by Hallu » Thu 18 Oct, 2018 7:00 pm
Hi everyone,
some of you may remember that I went to the US in 2015 for 3 weeks, doing California, Utah and Arizona. This year, I had an opportunity with Norwegian Airway doing direct flights from Paris to Denver, Colorado, for around 500 €. At first I had though about doing the North West with Washington, Oregon and Montana, but it was much more expensive. Upon further research, my interest for Colorado grew. I only knew the national parks here : Rocky Mountain, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Great Sand Dunes and Mesa Verde. But as it turns out there's a lot more, with countless Wilderness Areas where you can find stunning hikes to alpine lakes, my favorite kind of hike. But the main "dish" of the trip was the Yellowstone/Grand Tetons area, somewhere I've been wanting to visit for a very long time.
So after landing in Denver and spending the night in a nearby town, I drove to my first destination, a park called Medicine Bow National Forest. I heard it was a nice mountain range seldom visited by tourists. Indeed, I found mostly locals here. The walk I planned was only 600 m elevation gain, but I'm used to elevation of around 1500-2500 m in the Alps. But here, the walk STARTS at 3000 m and ends at 3663 m. The camping was right next to the lakes at the foot of the mountain. It's an area sparsly forested, only pines seemed to survive here, no aspen. Crossing a boulder fields, I heard tiny screams, but couldn't find the source. It would take me 2 weeks to learn that they're from a pika, a small mammal related to rabbits, their call resembling a crossing between a duck and a baby goat. Then the track climbed steeply in zig zags, but I wasn't used to that altitude yet. So it took me a while, with numerous breaks. Many other hikers here, including one who carried a portable speaker playing loud music while hiking... Apparently it's now a "thing", and I would encounter it multiple times in the following days, really annoying. But anyway, the views were great once at the summit, and the track lead to the plateau behind, with open views. Unfortunately the sky was full of menacing clouds, it was really windy, and it started to rain. I fell a few times on the steep descent, even twisting my knee but with no injury. Then on the last few kms, it was raining violently, temperatures dropping to freezing. It wasn't fun anymore, and I really struggled. I don't know if it's better to start a trip with the worst hike, but that's what I did. Wet, cold, jetlagged, not accustomed to the altitude, I went to bed at 8 pm.
The next morning, I just went for a stroll for a bit of photography. I didn't see wildlife the day before, and was hopping to see some today. I had some nice light in the sky, but no clouds to catch the light, and no stunning composition. So I just shot the lake and the mountains. I packed up and started to drive down the mountain road. Luckily there were a great number of deers on the side of the road, they're a lot less elusive than in Europe. Then I had planned a hike at Lake Louis, in the Wind River mountains. It's the same mountains as in the 2017 movie of the same name, great movie if you haven't seen it. And I saw there the poverty of native Americans all living in mobile homes, right next to richer towns living off the tourism in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons like Dubois or Jackson. The road to Lake Louise looked very dry, and the fire danger cursor was on "very high" that day. But I saw many other hikers on the way to Lake Louise so at least that was reassuring. The lake and hike were very nice, but you couldn't go past the first viewpoint of the lake due to steep cliffs, you can't circle the lake.
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