Deep Lake and Cirque of the Towers ~ August 2-7, 2006                                 

The Route... Just getting to the Big Sandy Opening Trailhead is half the battle! It seems to be a long way from nowhere. You need to negotiate miles of dirt roads and the road signs are confusing at best. I'd recommend making the trip during the daylight hours, if at all possible. And certainly bring your map!

If coming from the south, as we did from the Denver area, go to Rock Springs, Wyoming. Then go North on Hwy 191 to the town of Farson. Turn East on Hwy 28 for ~4.5 miles. Turn left (Northeast) at the sign to Big Sandy. Delorme's Wyoming Atlas and Gazetteer shows the name of this road to be the Farson Little Sandy Rd which then turns into the Big Sandy-Elkhorn Rd. Follow this for ~22 miles to a signed intersection. Turn right (East) to Elkhorn Jct. Go ~1.5 miles to Elkhorn Jct. and turn left (North), again following the sign to Big Sandy. Go ~11.5 miles to another intersection and turn right (North). Follow this another ~10.5 miles to the Big Sandy campground and trailhead (9080 ft). It is approximately a 7 hour drive from the suburbs north of Denver, CO. (GPX, Google Earth)

There are some nice afternoon/evening photo opportunities of the Wind River Mountains as you approach the trailhead - mostly before you reach the last intersection on your way to the trailhead. Scenes of sagebrush and prairie transitioning into forested mountains are often dappled with light shining through afternoon clouds. We didn't stop and take any images, but the possibility is worth mentioning.

The following is a summary of our backpacking and day-hiking routes. You can follow the travelogue day-by-day by using the navigation arrows at the top and bottom of each page. Or you can jump to different days by clicking on the links below.

• Day 1: Depart Big Sandy Trailhead at 8:30pm. Hike to V Lake and Camp 1 (GPX, Google Earth)

• Day 2: Hike to Deep Lake and Camp 2 (GPX, Google Earth)

• Day 3: Exploring the Deep Lake and Temple Lake cirques (GPX, Google Earth)

• Day 4: Hike over the Jackass Pass into the Cirque of the Towers and Camp 3 (GPX, Google Earth)

• Day 5: Exploring the Cirque of the Towers (GPX, Google Earth)

• Day 6: The hike out, back to the Big Sandy Trailhead (GPX, Google Earth)

A route of our entire trip, over 38 miles including day-hikes, is shown below.

Download Full Route: Google Earth w/ Photos (~ 5.5 Mb)

Note: I've edited the maps and downloadable tracks to abbreviate all of my "photographer's wanderings." The GPS was constantly on my person for the duration of the trip, and provided a rather comical record of my behavior as I search out pleasing compositions - 10 steps this way, 4 steps back, no, 6 steps forward and 3 steps to the right, etc., etc.

Well, enough already! On to the good stuff...