Titcomb Basin Bridger Wilderness, Wyoming

All right, well, I am in the Wind Rivers, Wyoming, with the Elkhart Trailhead. You can tell it is packed. It's packed this way. Tons of people here. There's a lot of places to go though, but we're going to be spending some time on and near the CDT, so I expect to see plenty of hikers. It was the third annual Wind Rivers trip for this group. Well, except for me. This was my first trip into the Wind River Range. We were heading out from the Elkhart Park Trailhead and taking the Polk Creek Trail all the way to Polk Creek Lakes, where we'd camp for the night. It would be our longest hike of the trip. As always with this group, the route is planned around fishing. There were a number of lakes that they were going to stop and try their luck at. It's official. We're about to enter the wilderness area, Bridger-Teton. We're at Elkland Lake to stop, drop packs, get up on some more water and a few calories, and head out here shortly, trying to make our way to Polk Creek Lake. Certainly worst places to stop and have lunch. Well, we just got done taking a break at Ekland Lake. Nice little lake. I had to water up. I think my travel, pre-funk celebration, and now the elevation. I'm starting to feel it, feel the elevation. Along with all of the other struggles, it was just plain hot, but none of that could take any of the beauty away from the winds. And thanks to the trail crew, the trail was in great shape. Coming from where I'm used to backpacking, blew me away just how much water there was up here. Well, we just made it to Polk Creek Lakes. Elevation is really getting to me. Made it really tough today. So, we're scouting around trying to figure out where we're going to camp. Damn, made that one look easy. So, it's morning of day two. Everybody's finally gotten up. Definitely got some rain and hail coming in this morning. I mean, we were expecting it, but we're kind of hoping it wasn't until later this week, but weather's definitely here. No matter. I mean, it's definitely cooled down, but still good. Still all good. It's great to be out here. It really is. Beautiful place. Highly recommend it. Well, we've gone through a couple rain cycles, got hailed on a little bit, and everybody's up now. So, hopefully pretty soon, we will pack up and be on the trail. Really looking forward to see more of this country. From Polk Creek Lakes, we get on the CDT and follow it as far as the Cook Lakes Junction. From there, we continue northeast into Cook Lakes. Planned on camping at the largest one. So, this is year three, as it would be on our quest to catch golden trout. We're here to be, at least to us, quite elusive. We've got a few lakes we're going to try that allegedly have goldens. I think the first one we're going to try to make it to is Wall Lake. It's just a little bit past the Cook Lakes. We're kind of doing the loop through Cooks Lake, and then we're going to end up in Titcombe Basin, or Island Lake, anyway. Maybe this is our year. Who knows? All right. Well, we are just coming down into the second Cooks Lake. We've been racing a thunderstorm, and hopefully we're going to make it. Pretty nice trail. It's almost picture worthy. We didn't have any time to admire the views. We needed to find a camp and get our shelters up. The storm was on us. Well, we are set up. Got set up in the nick of time. I didn't have any extra time. The hail, rain and hail came as soon as my tarp was deployed. Just dove under there and rode it out. This place is something else. God, look at the scenery here. I mean, it's beautiful. Let's hope the fishing is good. I'm really hoping for some fish for dinner. I've got a few of us out here fishing. We'll see where everybody comes back to camp with the fishes on the menu tonight. And he looks, and he points at me, and he starts doing this, he goes, same, same, same, same. I was like, no, same, same, no. Well, good morning. Morning, day three. Here from Cook's Lakes. Absolutely gorgeous spot. We're zeroing here today, but with this group, that just means it's all day fishing and we're hiking to other lakes. So Wall Lake is just a little higher. We're heading up there today. They're going to fish it. Starting to acclimate to the altitude a little bit, but still just going anywhere. Takes your breath away. The trail up to Wall Lake went north above Cook Lakes. Then he looked. Somebody pulling a golden today. Apparently that's where the golden trout are at. You know, we've heard that before and been disappointed. I don't think it's going to go that way with Wall, just from what we've seen and the people we've talked to. Well, it's a little after one. Timber and I are just heading out of Wall Lake, heading back to camp. I see a nap in my future. So I don't think the fishing was very good at Wall Lake, but I don't know. I guess we'll have to wait for the full report. Kind of looking forward to this little jaunt back to camp. These meadows are so pretty. Camp is down in that valley. Everyone got back to camp, and after a quick rest, it was back to fishing. Well, good morning. Morning, day three. Here at Cook Lakes. Or no, it's morning, day four. Here we go. It's already slipping away. So today we are pushing on, and then we'll be looking to get into Island Lake, I think. Map doesn't show a lot of greenery around there, so hopefully we can find a few trees to hammock from. That's my only concern. This should be a lot more popular area again. Last couple days, we haven't seen hardly anybody. After a record amount of encounters on day one. Loving it. I'm loving the winds. I really loved our time at Cook Lakes, but we still had miles to go. We planned on finishing the Cook Lakes loop, and then linking up with the CDT. From there, we'd push up and over Lester Pass. After dropping down the back side, we'd leave the CDT and take the Indian Pass trail into Island Lake. We made it up to Wall Lake, and it was a bust. Beautiful place, but four of us fishing. No goldens there, so now we're heading to Island Lake, and rumor has it, just before Lester Pass, there's a lake that has golden trout in it. Nielsen Lake, I believe. So I guess that'll be our next attempt. See what happens. Year three, chasing goldens. Well, we have linked up with the CDT, and now we are making our way up Lester Pass. At the base of Lester Pass, we dropped our packs and hiked up and off the trail a bit to Lake Nielsen. There was only one reason to stop here, to pull in a golden. Well, Nielsen Lake was a bust. We ran into some guys on trail, said that they were catching golden trout out of there almost every cast, and we only stopped there for, I don't know, an hour maybe, but we had no such luck. Three of us out there, sorry, four of us out there fishing, and none of us, none of us even got a I guess we'll continue to make our way to Island Lake and try our luck there. Oh wow, yeah, that's an outright glacier there. Well, we just made it over Lester Pass and dropping into this new drainage. So now we got to drop all the way down to the junction, and then we'll start hiking up to Island Lake, which is in that beauty somewhere. Should be cruising for a little bit, but there is more up to go. After we dropped down the other side of the pass, we made a quick stop for water. We had one more climb ahead of us before we'd reach Island Lake. There's our next pass. All right, well, we've just made our last navigation for the day. We're going up this little pass, steep but short. Should dump us into Island Lake. Let's get this over with. Well, we've made it here to Island Lake. There's a ton of people, as expected, but there is not a ton of trees. We've found a campsite here. It's up off the water a ways. It's going to be tight to get us all in, but we've got people on the scout right now, so hopefully they can find something better. Pretty good view though. Beautiful skies didn't last. As the sun went down, a storm rolled in. Well, good morning. Morning day five here at Island Lake. Right now we're just on a trek. We're going to go over to the far side of the lake and hopefully up into Titcombe Basin, but it looks like more clouds are rolling in. Completely socked in at the moment. Everybody's fishing down there at the waterfalls, and I'm going to head up to Titcombe Basin. Going to be no views, but we're out of here tomorrow. I'm here right now. I'm at least going to go up there. Well, there's good news. We made it into Island Lake. Got pretty socked in at Island Lake. Started raining, but we hunkered down, stayed the night. We got next morning. We hiked to Titcombe Basin, and we fished a couple of Titcombe Lakes. Had no luck there. A few of us decided to bushwhack up to Mistake Lake, and Mistake Lake was no mistake. We caught a golden. Three years in the making. I couldn't believe it, and I was fortunate enough to be the one that got it. It was awesome. Beautiful, beautiful fish. Well, good morning. Morning day six here from Island Lake. Rained all night. Got a little snow on the mountains behind us. Pulling out today to go. The plan is to go to Hobbs Lake. It is a cold pack up today, but looking forward to get on trail here. Warm up a little bit. From Island Lake, we'd backtrack up the short pass we dropped in from a couple days earlier. We'd briefly be on the CDT before getting on the Seneca Lake trail. Once we're on that, all we had to do was follow it into Hobbs Lake, where we planned on camping for the last night of the trip. Well, I think we've made it into this little pass. Already had to strip a layer. The rain has quit for the time being, and so other than the sloppy trail, pretty nice hiking. Hopefully, it's mostly downhill to Hobbs. We just cruise. Nope, we're not to the top of the pass. Well, we have made it here to Hobbs Lake. We're down at the far end. We're well off the trail. Drizzling. The forecast is more drizzle. It rained on and off all evening, and the temperature dropped as it got dark. As it turned out, we were in for a little surprise. Well, good morning. Morning day seven, and we are at Hobbs Lake, and obviously, we got a little snow. It is August. It's the last hike out today. Got about eight miles back to the trailhead. It's been a hell of a trip. We'd have to hike out of the back of the lake to get back to the Seneca Lake trail. From there, we'd link back up with the Pole Lakes trail and follow that all the way back to the trailhead. With the weather that we had had for the last three days, the trail was a sloppy mess. Okay, we've just hit the junction with Hole Creek Trail, so now this is all stuff we've done before, although it looks quite different today. We've passed Photographer's Point. It's just a cruise down to the trailhead now. Seeing more and more people, this is the main way in and out. Let's finish this one out. That's it. We have made it back to the trailhead. Well, maybe it's not quite as crowded as it was when we got here. Hell of a trip. Happy to be at the trailhead, and now it is time for Burger Town.