Special K was right - the Wind River Range rivals both the San Juans and the Collegiates.  Not that I doubted him, I just needed to experience it for myself.  

It’s stunning.  Everywhere I look I want to take a picture. Wildflowers blanket the ground, lakes and rivers glisten, and mountains stoically stand over it all.  

The hiking was NOT easy, but it was rewarding.  There was a lot of talk about blowdowns covering the first 8 or so miles of the day, so we walked a road for a few miles to avoid some of them.  When we returned to the trail, we were pleasantly surprised to see that many of the blowdowns had recently been cleared (we could see the fresh cuts and lots of wood chips and sawdust).  Still, there was about 2 miles where we slowly picked our way upland over the blowdowns and the overgrown trail, looking for cairns to keep us on track.  It took a long time to get through.

Once through the worst of it, we stopped for lunch.  It’s a good thing we stopped when we did because as soon as we finished eating it started to thunder, rain, and even hail.  Luckily, we were on the edge of the storm so it wasn’t too crazy.  In fact, I was more upset by the clouds that prevented me from having blue sky in my pictures.  :)

Besides the blowdowns and the non-blue sky, the biggest issue for me was the steep, rocky downhills, particularly the one after lake 10839 (not sure why it doesn’t have a proper name).  It was extremely tedious for me as I had to go very slowly to keep Patrick Duffy (what we are now calling my leg) from getting too mad.  I got so frustrated that I had to sit down on a rock about 3/4 of the way down and eat a snack.  Poor Nick - now that we are hiking together he has to witness all this ridiculousness. At least the views on the way down the stupid mountain were amazing - they more than made up for the shitty steepness.

After I survived the steep downhill (and took a break to eat more snacks at the bottom), we hiked along many beautiful lakes.  It reminded me a lot of Kings Canyon in the Sierra, actually.  There were clouds of mosquitos to put up with, but honestly, they don’t bother me. (Tip: even when going uphill, try to breathe with your mouth closed when walking through mosquito clouds, otherwise you will inhale and choke on them]

We hiked until 6 and then decided to try eating dinner before getting to camp.  Grizzly bears sure do put a crimp in our style - we’re changing all our routines.  We ate on a rock overlooking the back side of Big Sandy Lake.  At first, we both felt that eating before having camp set up was a waste of time (we usually multitask when we are in camp).  However, we both liked the boost of energy dinner gave us to finish the day.  We hiked another 1.5 miles to get to where we are camping now.  Unlike hiking together, I really like eating dinner and then putting in more miles (I’ve been wanting to try it ever since we hiked the PCT).

Along the way:

Camp: