The Bighorn Crags - Round 2

A few years back, Brandon and I did a 20 mile (+/-) backpacking trip to the Bighorn Crags, nestled deep in the Frank Church Wilderness. To my utter dismay, I lost almost every single one of the photos from that trip and due to inclement weather, we weren't able to visit some of the destinations we had planned. Needless to say, we knew we would be going back for more when the opportunity presented itself. Enter summer 2014, and the chance to go with 3 of my favorite guys!

I call this one "One of the guys." Loving my lesbo boots! 

It was so great to be able to do it with both my bros! Jacob went with us last time, but this was Ben's first time in. And actually our first backpacking trip together. 

Rock trail

View from our first campsite next to Harbor lake. It was 7 miles in on our first day. We were exhausted, but…can't beat this view. 

The next day we wanted to hike to a lake we missed last time, Ship Island Lake. To save some walking, we decided to hike up the ridge of Harbor Lake instead of following the designated trail.  

A man between two lakes. It was a great view. 

The other side was a little less enchanting, having to climb down a shale cliff.  It's the areas you can see where the ridge makes a "U." It was pretty scary. I only cried the whole way down out of both fear and pain in my knees. But I did it! It was funny in retrospect. 

We wouldn't make it all the way to Ship Island, as a crazy lightning and hale storm blew in. We did get a view of it.  

Me hiding under a tree from the hale. 

It looked like it had snowed and the trail had turned into a muddy stream.

We stuck to the trail on the way back, and it was a pretty, but very long hike home.

The next day we hiked out to Cathedral Rock to camp along the ridge. We found a leveled out spot between to crags just above the trail. 

And the rock had a man's profile.

This was one of my favorite pics of the trip. We saw a lot of variation in terrain on this trip, but this area was my favorite with the sand, boulders and green. 

This was the view from our actual campsite, overlooking the Cathedral Rock on the left there. It was pretty cool. We got all our drinking water from a dirty patch of snow that we boiled and purified. Neat to live off the land. 

The weather wasn't on our side though, when an alarmingly close lightning storm blew in we had to evacuate our high post on the ridge to find lower ground. Ben and I built a lean-to next to a boulder to keep the rain off while we waited out the storm. While sitting we heard some cracking out in the trees and the boys had to get armed for potentially dangerous wildlife (the area is known for wolf packs). It was literally one of my worst fears realized. But we were fine and eventually made a very dark and spooky hike back to our tents.

Where we play shadow games on the boulders.