accurate
map. Here, I could’ve spent all day working out the who’s who, but I repressed
my typical inquisitiveness to bask in the daunting spectacle of a
hundred haunted mountains. The downside of achieving a highpoint is that you
can’t stay there forever. It tends to be the windiest, most exposed part of the
hike, and on a day like that day, we had a lot more to accomplish. Melody and I
picked our way down the switchbacks, enjoying the company of stunted conifers
and Indian paintbrush. As we sunk lower into the basin, the highest peaks were hidden by mere 12,000 foot hills. After passing a few more bodies of water, we ended up just above where we'd planned to camp the night before, Little
Seneca Lake. Approaching the 50 mile mark, our feet started to develop some
hot spots and blisters. We duct taped our feet on the bad parts and prepared to catch up on mileage lost the day before.
The junction we took east leads to one of the most
popular areas in the Winds, Titcomb Basin, but after walking in that direction, in the face of Fremont Peak, we hung a left. We continued over a series of small passes to
Fremont Crossing, a roaring river, and, ¡oh
my! the first bridge on our journey. From there, the trail led up into
the interior of the range, past the Jean Lakes and Elbow Lake. We encountered a
girls group fly-fishing off the shore of Lower Jean Lake. I was envious. When
passing over one of the inlets, I spied on some golden trout feeding in the
current. No time to fish, not yet. As we sat by the creek eating lunch, the wind picked
up and started to carry with it some ominous looking clouds. The next couple
hours would be a race to get below treeline and avoid
hiking above and exposed during a thunderstorm. If the storm was anything like
the storms of the past day, we would not want to be turned into human lightning
rods, standing tall in an open valley. I made a comment to Melody that we needed to keep a steadier pace. She responded by hauling ass, and then I was the one needing to get a move on.
The storm never showed. The wind kept
blowing, gusts to 50 miles per hour maybe. Not intolerable, just not enjoyable. Our hands were dry and eyes
watering. We were lucky to have such scenery, but that noise. Gusts for hours, and not easy to hold a conversation. The lighting shifted by the
minute. When clouds moved in, the tones of the granite mountains dulled and the
lakes took on a deep blue. Small waves
whipped along the water’s surface. The gale pushed the waters and pushed
against us as we made our way from one lake basin to the next.
Above Elbow Lake, marmots peeked at us, making their way
between rocky bases. The wind continued and now any hopes I had of fishing Elbow
Lake were quashed. The Elbow Creek drainage led us down back below treeline where lodgepole and whitebark pines, spruce, and thickets of willows protected the
creeksides. Elbow Creek joins forces with Pine Creek at the second bridge of the trip. The creeks dropped swiftly from a steep
gradient, and we crossed it again on our way to Summit Lake, a possible home for the night. A porcupine
waddled out from some cover and we pursued it for candids. What a creature, yellow butt and funny walk. It would be extinct if not for its spiny
defense.
Wind is perhaps a fly angler’s worst enemy. I fished from
the shore of Summit Lake for a whole ten minutes before giving up and just
enjoying the view. Melody took a short, hard nap. The days were starting to add up
for us, but in spite of having camped behind schedule the night before, we
decided to push on to a further site. This was our last view above treeline.
From here, the trail dropped into Green River Canyon, the headwaters of one of the
largest drainages in the Great West. Melody’s pinky toe was giving her some
issues, a sharp point of pain which seemed so menial on the surface, but made every other step a stinging journey. We taped up the toe and dropped into the
canyon, tall evergreens on all sides of us. The great thing about having such a
windy day was that we did not have to deal with any mosquitoes, but being among
the timber, the bloodsuckers returned, as did our mosquito nets. We found a
previously used campsite out above the trail and creek and posted up for the
night. Melody was unintentionally comical setting up the tarp. Every spot in the dirt she went to
stake seemed to have a foot of rock below it. All those rocks can make a fatigued
person pretty grumpy and I joined her in cussing out the ground trying to down
a stake. The weather was so good and warm that we knowingly did a half-assed
job of staking the tarp. The mosquito net hung down on our faces and our
sleeping pads squeaked with every toss and turn. It’s amazing how well you can
sleep when you are truly exhausted.
The last 13 mile stretch of our 70 mile walk was mostly
downhill. The day was overcast. A whitetail deer hopped across our path and
very quickly up a steep canyonside. When the trees parted, there were views of
Gannett Peak. We came across a camp, 3 gents, who we chatted up for a few
moments. They were headed up to the interior of the range to follow the mostly
trail-less Highline Route (different and more difficult than our path, but following the same north-south trajectory), which traverses some of the highest passes in the
region, mostly above treeline, and with a good possibility of complete
solitude. I would like to follow this route one day. We crossed 3 more bridges over tiny, tiny creeks (more like unnecessarily placed boards), laughable considering the crossings we made bridge-less-ly earlier in the trip. The switchbacks led us
down to the canyon bottom and we had our first view of the Green River. It is
no wonder it is named as such- the river is shaded turquoise green with sediment built up by its glacial headwaters down to the Green River Lakes, where most
of the sediment settles out. Apparently, the river in this stretch does not
support aquatic life, at least not the type of life I can catch on an
elk hair caddis pattern. The sediment in the water deems it impossible for much
sunlight to get to the river bottom, making it tough to support aquatic
insects (trout food). I have not verified this conjecture, but it makes sense
to me now, as I could not garner any attention swinging a wooly bugger from the
current into some very promising looking holes.
Q: What is the plus side of fishing for fish that aren’t
actually there?
A: Being in the middle of an idyllic mountain-forest-river
scene while doing so.
I packed up my fly rod and we continued along the river,
which picked up so many creeks on its way to the Green River Lakes. If you have
ever seen pictures of the lakes on a postcard, they are probably
backed by Squaretop Mountain, accurately named. The short hike of 13 miles
seemed to take forever. We were entertaining thoughts of hamburgers and kettle
chips, showers and soft sheets. We had originally planned to spend the night at
the campground near our outgoing trailhead, but to-hell-with-that turned into
the new plan, a night in Pinedale at any hotel we could find. Walking alongside
the lakes, we came across the ranger in charge of the campground. He’d caught
some nice fish on a spin rod and I was looking forward to trying the part of
the river below the lakes. He recommended a spot near the bridge crossing over
to the campground, but a family was already working the water there. Santiago
waited for us all in one piece in the parking lot along with a cordial note from
the shuttle service at the Great Outdoor Shop who had added a few gallons of
gas for the drive back to Pinedale. Melody and I stripped off our shoes, socks,
and liners from our swollen feet and congratulated ourselves on a great trip.
Melody finished reading Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises in the car and I hobbled down to the stream to try my luck.
At this point, the little pains had compiled and the front of my left shin felt like it had a nail driven through
it. I paid for every step upstream. I found a nice riffle and casted toward
the top of it and off to the side. I watched my dry fly drift by and let my
line swing about 30 feet in back of me and hang. The fly plunged under
water and I struggled for the next few minutes to land a 20” rainbow trout on my wet fly, a zebra midge, which is a pattern fished below the water representing a mosquito-like insect at the larvae stage. Bingo. This made up for all my previous fishless days.
Over the next twenty minutes, I would land three (and miss three times as many)
more rainbows on purple haze (which mimicks a mayfly), 18”, 16”, and 14” fish, an acceptable
regression. Catching them made me less of the putz I felt like going to
the Winds and passing up countless opportunities to catch willing mountain
fish. Time to pack it up, get some well-earned real food, and make plans to come
back the next day.
Melody and I checked into our hotel in the early evening,
had glorious showers, and made our way to the best reviewed Mexican restaurant
in town, Los Cabos. Nothing like enchiladas, margaritas, and Dos Equis to heal your bones. I
was so tired that I left my credit card there and didn’t realize it until a
week later. We brought pints of ice cream and pints of other things back to the
hotel, and partook in customary reruns of Seinfeld and Friends.
The next morning, we drove Santiago out back to the Forest
Service boundary and walked toward a promising looking run coming around a
slight bend in the river. It was raining, a little dark, and I didn’t expect
there to be much of a hatch coming off the water, so I chose to swing a
streamer across the current and behind me toward a log lying in a mellow
stretch of water, a perfect spot for fish to take cover. My streamer of choice, a black wooly bugger, can imitate all sorts of things- a baitfish, leech, or anything else that moves through the water to attract a hungry fish. I worked my way
downstream a bit, but only had one serious take the next couple hours, a fish that looked to be 18”. He took the bugger about ten feet in back of me. I hate
to lose a fish like that. But let’s rewind, because the real story that day is
about Melody who works more magic with a spinning rod than I have ever seen
anyone do. She fished upstream from me and aimed her lure- a brook trout spinner, best spinner ever made- toward some mellow
water behind a boulder. It took all of two minutes for her to her to hook into
a monstrous brown trout at 22”. We netted the fish and Melody,
perma-grin in full swing, held the behemoth out in front of her. She lowered
Mr. Brown back into the water, returning to the current to get bigger for next
year. The next couple hours after catching daddy, she caught mama at 16” and
baby at 14”.
I am proud to be out-fished and out-hiked by my lady every time.
-Grasshopper
-Grasshopper
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