The weekend of February 20, 2009, Tracy and I headed up to Jackson, WY, to see what the winter up there would be like. On Saturday we got on Highway 26 and drove over to Dubois, WY. It dawned on me that we had never driven that stretch of road, and I wanted to see what it was like. Well, it was actually really nice, and I can’t believe we had never checked it out. There was a lot of snow up high at Togwotee Pass, as well as some great views back down towards the Tetons. But the best part was when I decided to check out one of the northern most trailheads of the Wind River Range in the Fitzpatrick Wilderness. We went to the Glacier Trail outside of Dubois, and it was great. The drive to the trailhead was completely dry, and the trail itself was almost completely dry. It was amazing to hike in the Winds in February without having to deal with snow. The weather was warm, and we just had a very relaxing day hiking.
On Sunday we drove to Alpine and rented a snowmobile for the day. We rode all day around the west side of the Wyoming Range outside of Alpine. There was definitely a learning curve with riding the snowmobile, but we had a lot of fun, and it was more secluded than I thought it would be. I think we decided that snowmobiling was definitely a good mode of transportation in the mountains in the winter, but we didn’t see ourselves ever doing it as a play activity. It was fun to explore and see the backcountry in the winter, but we wouldn’t really enjoy just playing in the snow with them. We did get it stuck at one point, which wasn’t all that much fun. But we had a great weekend, and I definitely want to hike more in the northern Winds, and I would like to snowmobile some more out to Forest Service cabins.
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