Gannett Peak Trip Sept. 2010
Get ready for the longest blog post in history!

Many of you have been asking me (me being Jared) why I haven't posted pictures of our backpacking trip. Well to be totally honest, it took me about a month before I could look at something that difficult again. Matt, Blake, and I kept telling each other that it was by far the hardest thing that we have ever done. We pushed ourselves to the absolute limit on this trip! With 50+ pound backpacks, we hiked 42 miles in three days across some of the most unforgiving terrain in the lower 48 states. I think it is safe to say that we all learned something about ourselves on this trip.





The picture above is is about 3/4 of a mile from the parking lot and we have already climbed about 750 feet in elevation. During the first 3 miles there is a very steady climb of about 3 thousand feet. Around the end of the first mile we crossed over the top of Torrey Creek Falls.






Up to this point we were feeling pretty out of shape but confident that we could make it!

This was about 3 miles or so into the hike and the first chance to fill our water bottles. One sore mistake that we made was thinking that there would be water at the trail head. This point marks the beginning of Bomber Basin, which is home to the worst set of switchbacks that I have ever seen!















It took us about 2 hours to get up the 30 switchbacks that result in a 1500 foot gain in elevation. They take you up to burro flats, of which I underestimated both the length a difficulty. It is very barren and demoralizing at best. The trail climbs about another thousand feet over 2.5 more miles to an altitude of 11,000 feet. The picture below shows Blake at the top of the switchbacks and on the trail to up to the saddle.

This was the last place to get water for a while so I am glad there was water here!

















2.5 miles from the top of the switchbacks and 7.5 miles from the car, we are finally looking down hill into the valleys that lead up to our final destination. Frequent lightning strikes have left the top of burro flats looking like a scene from Lord of the Rings. It was pretty cool to hike through.



The decent from burro flats was also something I underestimated. I thought this was going to be a downhill relaxing hike through beautiful lakes and backdrops, but I was wrong again. It drops down the there are a series of switchbacks that took us back up and down and up and down.... you get the point! The next few pictures show some of the amazing views and landscapes that the Wind River Range offers.


Pretty sweet right? Well the picture above made our jaws drop for two reasons. First is pretty obvious but the second was because of the drop in altitude over the next couple miles. We are now about 5 miles from the saddle that we passed through and have dropped a thousand feet already. We will drop just over a thousand feet over the next few miles. In the pictures below you can see how steep the decent is! We weren't too excited about hiking back up them in 2 days.


By the time we made it to our first night camp site we had traveled just over 16 miles in twelve hours. We cleared the site, built a fire, cooked our food, and nearly died!

The next day we took care of our wounds and did our laundry! We left on our day hike around noon. We had planned on going all the way to the base of Gannett peak to mess around on the glacier but we were still about 15 miles from the base and not really up to a 30 mile round trip in one day.



We get down into the meadows about a mile after camp and it gave us some amazing views! The water was an awesome turquoise color which comes from the granite sediment floating in the water. All of the rivers up here come from glacial runoff which is why there is so much sediment in the water. It makes a pretty spectacular picture!























The bridge that we are crossing is fairly new and pretty sweet. We spent quite a bit of time here both on the way up and back down. Matt even caught a fish here but his line broke right before he got the fish out of the water.












































I had to soak my feet for a while because I was almost to the point where I couldn't walk anymore. My ankles had some issues on the trip and needless to say I will be buying new boots before I go on another hike. The pictures below are taken over the next few miles. We had to weave in and out of some huge granite peaks which was cool but pretty rough because there were more switchbacks!











































We finally got through all of the trees and got our first glimpse of Big Meadow. We only had about two more miles from here before we would be able to see Gannett and arrive at our final destination.

The bridge you can see is another trail that is meeting up with our trail. We have been on the glacier trail for about 20 miles now and this is the inkwells trail that comes from another valley in the Indian reservation outside of Dubois, WY. I heard that it is a little easier but much more expensive because you have to hire an Indian guide to take you through their land. I was very impressed with how well the trail had been kept through our entire hike. The bridges were awesome and I really didn't expect there to be bridges because of other hikers blogs saying that they had to forge through some of these rivers.

Well we finally made it to the view that we were waiting for! Gannett Peak in the Wind River Range stands at 13,809 feet, which is only 34 feet higher than The Grand Teton. So here are some of the pictures that I took. The picture to the left is Mt. Woodrow Wilson.











































Well even though we didn't get to climb Gannett, I think we all felt like the trip was a success and it just gives us a reason to go back for another attempt! When we got back to camp we cleaned up and sat by the fire for a couple hours. We decided that we would hike half way out the next day and camp once more. It didn't really happen that way though. We pretty much just ran back to the car in one day. It took us 12 hours to gt to our camp site on the way in and 7.5 hours to get back to the car! One big reason that we hurried was the weather. When we got back up on top of Burro Flats it started snowing on us. From that point on it was all down hill and we flew down the mountain. Great trip but a hard one.