On July 13th, I headed up to Dickinson Park on the SE side of the Wind River Range to do a dayhike. Because I bumbled around for a while and it was a long rough drive up to the trailhead (although scenic, with some huge sweeping switchbacks up green meadows), I decided to do an overnight hike to make the most of my approach. I threw a bit more food and a sleeping bag and bivy sack into my backpack and headed off up the Bears Ears trail. Since the trailhead is at about 9300 feet, this would be another good acclimitization hike.
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There were a few mosquitos in the trees, but mostly the breeze and my hiking kept them from being a problem. The first few miles of this trail switchback uphill in the trees and are pretty unremarkable. Then you get out of the trees and the views improve. They get better and better as more of the mountains are revealed. I cut off to the South towards the Lizard Head Peak trail (8 or 9 miles from the trailhead), then headed cross country to scramble up Cathedral Peak (12,326 ft). I had one mishap crossing some very wet mushy snow/slush (I went in up to my shin). Near the end of the day I scrambled up to the top of Windy Mountain (12,539 ft). It was very windy indeed. I turned back towards some rocky outcrops on a high plateau to find a somewhat sheltered place to try to sleep. It was really windy despite my V shaped outcrop to shelter behind. The sunset that night was very spectacular. That night it was cold. I was wearing all my clothes and my Mont-bell sleeping bag and a bivy sack and it was still cold. This made me rather nervous about the upcoming sufferfest where Andy didn't want to bring any sleeping bags at all.
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Eventually the night passed and I got up around sunrise to try to take advantage of the sun's warmth (which wasn't much for a while). It was still very windy - strong enough to make standing still or walking in a straight line difficult. I hiked for quite a while with all my clothes on which means it was either really cold or windy (the latter). I don't think it got much below freezing that night, as there was no ice in my water bottle but the snowmelt trickles were frozen. I hiked up over point 12,490 and then continued around a rather dramatic chasm and up to the summit of Mount Chauvenet (12,250 ft). From there I continued back to the Bears Ears trail and back to the truck. There were a number of trees that had been blown over since I hiked in the day before.
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