The Winds

Somehow I’ve managed to live in Utah for over a decade without ever driving four hours north and checking out the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Stories of long hikes and mosquitoes so bad that you regret life choices always kept me away. But a lot of friends have been heading into the Winds lately, and they promised the bugs were dead. So, Jen and I took our three-day weekend and headed into the range for what we both agreed would be a mellow climbing trip.

Honestly, I am super pissed at myself for waiting so long to check out this place. It’s amazing. The hike into Deep Lake was super chill, and the formations are incredible.

After doing part of the approach the night before we found ourselves sitting in camp right below Haystack at about 2:00 in the afternoon. I’ve been shut down by weather too many times in the past to let the bluebird afternoon go to waste, so I talked Jen into a quick sprint up a route called Railroad Tracks (III 5.8). Despite being pretty much the shortest thing on the mountain, it was still somewhere around 1,000ft tall.

Jen was pretty tired when we left the tent, but she usually does better with the actual climbing than the approach to the climbing, so I figured she would be fine if we just got to the base of the wall. True to form, she cruised on the route, and we topped out in about two hours. However, the long hike across the top of the formation and the down climb to get back to camp was a bit more than Jen had expected. By the time we got back to the tent, it was pretty clear that I had failed in my goal to have a chill alpine experience with Jen.

So, I suppressed the inner voice that said “Dude, you’re in the mountains and it’s a bluebird day. You hiked nine miles to get here. You need to climb something.” Instead, I tried to get back on the chill-trip plan and we just hiked around Deep Lake and scoped future goals instead.

And honestly, this place is so beautiful that I didn’t really mind not being up on the wall. But that doesn’t mean I’m not itching to go back.