Month: September 2016

This overnight BikePack plan almost didn’t come to fruition. But the ride to Lizard Lake was the goal of the day none the less. At the very least we would do it as a out and back before retreating home to the safety of warmth of HOME. Watching your water freeze in front of me was not comforting either.

We arrived the night before and experienced a ten degree drop every hour before running to safety in the tent. I awoke in the night and the zipper was froze shut. That morning I built the biggest fire I could. The earliest morning hours were the worst. I took a gallon of water out of the cooler and set it on the table. It froze before my eyes with crystals forming first.

The sun saved the weekend; by noon it was warm enough to take off our puffies. And our old short term memories forgot we nearly froze to death. Well … “feels like”. So we chose to ride to Lizard Lake with 60 pound bikes instead of 23 pound bikes.  And it was worth it because we were rewarded with a warm up and sun. A beautiful day for an important weekend.

It was cold that morning

The initial climb to the trailhead

The trail to Lizard Lake runs along Dead Horse Ridge

The trail follows the wilderness boundary

Breaking out into Lizard Meadow

Lizard Lake Meadow

The Lake on a beautiful day

Woke up to a frozen tent and snow falling. I used bark from a dead white bark pine to get a fire going. We ate breakfast, or drank it in the form of bulletproof coffees. All the while watching the weather get worse and worse. By the time we finally packed the tent and bags it was a full on down pour. And it was cold. This was not fun and getting into a wet tent that evening sent even more chills down our spines. We bailed, bailed hard, and charged down into the valley to Sheridan. As I screeched to a halt on the edge of town I realized the epic-ness of the effort. We needed to climb 3,600 feet back into the snow laden mountains and back to our element. My bike looked like a sand sculpture after the mud grinding it took to get to town.

“Did you bring money or a card?”, I inquired of my epic-mate.

“No … did you?”

“No!”

And so the epic continued back up to Branham Lakes where our car awaited. I blacked out and went into epic mode … my partner the same … possibly her first time. No drama there, we made it, not that big of a deal. It just sucked. The rest of our 5 days off … drying out at home and sleeping. Part of our boring lifestyle as old folks.

AM at camp

Early fall at Noble Lake

Noble Lake the next morning

Cabin at Noble Lake

Mo taking photos as some clouds clear enough for us to see that snow had fallen during the night

Everything was wet when I woke up. After pouring all night all flammable materials were soaked. And to make things worse everything was frozen. I attempted to get the stove out of my bike bag but had to break the ice off the zipper. All hopes to get a fire started were dashed … but … a friend once said that just because something is impossible why not try it anyway.

I was able to find a dry old red needle branch under a sheltered pile of logs and decided to try breaking apart a old rotted log to find some dry chunks of wood. It worked. The fire was so nice we sat there drinking coffee and marveling at the view until noon.

Mustard Pass was ahead of us and I was excited to finally get going. it was so hard to put that morning fire out. We packed up and headed out. As we rolled our bikes back to the trail I froze in my tracks.

Griz poop that looked like it came out of a elephant. And since there was no elephants that ate pine nuts it was obvious a huge griz was checking us out the night before … or … even worse while we sat at the fire. Mo stuck her hand in it to find how long it had been there. Whew, …. last night. Stepping around the massive dump we continued down the hill shouting, “hey bear”.

Just as we got back to the trail I heard, “pedal down! pedal down!”. Holy shit, the pedal fell off again. This time I used my knife to whittle me a socket that would fit into the pedal. I might of been able to tighten the nut enough for it to stay on and we continued. Also I clean out all grease because the frigid temps was making it sticky and would back off the nit. We continued.

The ride up Mustard Pass was the pinnacle of the weekend, it did not disappoint. All rideable at some time I was forced off to walk on some rough and rutted sections. Standing on top of the pass we raised our arms in victory. That was pass number two of this trip

We bombed down the descent past Blossom Lake where we spotted some campers. the first humans we had seen in two days. We were not eager to socialize. We came out on Noble Fork atv trail. I pulled out the map and waited for my partner.

She prompted me for the time and I found my gps … holy shit, it was 4:30 PM. We usually look for camping spots around 5 but we were so far out of where we planned to be. By now we should of been in the Twin Lakes drainage.  A little tired from two days of climbing we decided to climb to Noble Lake and reassess in the morning. we were not as lucky as the night before as a heavy rain forced us into the tent early.

Morning Coffee

Rossiter Lake

Our camp on Rossiter Lake

Meadow towards Mustard Pass

Mo climbing strong

Mustard Pass switchies

Remember our bikes are 50 to 60 pounds with gear

Mustard Pass

Us …OxO

Noble Lake

We arrived after dark all grumpy from a week of work related bullshit. The weather reports did not look good. We did the best we could choosing this place because of all them this one would provide the warmest most pleasant weather. Which is not saying it would be nice at all. Just something we could survive … maybe.

The morning of departure was full of optimism. The sun came out and it was nice. Real nice. The big push out of the bowl and over the first pass was intensely hard but we had 5 days ahead and all was good. This was going to be fabulous.

As we approached the low part of day 1 we encountered our fist hurdle. A scrambled to find a place for a tent where one of us could rest while the other could get help ensued. We were as far away from help as one could get. After a hour of stressful assessment and trying remedies things finally worked out. The situation passed and we were able to remedy the issue. The call was to continue with the idea that we would cancel the trip if anything surfaced again.

We turned upward into the North Fork of Indian Creek and waited. The trail was so amazing we just continued and the danger of dying out there did not seem so possible. I have to say if the trail was not so fantastic we would of camped at the first meadow and rested … and waited. To see if the remedy would hold.

Then I heard my partner yell that her pedal fell off. A “Oh crap” panic entered my head as I pulled out all my tools. Another situation. Another reason we should just turn back. Being the tenacious folk that we are, or dumb, we decided to rig the pedal to stay on and continue. Damn if we were not going to at least stay out there for a day or two.  Even considering we were way into the boonies without seeing any other humans at all. No one goes this way I thought my self. It was going to be a LONG walk into Sheridan … a LONG walk.

But the pedal held and the trail was so amazing we found the intersection to Rossiter Lake and excitedly set up camp. This was going better then I hoped given all the diversity of the day. We were on track after overcoming a couple possible trip ending situations. Tenacious … yes. After a fire and supper we slipped into our tent just as the rain started and continued to pour throughout he night.

Branham Lake

The start of the Shindig

Starting out on non motorized singletrack is the best

We are going over THAT?

Thompson Pass, the first pass of the ride with Bell Lake in the backdrop

High point

A tail of two lakes

Should we do Thompson Peak?

Thompson Meadows

Thompson Reservoir left the building

Thompson Lake went missing

Cabin on South Fork Indian Creek