In this multi-post series, Spiderwoman offers her tips for hiking the Wind River High Route and her comments about the Wind River Guide. View all of her posts.
Some of her pictures have been embedded in these posts. To see the remainder of them, go to: Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, and Section 4.
Spiderwoman on the knife edge just north of Europe Peak, a vista-filled mid-route summit (Skurka caption)
To get a sense of how you do or don’t compare to my skills, style, and experience, please look at bios from my HDT Tips. I’m a very average backpacker. Not ultralight. Not ultra-fit. And definitely not ultra-relaxed about stressors and dangers. Put another way: if you’re in Skurka’s league, these Tips aren’t for you.
I’m making my thoughts on this route public in an effort to
- Share an average backpacker’s perspective, and
- Promote safety and success.
Had I read Tips like these before our thru-hike, I would have made changes to our itinerary for the sake of our safety and our physical and emotional well-being. I’ll bold what I would do differently now that I know better.
The majority of this document is a personal commentary about our trip. But I also include commentary about the Wind River High Route Guide. When referencing annotations on the topographic maps or text in Part 2 of the guidebook, I have used “quotation marks.”
A hope dear to my heart is that more and more people choose to spend chunks of their lifetime walking through our natural world with their house on their back, home under their feet. For the education. The beauty. The small carbon footprint. The personal growth. The instant trust and fellowship within the community. The quality of interpersonal relating. The falling head over heels in love with our Earth and its web of life. For the Earth-honoring choices they make once back in society. May these Tips help in that effort.
Reliable hiking companion, The Brawn (Skurka caption)
Tags: Spiderwoman's WRHR Tips, Wind River High Route