Wind River, Wyoming

August 2004

by John Klebes

Each of the past few years a small group of diehard hikers in the club have invested our hard earned vacations in a major mountaineering expedition.  Last year we climbed Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, the year before Mt. Rainier in Washington State.  This year we attempted the highest point in Wyoming; the remote and formidable Gannett Peak (13, 804 feet).

We planned an eight-day expedition which included 20 pounds of food per person, bear canisters, ropes, crampons, and winter gear totaling as much as 50 pounds each.  Our route took our group of four (Mike Carrier, Rick Briggs, Ed Laroche, and John Klebes) deep into the Wind River Range of the Bridger Wilderness, part of the mighty Rocky Mountains.

After a long hard day of hiking heavy gear down nine miles of the continental divide trail we made our first camp before saying goodbye to developed trails and heading up into the mountainous terrain of the Wind River.

Our first obstacle was crossing the cold and swift moving glacial feed Green River.  (Burr was that a cold water stream crossing).  We headed up the Tourist Creek river drainage on a combination of game trails, bushwhacks and bolder hops, some as large as cars, where every step leads to an even more difficult rock problem to cross.  And all with huge heavy packs on our back, rain-sleet-snow-hail in our face, and ever-steeper inclines.  We didn’t see a trail again for seven days.

Slowly making our way closer to Gannett Peak we climbed past crystal clear lakes and tarns, cascading waterfalls, and unbelievable alpine meadows filled with wildflowers.  We made two more camps finally positioning ourselves for summit day from our high camp of 11,100 feet.  Despite positioning ourselves with four potential summit day windows the weather got the best of us.  Each day we had snow, sleet, hail, or freezing rain with high winds that made it unsafe to summit.  We were blessed with fantastic 360 degree views and surrounded by alpine flowers, wildlife, and mountain summits and glaciers but the elusive summit of Gannett was not within our grasp this trip.

As a consolation Rick Briggs lead us up a steep and difficult assent of the famous Square Top Mountain.  A 11,595 foot massive flat toped summit with steep drop offs and 360 degree views.  From the summit we had great views looking down the sheer cliff faces overlooking the wind river valley.  But even here the weather followed us and dumped another two inches of snow in a quick whiteout while on the summit.  The climb down was all the more tricky with this fresh coating of snow on the slippery high angle rock and scree slopes.

Still a fantastic and magical place that will certainly warrant a return visit.

- John Klebes