By Chuck Sanders
At the age of 12, I loved the music of John Denver. All of it, even the yodeling. Prominent in his songbag was “Rocky Mountain High,” which inspired me to campaign for a family vacation to Colorado.
My parents (may God rest their souls) granted my wish.
A year later we drove the station wagon up a canyon near Boulder and immediately hiked up the nearest mountain without proper hydration or pre-adjustment to the elevation. This triggered altitude sickness in my brother and me, such that we spent the next eight days in the long-anticipated Rockies with killer sore throats and splitting headaches, all of which resolved immediately when we returned to the plains during the long drive home to Ohio.
Now that I am getting old, I decided it was time for a make-up mountain experience, this time in the form of a backpacking trip in the Wind River Range of Western Wyoming. Accordingly, earlier this month, my wife Becky kindly spent an extended weekend hanging out with me in the vicinity of Pinedale, Wyoming, so I could get used to the high elevation. I then bid her a fond farewell as she returned to Nashville and my friends Wade and Mike joined up with me. Wade has backpacked the Winds many times and served as our guide. He also provided most of our gear. Mike (a marathoner 30 years younger than me and 15 years younger than Wade) came so that if I collapsed, he could hike to get help while Wade attended to me.
We set out with our 40–50-pound packs from the 9,000-foot trailhead and then spent nearly all that week above 10,000 feet. We filtered roughly 20 liters of water a day (there are hundreds of lakes in the Winds) that we used to hydrate both ourselves and our freeze-dried food, which I found to be a MUCH better experience than my brief stint in the Boy Scouts over 50 years ago. The tent Mike and I slept in provided an entire soundtrack in response to the constantly shifting wind, including one motif that resembled a very large animal sniffing and another where said beast was ripping into our backpacks just yards away. However, it was all an aural mirage, and we never needed our bear spray.
I have to confess that I spent part of this trip in terror—that I would freeze to death, that we would start a forest fire in one of our bone-dry campsites, or that I would have a hypoxia-induced stroke on my way up Lester Pass with that pack. This journey impressed on me that gravity is NOT our friend. By the end of our 40-mile trek I was pushing for flat walkarounds whenever possible rather than inclines. I am sure that I drove the long-suffering Wade and Mike crazy.
Aside from my moments of personal disarray, the Winds were truly awe-inspiring: monumental granite spires splashed with green pines, the roots of the mountains bathed by clear blue lakes, the primordial pleasure of a campfire on a chilly evening, the beautiful trout that Wade caught and released, the idyllic settings of our campsites, and the brightest full moon you’ve ever seen. Lying in my tent, I was pleasantly haunted by the sound of wind blasts rushing through the valleys toward our camp followed by the whoosh as they finally blew through.
It did not rain all week, so the mosquitoes were much sparser than Wade had previously experienced in the Winds. We passed folks, both women and men, who were covering 100 miles or more, some having traversed all the way down the Continental Divide Trail from Canada, often with backpacks smaller than ours and no tent. Some were running. Amazing!
I have no plans to try this again, but my childhood disappointment in Colorado was well assuaged by this journey and the comradery enjoyed by friends sharing such a magnificent experience. I came home more humble and seven pounds lighter.
I hope you too had or will find a good adventure before this summer slips away!
Acknowledgements
I thank my former boss here at Vanderbilt, Professor John York, and Professor Wade Van Horn of Arizona State University for piquing my interest in the Wind River Range. Thanks to Becky Sanders for her patience with my endless preparation for this trip. I thank Wade for being such a splendid outfitter and guide and both Wade and Dr. Michael Goodman (Vanderbilt) for being such good friends and traveling companions, not to mention for carrying some of my stuff over the final six miles of the trail even though their packs were already much heavier than mine.