South Fork of the Little Wind River
Quick shout out to Sockdolager Equipment for providing a pack, pogies and my personal favorite, the tri-tip inflation adapter.
If video is more your style, both Andrew and Landon have nice edits.
Background
Landon texted me back in April looking to put a trip together- a few ideas were thrown around, but he was looking to shred some gnar and I liked the stoke. We looped Andrew in and eventually settled on trying to get into the Wind River range. Like any good trip it was a fast and loose operation from the get-go, with things changing right up until day-of. With flows aligning, we decided to do it.
The SF L-dub is an obscure run overshadowed by the shorter, punchier North Fork and it’s big cousin Bull Lake Creek. BLC is a premier, stout multiday kayak adventure with a massive hike-in, and the North Fork is a Wind classic. Granite everywhere, mosquitos, beautiful hiking in high country, all characterized by manky drops, slides and portages.
Theres almost zero beta out there: A mountain buzz post from 2009 and a mention from a recent Tales from the Cripps episode with Nathan Werner were all we really had to go on. Nathan called it one of the best rivers he’d ever paddled, and it sounded less messed up than the NF. I was very, very intrigued.
Andrew drove to my house on Thursday, we had a low-water surf session at Brennan’s Wave, and we were off at 6AM in the morning. Kayaks, packrafts and paddling junk everywhere.
Day 0
The drive took forever. It was supposedly 8 hours or so, but it definitely took a lot longer. We stopped to eat ice cream, listened to the theme song of the trip, freestyled, paid authorities exhorbitant sums for permits and invasive species stickers, and more or less lost our minds. My poor Forester struggled under the combined assault of two people, two boats and a cargo box, but brought us venerably to our destination.
Around 5PM we made it to our rendezvous spot with Landon, did some frantic last-minute packing and headed up to our start point, Moccasin Lake. There was some debate about doing the mission in one night or two, and eventually we settled on two. This turned out to be a good idea.
I’d either totally ignored or misbelieved the fact that we were doing group meals, so I doled out some extra freeze-dried meals I’d brought to make up for it. Luckily everyone was a good sport.
Camp on night 1
Everybody loaded up ~45 pound packs and We started hiking in around 6PM. After a couple of hours and slow trudging by me, we stopped at Gaylord Lake for the night. There was a pretty fantastic boulder there, which Landon cooked up a mean Pepperoni-Mashed Potato-Cheese dinner on. I was very thankful that other people had done the group dinner idea. Crispy pepperoni is amazing.
The pepperoni boulder
Andrew said that ibuprofen could help with adaptation to altitude, so I took a couple and passed out. Going up to 10k feet from 3k feet at home was just about as much as I thought I could handle, so I took advantage of anything I could. Electrolytes helped too and I felt great by morning.
Day 1
We all woke up early without setting any alarms, packed, got ready and headed out. I was the only one who heated anything up (coffee). Landon and Andrew are hardcore, just cold oatmeal and fruit.
Dramatis Personae: Andrew hikes up a rock. Peep the Bad
Larry
We got a little turned around with all the trails, but managed to find our way to the South Fork and put on. The hike was a good split: 5 miles the night before, 4.5 in the AM. We floated on just enough water through meandering meadows, beaver ponds and occasional small class III/IV rapids. It was a good warm-up.
Eventually we came to our first bigger one and it was go time: Andrew fired it up, everybody had clean lines, and it set the tone for the day. Run the big stuff.
Andrew flies off our first big rapid
The pattern would repeat: Meadows, rapid, meadows, big rapid. We would scout, find a line, usually run it, and continue on.
Landon airs it out over one of my favorite rapids in the first
half
At one point we found this channel with a rapid that didn’t go, but Andrew walked into the woods and found a good, clean slide.
Secret, high-quality slide
We were all pretty much on the same page with risk level, so if we could just pass verbals down from a single person scouting, we would. Otherwise the person scouting would get out and signal the rest of us up to take a look. This went well the whole trip.
The first half of the river (6 miles or so) was full of good, bedrock rapids with occasional manky read-and-run IV. It continued to alternate between babbling brook and amazing granite drops. There were some huge, great slides in there.
Landon blasting the hype-crew seaworld style
At some point we started to be in between the giant granite domes rather than on top of them, and things started to be steeper and more gorged in. We continued to run things, until just around the halfway point, we had to portage two big gorges. Each had beautiful drops marred by truly horrific rock placements.
“It’s like each rapid is good except for a single thing wrong with it” - Andrew musing on the nature of the river
As far as portaging goes, it wasn’t bad at all. We would usually bash through sharp, dead trees up onto the granite, then hike over and back into the river. I’ve had much worse before.
Putting back in after portaging a bad one
After the first gorge we counted two punctures, and Andrew had ripped his spray deck. We licked our wounds in the shade and he sewed up his boat, baseball stitch style, with some help from Landon’s repair kit.
Fresh laces
We reached the amazingly named “This Ain’t Seaworld”, which is a two-part drop: First with a slide into 20 or so feet of vert into a pool, which has an undercut rock on the right and lots of foam, and then another 15 or so feet into another pool. We elected to walk it, despite Andrew wanting to run the second half.
We put back on, and at this point I was starting to feel pretty beat. The altitude was mostly doing all the damage, but Landon busted out some sour skittles and got us through the next chunk of read and run IV. We found our groove again after our first big portage, but were forced to walk some more around a wood-choked oxbow that ended with a slide into a big pool. I just hiked down, but Andrew and Landon ran the slide.
Another big portage put us pretty high up and took a lot longer.
Portaging high up in the Wind River range, no water in
sight
Finally we reached river level, ran a few more drops that would have been absolute gems on any Montana river, and reached a long meadow that Landon had just called the “Chill Meadow” on the map. It was about a mile long, and we started looking for camp.
We drifted, looked for good spots and saw two big bull elk roll through. We stopped at one spot that had a tree, river access and enough space for us to all put up tents. Landon crisped up more pepperoni, Andrew put on the Tyvek suit and we ate a ton before passing out around dark. It had taken us all day to cover 4.5 miles of hiking and 10.5 miles of stout Wyoming granite. I slept well in a weird ditch, with my feet higher than my head.
Dinner fiends
Day 2
We slept in a little longer than the day before and I actually had hot oatmeal in the morning. We only had three miles or so left of the section we planned to do, so we weren’t eager to move as fast. We returned to floating down the gentle meadow in the sun.
Much like the day before we had a couple of warm-up rapids, then the entire river dropped into a beautiful, multi-tiered cascade: Entirely good to go. We’d been looking for this one since the podcast and it was pretty obvious when we saw it.
Landon drops into the top slide
Andrew entering the final slide
Me,
heading into the final slide. Photo cr. Landon
We were pretty fired up after that. The next rapid was what Nathan called a “Whale-dome boof” or something like that: We elected to just run the second half, since there was some concerning wood in the crack of doom on the left. My line wasn’t great, dropping me onto the rock at the bottom, luckily the packraft absorbed all the impact and it was like sitting down agressively on an inflatable chair.
We had a few more boofs, slides, easy portages around choked in mini gorges, and even an eventful swim where Andrew tried to freewheel a small ledge. After livebaiting his boat, he hiked up and ran it clean. There were some really good class IV rapids in this section.
Finally arrived out what would end up being our last big rapid. It was a walk from me immediately, but Andrew was psyched. He ran it clean but didn’t sell me on the line. Landon was determined to run it as well, but one of his floor baffles blew up. He walked it too.
Andrew about to hit the meat
We didn’t go too much farther, the rapids after that were pretty bad (with wood) after a big scout so we decided to start our hike. We all went up to a small saddle on river left and slowly packed our bags in the sun. The wind kept us cool for a little while, but I dropped down and grabbed us all some water, filling a small water bag.
Packing up on the saddle
We drank, put everything away and used the rest of the waterbag to drench ourselves for a long hike out.
Andrew and Landon diverging amid some deadfall
There was a lot of deadfall, some lighter bushwhacking, and a lot of trudging uphill with heavy packs. I was always at the rear. We killed the rest of our food, and after four hours, made it back to the car. We stopped a few times (mostly I think so I could catch up) and ate all that we had left.
We jumped in the lake, ate everything not nailed down, and declared it a successful mission. I give this river a 9/10, for the outstanding beauty and quality of rapids. I think even the portages were kind of nice.
Bonus
We had a couple of days left, so we ran Crandall Creek and Sunlight Creek up near the Clark Fork. A good, manky ending to the trip. For flows we had ~215 CFS on the first day, and ~200 on the second. I agree with Nathan: 300 would be perfect.
Final Boat Damage Tally:
- Two Punctures
- One stitched + taped spray deck
- One blown floor baffle
The crew at the confluence of Crandall Creek and the Clark Fork. The
box!
