July 18: South Fork Little Wind River to Skull Lake
 |
| We were rewarded for the hike from the trail junction to this view of Washakie Lake. |
The next morning was shaping up to be another perfect day, albeit a little too warm for my liking, with not a cloud in the sky. I slept a little later on this morning, sleeping in until 6:30. We broke camp just before 9 and began a day of climbing and more beautiful scenery.
After little more than an hour of climbing through the forest interspersed with beautiful meadows we made it to Washakie Lake. My cameras memory got quite a bit smaller here as this area might have been even more pretty than the valley below Hailey Pass. It looked so good that we took a break in a small cluster of trees and took it all in.
After beginning once again it didn’t take us long to hike above the tree line and at 11:30 were taking another scenery break about 400’ above our last resting spot at Macon Lake. The landscape up here was almost surreal: no trees, lots of boulders, snow and Macon Lake. After trying to eyeball Washakie Pass for the last hour it became clear that the trail up to the pass would take us directly through the snow.
 |
| Macon Lake, at the foot of Washakie Pass. |
|
|||||||||||||
Yumi took a break in the only stand of krummholz in the area while I hiked over to the shore of the lake to filter some more water. Again, I would have been happy to spend the rest of our trip right here between Macon, Washakie and Pass Lakes. I spent a few extra minutes marveling at the beauty before me before heading back to find Yumi.
The climb up the pass was only about 800’ and went very quickly, aided by many cairns, despite the faint trail. There was a lot of water trickling down the slope which made things a little mucky but otherwise we had no problems until we got up to the snow field about 3/4 of the way up. Again, however, the snow was fairly soft and I had no problems kicking in steps for Yumi to follow. Once at the top of a very windy Washakie Pass Yumi decided to try to give her kids a call and was successful. I then talked with Matt for a few minutes before realizing some weather was forming to the west.
We hurriedly took a few more photos and began our hasty retreat down down towards Skull Lake. The difference in landscape was staggering: instead of being surrounded by jagged peaks we were heading back to the relatively boring bench lands for our 4th night out. I again kicked myself for not trying hard enough to get us to the Cirque instead.
 |
| Macon (left) and Washakie Lakes from Washakie Pass. |
The weather that had been threatening up on the pass was moving in quickly and, in fact, gave us our first precipitation of the day along with thunder and lightning. Still above the tree line we decided to don our rain gear and seek what shelter we could. Not finding any, I pulled out my silnylon tarp and rigged a makeshift shelter. As it turned out the storm passed by us to the north and we escaped without really even needing our rain jackets.
A short time later Skull Lake came into view. I took us off trail toward the lake and almost immediately found a great area to camp nestled in a clump of trees. After further review it was determined that this campsite had probably been in use as a horse camp for a good many years (The next day I would accidentally dig up an old mayonnaise tin that looked to be at least 50 years old based on the artwork). that didn’t matter to me as there was also an ample supply of firewood near the fire ring. I gladly did my part to rid the site of that particular bit of evidence of use later that night.
 |
| Looking north near Skull Lake. |
Once camp was set up and the skies clearing, we made the short hike down to the lake to wash up. The water was not nearly as cold as it was a few days earlier and I was able to wash up pretty thoroughly. Minutes after returning to camp to make dinner I began coating my clean flesh with smoke from the first fire we’d had on the trip. We sat around the fire until well after dark and plotted tomorrow’s plan of attack. It was decided that we’d hike up to Pyramid Lake in the morning, then pack up camp and stop at Dads Lake tomorrow night.
