2015: Off The Grid (A Return To Cloud Peak Wilderness)

This year's adventure had us returning to Cloud Peak Wilderness and the Big Horn mountains for a longer stay and some new destinations.  It presented many challenges, testing us physically but also mentally, testing our fortitude, leaving us sore, battered, bruised, and a little bloodied even.  It was a great "vacation".

Our destination to the Big Horn National Forest and Cloud Peak Wilderness Area is just outside Buffalo, Wyoming -  a short 7 hour drive up from Denver where we flew into first.  Our goal was to reach Lame Deer Lake, one of the highest lakes, if not the highest, that has trout and make that this year's base camp.  There are higher lakes but no fish so there is no point.  Reaching Lame Deer would be no easy feat.  There is a massive boulder field to contend with, steep ridge, and so on.  Last year we did so as a day hike carrying only our fishing pole and some water; this year, 30 plus pound packs strapped to our backs.  More on that later.  

Here is Al, my hiking/survival partner doing something really, really important: placing our registration form in the Ranger's box so they know our trail route and destinations along with expected date of return.  This is something we forgot to do last year being caught up in our excitement and enthusiasm to get started, I guess.  

We didn't get an early start on the trail head.  Even though we left Denver at 6 AM, stopping to get our fishing licenses, buying flies, etc., we didn't get started on the trail head until after 3 PM.  We  took trail number 46 at Circle Park trail head heading West and Up.

Sherod Lake.  This is the first lake you come upon after about 1.5 miles of mostly vertical climb.

From here you turn North and Northwest on the trail going up and down with a series of hills and ridges.  Throughout the Big Horns the trails are rocky and either going up or down.  It is not like the Barr Trail going up Pike's Peak with lots of switch backs and a straight vertical climb and straight descent.  You are constantly going up and over ridges gradually climbing in elevation for the most part.  

Otter Lake

Gnarly tree!  Otter obviously got to it.  

Dry stream/river bed.  Last year this was raging and we had to walk across a fallen log as a bridge to reach the other side (it is wider to the North).  We came during the rainy season last year.  This year we came 5 weeks later to ensure the rainy season was over.  There were places on the trail that were impassible either because of high water or snow banks that hadn't yet melted away.  The weather was perfect this year.

And here, Otter Lake is where we would camp the first night.  

In the foreground is Al's sleeping quarters for the week.  He had the tent all to himself!  In the background the red thing you see is my hammock.  It was awesome and I got to sleep under the stars every night except the very last when a mean storm rolled up on us and forced me to take refuge in the tent with Al.  The hammock straps also served as a clothes line and so you can see my clothes next to the fire drying out.  

About that...this is pristine wilderness with a strict "leave no trace behind" rule.  That includes burning the ground bare with a fire.  Therefore you are required to use a fire blanket.  I wish I had gotten a good picture of it.  It is very thin, grey material.  You line the bottom of it with sand and minerals from a dry river bed (like the one pictured above) and then you can burn fallen dead limbs on top of it.  I am glad we had it and could use it.  This, ironically, would be our lowest elevation and coldest night of the week.  It got down into the 40s that night.  This would also be our last and only night to use the fire blanket.  Once you are over 9000 feet no fires are permitted even with the fire blanket.  But it warmed up and we wouldn't need it anyway.  

And then that night we got to see a blue moon.  I slept under it and the North Star directly above me.  

The next morning we got up and started making our ascent to Lame Deer Lake.  These pictures are Old Crowe Lake where we made our camp last year.  From here we cut through the dense trees, rocks become boulders, where the trails peter in and out, to finally make it above the tree line and meet our foe: the massive boulder field that stands in our way of reaching Lame Deer.  

What is a "massive" boulder field, you ask?

THIS is a massive boulder field!  The vegetation in the middle is where a lot of water has pooled. There is water that runs underneath the boulders running down the hillside feeding into Old Crowe and other lakes.  What you cannot see behind it is the continuation of said massive boulder field.  

 Picture of Al navigating and negotiating the boulders.  I say "navigate and negotiate" because you need to have a plan and then an emergency bail out procedure!  Most of the boulders are very large with some smaller ones sprinkled in between.  Most are not flat but rather pointy making it hard to land and balance yourself.   And even though they may be large, since they are stacked on top on one another they sometimes tend to move and shift, throwing you off balance and needing to leap to another, hopefully, more stable boulder.  Our strategy is to know the next two boulders and identify which boulder is your safety should you have to bail and jump, depending on which direction.  You also have to stand and survey your route because you do not want to get into a bottle neck with all small boulders.  I would seek out the bigger, flatter boulders that I could eventually get to and rest.  So it is not a straight shot at all.  You are constantly zig-zagging, sometimes retreating backwards, in order to go forward.  It takes all of your concentration and wit, not to mention your reflexes and senses.  It is a little unsettling the first couple of times you hear and feel a big boulder beneath your feet rock and shift.   

Once we cross, we rest, and then go straight up a steep ridge...to the lake?...no, another boulder field, albeit smaller, and then Lame Deer Lake!  

No sooner than I crossed the boulder field I went down and bit it.   Not sure if I just lost concentration or if my legs gave out from fatigue; maybe a little of both (I did the same dadgum thing crossing down too).   Once across, up over the ridge, across the other boulder field, and finally reaching the lake, we promptly set up camp  and took a nap.  It took us about 3 hours to make the climb.  We were physically and mentally exhausted and needed a recharge before fishing for our dinner.  Truth be told, we took two naps that day.  

 

 

That is Cloud Peak mountain in the background.  There is still a little snow on top but most of it is now melted.  Lame Deer was as far up as we go.  Our elevation is 10,200 feet.

 

Trout!  It's what's for dinner!!

 

 

Campsite.  We found a great table rock large enough for our tiny survivalist cooking stoves and all our supplies.  You can see Al's tent back on the right and my hammock stationed behind the rock on the left.  We stayed here two days and nights.  The weather was perfect.  It really warmed up during the day and stayed relatively warm (50s) at night.  This is a stark contrast to last year.  As mentioned before, we day hiked up here last year just to fish for the day.  No sooner we made a couple of casts and caught a couple of fish, clouds rolled in fast over Cloud Peak mountain and we had to high tale it out of there for fear of lightening strikes.  There is very little timber where we are because we are at the very edge of the tree line.  And going back down you are exposed crossing the boulder fields.  We were only up at Lame Deer for 30 minutes; this year we were able to make it our main destination and base camp. 

 

"Wait Al, what is that?  I think I hear a bear.  Quick; hide behind a tree!"

 

 

Fortunately it was not a bear.  We did see a moose but the pictures did not turn out. 

The next day we decided to go on a day hike to Fire Hole Lakes 1 and 2.  We did not make it.  But, you can see Fire Hole Lake 2 on the right.  Fire Hole Lake is just behind the two very large pine trees which blocks most of its view.  I will say we made a valiant effort though.  As you can see there are a lot of boulders to cross over. And this here is the easy part.  If you examine the picture more closely you may notice there are boulder fields going all the way down.  We tried different avenues and even went high climbing ridges to survey alternative routes but there was no getting to them directly from Lame Deer without crossing the boulder fields.  We could have gone down back to Old Crowe picking up a trail to there, but we still would have had to cross that massive boulder field going down and back up again that we just mastered the day before. Still recuperating from sore and tired legs from the day before, we punted and decided to just fish Lame Deer.

Which now takes us to day 4. 

What goes up, must come down.  We got up very early, broke down camp, and headed back down; or so we thought we were.  Here, we have just crossed the smaller boulder field atop the ridge and are about to go down a very steep ridge to reach the boulder field.  And, I am having mixed emotions.  One, I know this is the last time Al will ever see Lame Deer and get to fish that great lake.  Two, I am happy to go experience a new lake I have never been to; Romeo and if time permits, Martin.  And three, I really do not want to cross this boulder field and think we should just stay; at least for another day.  But no.  Come down we did. 

If you want to experience crossing the boulder fields from the comfort of your chair, you can.  I strapped a Go Pro to my head and video taped it.  You will need to turn the volume way up to hear me narrate.  Just click on the link below. 

Lame Deer Boulder Field

Back at Old Crowe where we rest and refill our water bottles before journeying on.

I took this picture (above) because  last year when we came up the last week of June there was a nice snow bank right here (pictured below) that we used as refrigerator for eggs and bacon we packed up.  We would also bury fish we caught until ready to cook. A big difference waiting a month makes in the summer up in the mountains.

 After a short rest, we carried on to find Romeo Lake. 

These pictures, however, are not of Romeo Lake.  This is Willow Lake.  But after what it took to get to it, they could have named it Widow Lake because it just about made widows out of Teri and Nancee. 

 

So, what happened to Romeo?  It is there; somewhere.  There is no trail leading to Romeo from the side of the mountain range we were coming from.  You have to bushwhack it.  25 years ago Al tells me you could see it from our trail because a fire some years earlier destroyed the vegetation and it was just growing back.  Now, you cannot see it.  So we would have to bushwhack it blindly based on mostly intuition and a little bit of knowledge from our map.  But we didn't want to bushwhack it with 30+ pounds strapped to our backs.  So, we decided to carry on to Willow.  We went up, up, up!  A very rocky trail and long trek from where we started out that day.  And then we arrived, there is a giant ridge steeply set high above the darn thing.  Even if we crossed down there was no place to camp with a tent - it was all boulders.  So, we made camp high atop this ridge with the lake about 100 feet below.  Oh, and Lame Deer Lake, the place we just left, is directly West of us just over another ridge.  In other words, we ended up hiking three quarters of the way back to the trail head, turned up trail 87 and ascended back up making a "V" to end up not too far from where we just were. 

 

The first thing we did was cook some freeze dried meal since we hadn't eaten all day and it was sort of late.  Then Al volunteered to go down and survey things and fetch water because our water was spent.  After his return we set up camp and got some needed rest.  Later we did slide our way down and fished for awhile.  Of all the lakes I have been to on this mountain range, Willow appears to be the one most accessible for bears - so long as they don't mind crossing some boulders to get there.  All of the lakes have boulders surrounding them to some degree where the water comes up to and then it just drops off and the water goes very deep.  Willow has a lot of shallow edges to it before dropping off where a bear could easily stand or sit in the water and just pluck the trout swimming by.  But, we never saw a bear come by.  I did, however, have something nudge my hammock that night causing it to rock back and forth.  A bear?  I wouldn't know.  I played dead!  I imagine a person sleeping in a hammock hanging from a tree must look like a giant pinata to a bear.  No way I was going to peak up and outt to see what it was.  Anyway, "it" lost its curiousity and left me alone the rest of the night. 

 

 

Rainy Lake.  This is at the intersection of trail 46 and 87 where we turned the day before to go up 87 on our quest for Romeo Lake.  This is a dead lake - meaning it is too shallow to sustain fish over the long freezing periods each year.  "Hind sight is always 20/20" so the saying goes.  We could have stopped and camped here the day before instead of continuing on to Willow.  Then, we could have attempted to do a day hike bushwhacking our way blindly down to Romeo from here with just our fishing poles and not our full packs.  The trade off, I guess, is that I got to see a different remote lake.  But...I would have rather not made the arduous trek from Lame Deer to Willow all in one day. That was singularly the most difficult day I (and I think we) have experienced; not only on this trip, but even others like climbing Barr Trail up Pike's Peak.  It taxed us physically and mentally pushing us to push through our own limitations.  This morning, we decided we had no desire to hike up and down the steep cliff to Willow for water and fishing and so we headed back down.  Rainy Lake was just a water refill break. 

 

 

We ended back down to Sherod Lake.  These pictures were taken our final morning.  We camped atop a small ridge overlooking the lake.  The day before we watched Lame Deer and Willow lakes just get hammered for about 3 hours straight with lightening and rain.  We thought maybe, just maybe the storm would stay to the North and West of us but that did not happen.  And when these mountain storms roll in upon you, you better act fast.  Al started mooring down the tent while I packed up my hammock and all of the camp gear and we holed up in the tent the rest of the afternoon and night outlasting the storms.  This was the only night I did not sleep in my hammock and the only time we experienced any adverse weather.  

 

And this is where it ends.  I have more thougths to share and maybe even wax poetically about life and its correlation with wilderness hiking. But for now, I just want this blog entry to be over; much like I just wanted this hike to be over and just get home. 

 

:-)