The morning dawned bright and crisp as Dan Hill, David Wilcox and myself loaded into Dans Volkswagen passat. The drive to Dubois was filled with nervous chatter and sleepy, possibly hung-over mumbles from the back seat. We pulled in to dubios and chowed down on breakfast at Kathy’s Koffee. It was at the coffee shop that doubts were first cast on the success of our trip. When we told Kathy and her husband that we were attempting to summit Gannett Peak, they looked at us as if we were out of our minds. They gave us free tea that I now think was intended to sooth our wounded egos after what they seemed sure would be a failed summit attempt. After thanking the staff of Kathy’s we were off to the glacier trail trailhead and what would become an epic.
We decided to take the old glacier trail. This meant we had to cross the frozen Glacier Creek. The trail climbs sharply two thousand feet and then opens up. As we walked out into that open area thirty big horn sheep thundered towards us. They passed us and cut north and down the steep valley walls. We made camp at 10800 feet, just past the cave David and I camped in during our scouting trip. It was here that we met what would be one of our biggest foes on this trip; nighttime temperatures in the Windriver Range, in late fall. Food was cold after a couple of seconds, and water not kept warm would freeze. As we packed in to my cramped three man tent I was optimistic about our trip.
We woke up, grabbed a light breakfast and got moving early. We were somewhat delayed because the entire interior of the tent was coated with ice and had to be shaken and dried in the sun. We headed south, postholeing in the sun crusted snow. We crested the pass at 10900 feet in the late morning. As we just dropped down the other side we crossed a marshy area, spotting an elk I suspect fell victim to wolves. As we descended, hugging the western side of the pass, towards Upper Philips Lake, the environment changed from lush wetlands to burnt out forest. Here we suffered our first major set back, a shit load of snow. Between the scouting trip a week prior and our arrival there had be two to three feet of snow. We hung east and passed below lower philips lake. At Philips Creek we passed out of the burned area and took our lunch break. It was slow going through the snow, I estimate our speed dropped from three miles per hour to half a mile an hour. As we continued south, passing Double Lake on its east side, the snow got deeper. We made camp just north of Star Lake. It was here that I decided we were not going to make it, I approached Dan about it and he agreed. We spoke of the snow depth now and snow that we could see falling in the distance and the affect that might have on snow stability. As we relaxed in camp on the evening of our second day I noticed that the sky had become dark and a cold wind had begun to blow from the north and then a second wind from the south, converging in the horseshoe formation that is home to Florence Lake. Dan, David, and I watched as the northern wind rocketed spindrift, from the snowy backsides of the sheer cliffs. Five, six, seven hundred feet, the pillar of snow rose, and then fell on the valley, shrouding the sun from view and giving the wind enough bite to make that evenings attempt at dinner miserable. We ate a cold dinner. The now freshly falling snow, and spindrift ridden southern wind made a mockery of our jet boil stove. We foraged for supplies to create a wind barrier but found none suitable on the lone rock out cropping on which our camp sat, or in the snow covered forest around us. We made a small fire and talked as we tried to thaw out frozen water bottles and dromedary bags. We were running low on water and our fire was not substantial enough to melt snow. It was here that we began to formulate our plan for escape from the cold vice that the Windrivers held us in. We could not go back the way we came, the snow was too deep, and getting deeper. There was only one route out of the mountains, through the reservation. We had no permits to be on the reservation. We had been warned and I had heard stories of the natives lack of hospitality toward white trespassers, and though I didn’t tell the others I had even heard rumors of meth labs in the very valley we were going to traverse. We were rocked to sleep that night by the vicious southern winds, which carried with it biting cold, more snow and uncertainty.
More to come with pictures this week!
More to come with pictures this week!
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