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Snowy Range, Wyoming ~ August 2-4, 2008 Location... The Snowy Range is located in Southern Wyoming, about 25 miles West of the town of Laramie. Its is part of the Medicine Bow Mountains which extend 90 miles from Elk Mountain, Wyoming to Cameron Pass, Colorado. With it's many lakes, dramatic peaks and extensive high tundra, it makes a perfect location for wildflower viewing and photography.
This was my first photo/camping trip on my motorcycle. All went well and I had a great time hiking, photographing and hanging out with Brent Doerzman, Jimmy Gekas, Benjamin Glatt, and Joshua Hardin All these guys are talented photographers and you should check out their websites for some fantastic images of the Snowy Range and other locations. Besides the commonly photographed areas around Lake Marie, Mirror Lake and the incredible views from the pass, we found basically unlimited photo opportunities on short hikes from a number of trailheads. (See map below) The Lakes trail starts at the Mirror Lake Picnic Area, winds around Lookout Lake and then up onto a ridge with majestic views of Old Main (11,755 feet), The Diamond (11,720 feet) and Schoolhouse Rock (11,440 feet). Along the route is a hillside with more columbines than I've ever seen in one location - just incredible. And the ridge, about a 20 minute hike from the trail head, is a great sunrise location. Gap Lake Trail begins from Lewis Lake in the Sugarloaf Recreation Area (Day Use Fee of $5 at time of this writing). We found an abundance of photogenic tarns, cascades and wildflowers between Gap Lake and Klondike Lake with Medicine Bow Peak (12,013 feet), Sugarloaf Mountain (11,398 feet) and Browns Peak (11,722 feet) as a backdrops. This too is a fantastic sunrise location. The Glacier Lake Trail starts from the Brooklyn Lake Campground. We hiked this one evening and found some nice wildflower/intimate locations around Glacier Lakes and also a number of nice tarns further down the trail towards Lost Lake. We had fantastic weather this weekend - warm days, cool nights and just enough rain showers to keep the flowers fresh. But the above average snow pack and summer rainfall is the recipe for bugs. The mosquitos were quite thick anytime the breezes stopped, especially during early morning hours.
More Background on the
Snowy Range...
The oldest rocks in the range are estimated at roughly 2.5 billion years
old. The Medicine Bow Mountains were formed approximately About 70 million
years ago, and since this time it is believed that more than 15,000 feet of
rock have been removed by erosion. The Medicine Bow Mountains are actually
one mountain range stacked upon another. The range consists of a complex
rock mass that has been changed by several episodes of crustal movement,
normal faulting, thrust faulting, folding, uplifting and tilting. As a
result, changes in the surface relief caused an ancient inland sea to
advance and retreat, inundating and exposing the Medicine Bow Mountains
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