Patience pays-off

Since I've been on furlough from work I've been biking to first dam and fishing 2 or 3 times a week. It's good exercise and it helps my furlough feel more like a weekend than a lay-off :)

Some days I do pretty good, catching 2 or 3 little rainbows or browns, but they're never big enough to get excited about. In fact I think the biggest I'd caught (or watched anyone catch) in first dam was around 9 inches. It's kind of a fun little community up there, lots of old timers are there every day at the same time in the same spot. They all come separately but they know each others' names and there are some funny little chats that I over hear. The weather is always really nice and every once in a while I'll see a deer or something to keep me interested. I usually take a book and spend about 90 minutes there before coasting home.

Today I was taken completely off guard when I reeled in this monster brown trout:


I never keep anything that I catch, but I made an exception today. He was 19" and 2.4lbs, easily the biggest fish I've caught in Logan canyon. There were some other anglers nearby and they were floored! It was pretty exciting

Wind Rivers

Adam and I have gone backpacking almost every summer for the past 4 or 5 summers and we wanted to keep the tradition alive this year as well. We decided to head to the Wind River range of western Wyoming. Neither of us had been there but we'd heard great things. They were all true. We spent 3 days hiking from Big Sandy trailhead to the famous Cirque of the Towers. The fishing was... easy. I don't say "great" because we caught a zillion fish, but the biggest was about 8 inches. The fish were so easy to catch that I literally caught one by dangling my worm over the water! Adam kept one of his and cooked it up, it was yummy. I got to finally field test my jetboil camping stove that Angie bought me for my birthday. It worked great and made us some wonderful soup, ramen and oatmeal. The scenery was incredible up there and we couldn't believe that we'd gone our whole lives without knowing what we were missing out on. The Cirque of the Towers was a real tough hike (at least with our packs on) and we finally reached the Cirque at what we estimate to be around 11,500ft. In the Cirque all those peaks are 12,500+ ft, it's crazy! We got so used to amazing scenery all around us that by the 3rd day it felt normal. The original plan was to loop around the Cirque and work our way back to the car via the Highline trail, but there was so much snow at the Cirque that the trail was completely impassible. We camped on Big Sandy lake both nights under tarps with relative success. All in all it was an awesome hike of about 25 miles, also Adam is pretty sure he's the first person to play Bejeweled at the Cirque.