Wind River Range Adventure - Day 1

After four adventurous days in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, we're out of the mountains, cleaned up, and enjoying looking back on the stats of the trip:

-32 miles
-4 days
-1 moose encounter
-1 day of never-ending rain
-1 day of blue bird skies
-8 blisters (Scott - 1, Shannon - 7, yikes...)
-15 granolas eaten
-Plenty of elevation gained.  Plenty.

So... let's jump into the story...

On our first day, we drove from Salt Lake City to the New Fork Canyon trailhead.  We would spend the first day heading up canyon.  The New Fork Canyon is pretty amazing with huge granite walls all around.  Here's our first look... by the end of the night we were deep into the canyon you see here.

 Mid-way up the canyon we had our moose encounter.  I had really been hoping this would happen since the Winds are stuffed with them and it would be great to get a picture of Shannon with one for her Dad (whose nickname is Moose).  What I didn't expect was that Shannon is... well... terrified of large mammal encounters... I knew this included bears, but didn't know it included Moose.  So Shannon let me take this ONE photo (which basically doesn't show the moose) before essentially running down the trail.

 

As we worked up Canyon one of our challenges for the day was river fords.  I think we crossed the river 2... maybe 3 times this day?  These were pretty legitimate fords without bridges and with fast, cold, knee deep water.

 

 Finally we made it to New Fork Park.  A spot about 7 miles up canyon where the trail levels out and there is beautiful river and meadow to enjoy and camp in.  We setup our tent and had a good dinner before heading to bed.