Friday, August 29, 2008
Spectacular playground
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Imagine a place where the scenery is off the charts, the hungry trout as long as your arm.
It's the kind of combination that should attract big crowds, right?
Not when it's deep in Wyoming's Wind River Range, a wild and spectacular playground for those willing to work for it.
"The only people we saw were four Forest Service people working on a trail and a couple of climbers," said Dan Phlegar of Roanoke County, who was enjoying that trout-fishing nirvana in person a few weeks ago. "Normally, we don't see anybody."
The trip has become an annual adventure for the core of the group.
This year seven men made the trip in early August, and even after a few weeks back in the real world, Phlegar's voice rises with excitement when he talks about the trip.
"What really stands out is the amount of fish you catch, and the beauty," said Phlegar, a 62-year-old resident of Roanoke County who works for Rockydale Quarries.
Chuck Hunter agrees.
"It's the whole combination of things," said Hunter, who is 55 and works in the investments industry. "You have the wilderness experience, and the fishing and the scenery are just spectacular."
Phlegar made his first trip to the Wind River Range about 15 years ago with another Roanoker, Quenton Ratliff. On that trip the men did volunteer trail-maintenance work.
Phlegar has been back every year since, sometimes twice a year.
This year he took along his son Bobby, who lives in the Cave Spring area. Hunter also brought a son, John, who lives in Richmond.
The other men were Butch Carter of Botetourt County, Joe Hayes of Roanoke County and Mike Burrows of Raleigh, N.C.
The dynamics of the group are important on backcountry trips, Phlegar said.
"You can't take just anybody," Phlegar said.
The men know each other from fishing around here and know they can get along well, even in the physically demanding, sometimes stressful environment of the deep backcountry.
The group got into Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Aug. 2, and spent the night finalizing their preparation. The next morning Phlegar's daughter, who lives in Jackson Hole, drove the group to Crowheart, Wyo., from where the trip would get rolling in earnest.
Here's where the men opted for something of a luxury, paying $200 a head for a truck shuttle through the Wind River Indian Reservation. With the shuttle, it was only a 6-mile hike into their first destination, Native Lake.
As relatively short as the hike was, it still took the men longer than three hours. After setting up camp, they started fishing.
Not surprisingly, the fishing was good.
"I think the fish are so hungry that time of year, they'll hit just about anything that floats," Hunter said.
Over the next six days, the men hiked between a number of lakes at elevations between 9,500 and 10,800 feet.
The travel with 60-pound backpacks was strenuous.
"As much as you work out, it's tough to simulate," Hunter said.
But all of the campers were able to hang, and that was important from a unity standpoint.
The fishing varied among the lakes and streams the men hit over the next six days. Generally, the fishing was great and it was not unusual to catch more than 50 trout a day.
Many of the trout, especially those from the streams, were pan-sized. But there were some lunkers.
In one lake Phlegar caught several cutthroats in the 20- to 22-inch range. He even saw a huge trout engulf a waterbird chick that was swimming in the shallows.
Trout weren't the only abundant critters. Mosquitoes were so heavy that the men had to wear head nets in the evening around camp.
The men released all of the rainbows and cutthroats they caught, but kept many brook trout.
"We ate fish three or four nights," Phlegar said.
What fish was left over was often mixed into a kind of trout salad that they spread on wraps for lunches the next day.
Other food included freeze-dried backpacking dinners and oatmeal.
"We ate pretty good," Phlegar said.
And they planned well, too, having just a few crumbs of food left in their packs when they got back to the trailhead on Aug. 9.
Phlegar hasn't officially started planning next year's trip yet, but the work will start soon.
The group may be a little different next year, but one element won't be.
Phlegar has no intention of breaking his streak any time soon.
