Southern Wind River Winter Adventures: Roaring Fork Tour

Touring the Roaring Fork via Boulder Creek
Popo Agie Wilderness Area, Shoshone NF
January 28th, 2007

A view of Windriver peak early in the morning, from above Frye Lake.

Got up early to take a stab at making my way into Leg Lake, and possibly a couloir up there. It's tricky finding the route up there in the summer, so I wasn't too ambitious about how far I'd actually get in the dead of winter. I figured turns would be a bonus, if they happened.

A view of the Leg Lake cirque from Roaring Fork lake.

I've had lots of practice getting this far in the winter time. Finding the route at the end of the lake proved to be harder than I thought though. I ended up following a drainage too far to left, too far up (probably Boulder Creek). Before I knew it, I was skinning up boulder fields. Yuck!

Literally what I skinned through for about an hour. Up and down.

Once I figured out my goof, I started climbing over a mountain, hoping I could find an easy way to drop back down into the Roaring Fork and one of it's meadows. Then maybe I could get back on track. Climbing the mountain worked, but it it wasn't easy. Nothing but boulders both ways.

Finally down in the first meadow on the Roaring Fork. This would be as close as I would get today. I started skinning at 8:00am. It was 11:00am when I got here. I blew two hours climbing a mountain of boulders that I didn't need to. Yikes- I would need those hours if I wanted to ski anything up there, and that was provided I didn't take any more detours, which was still easy to do with the 3 miles in front of me. I blew it. Decided to abort. Oh well. Have to try it again some other time. Next time I bet I'll be able to get this far at least, with no problems.