On the river & superlatives

After throwing a dart at the map to determine the direction of our next jaunt, we were away to Little Half Moon Lake, ignoring its big brother that was just over the rise but accessed via another road.

And speaking of roads, again we had to endure my carrying on about the narrow, dusty, winding, rocky access with long scary precipitous dropoffs.  I'm okay with a rough road, but those places where one bounce too high over a rock could send a truck & passengers down a looong drop off the side do get my attention.

Granted, I am probably overstating just a tad about the road to Little Half Moon, but not a lot.  And sometimes it depends on my mood, and how much I'm valuing my life at the moment.

I'm guessing there haven't been many (any?) on the last section that we used to get past the lower end of the lake

At least along the last part of the drive, we were able to view the lake, set down in a bowl - likely a huge glacial kettle created during the receding of the last Ice Age.  Unlike most places in that area, its setting was low enough in the surrounding hills that there was not a high snowy mountain in sight.

 

I was not overly excited about shore fishing opportunities there, so set off on a walk to see what was below where Little Half Moon empties into Pole Creek.  What a thundering cascade I found there . . .

  

. . . and then realized I had wandered off without bear spray and was in a very low brushy area with no line of distant sight.  If I'm to meet a bear unprepared, I would like to at least be able to see it coming, as opposed to rounding a bend and running into it, so it seemed the best way to rectify my mistake was to return to the truck.

Wanting to share what I had glimpsed down the creek, I equipped myself more appropriately, gathered the señor and we made our way downstream, where we were awed by the beauty of the stream.  Like all waterways there this summer, the creek level was very high.  Who knows why, but mosquitoes were not overwhelming in that canyon; unfortunately, neither was the fishing.

Can't tell it very well from this photo, but this route down to water's edge was hairy beyond belief, and one at which I balked for an extended period, relenting to risk my well-being eventually in the belief that those trout were calling my name. . .

. . .  they weren't, but at least I overcame my terror (with a good bit of help & encouragement) that arises when I recall the snap of those two ankle bones, and was rewarded with a new photographic perspective of Pole Creek.

And oh those delicate buds on the wild rose!

And the superlatives . . .

That spot on Pole Creek was stunning, but the day afterward, we found even more in the "best" category.  Because we are fortunate to be in Pinedale for the second week in July, we are immersing ourselves in all things mountain man rendezvous, and again, most of the events are free of charge.

We signed up for a tour of Green River Valley rendezvous sites, not knowing if it would be a docent-led well-meaning but rote tour, and were very pleased that knowledgeable researchers, historians & authors were our guides, volunteers for the American Mountain Men Museum.  Jim Hardee led the way to places that were relevant and important to the times in the 1820s & 1830s, when mountain men & fur traders were the first Anglos to explore that region of the Rocky Mountains.  While their presence was to supply beaver pelts to markets in the East, their explorations paved the way for those who followed on their journeys to settle in Oregon & California.

Although the period of the American mountain man was relatively brief - 1820 to 1840 - the trappers' daring experiences and exploits are the enduring stories of incredible hardiness and bravery in the face of unimaginable hardships we can only wonder at.

I have long been interested in Joseph Reddeford Walker, the man who led the first non-natives into the Prescott, Arizona, area in 1863.  Of course I knew that he was a hardened frontiersman, but somehow, it never occurred to me that he was a major player in the Green River Valley.  As we visited the site of Fort Bonneville, we learned that Walker was involved with Benjamin Bonneville as they were the first to bring wagons over the Continental Divide in 1832, after which they established a trading center fortification of 15-foot-high cottonwood pickets with a perimeter of about 80 feet.  The fort included at least one internal structure and a blacksmithy.

Their expedition consisted of 110 men and 20 wagons departing from Fort Osage, Missouri, proceeding into the unknown western territory.

The Green River Valley was the center of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.  We stopped above the site of six of the rendezvous held between 1833 & 1840 at and near the confluence of Horse Creek & the Green River.

Because of the large number of trappers, traders, Indians and livestock that gathered at each summer rendezvous, encampments stretched for as many as 20 miles along the river's bottomland.

At the overlook of that encampment site is a monument commemorating the first Christian religious observance in Wyoming - a Catholic mass given by Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet in 1840, and said to have been attended by 2,000 trappers, traders & natives.  A commemorative service is conducted there once every year.

Because I admired and remarked on a fellow tourers' mosquito-abatement gear, at the next stop, he produced a second protective netting for me.  Dick Ireland hails from Alberta, Canada, & Washington state, both places that are needing of mosquito protection.  Ungrateful as I am, I could only wish for a full-length protection - one that my new friend said he also owns.

Our tour ended at the 1907 Sommer's homestead, obviously with no relationship to mountain men, fur trappers or explorers, but a great place to continue using the mosquito netting.  How do people live with such???  I would be hard-pressed to have to choose between staying inside or using insect repellent to go out.

The house and grounds were interesting; however, I was weary of flailing my arms around, so primarily examined the extensive but somewhat incoherent arrangement of artifacts inside, while enjoying Chris' playing of the partially keyless player piano.

In the category of bad or badder: prior to public events such as parades, rendezvous and so on, aerial spraying from a small black helicopter is done to . . . well, kill the mosquitoes.  Should one be fortunate enough to know it's coming, one can close one's windows and then stay inside for hours because the insecticide smell is awful.  If not - well, at least the numbers of mosquitoes is lessened.

In the category of "What the hey?", I was somewhat bemused to see three folks in a fishing drift boat on the river with eyes for nothing but their phones.  Impatiently awaiting important calls, no doubt.

Trappers Row & the museum . . .

On our return to Pinedale, we found it bustling with newly erected booths along "Trappers Row", where folks were demonstrating methods used by those of long ago in their subsistence existences. 

Some were activities that we are familiar with - like blacksmithing - and others were new to me, such as stick weaving, used as far back as the 1600s to weave rugs and now used to make sashes, bracelets and such.

There were various interesting goods for sale . . .

. . . and more furs than I could have imagined.

Moving on to the Museum of the Mountain Men was akin to moving into another world, one of ages past.

Easily one of the finest museums I've ever seen, it truly was an experience of being immersed in a time long past.  Exhibits were fully explanatory and offered in a manner that was in context, from earliest native inhabitants of the Rocky Mountains to white explorers, trappers and pioneers.  We emerged as if we had time-traveled, and learned so much in the process.  

Curation was incredible: for example, there were displayed various documents of antiquity, but each was then transcribed and broken down into understandable sections within the context of the age.  Needless to say, I highly recommend a long visit to the museum.

An impressive reproduction of Chief American Horse's tipi was explained in detail.  In part: it was pre-1876, 20 feet in diameter and constructed of bison hide & sinew.  The full-scale replica was created by Native American historian and ethnologist Michael "Bad Hand" Terry.  After studying & measuring the original fragile tipi at the Smithsonian Institute's storage facility, he painstakingly sewed together twenty bison hides with sinew.  In the process, he duplicated each stitch, patch & measurement.

As we savored the wealth of information and became captivated by the museum's presentations, I took only a few photos; my feeling is that in general, they would be completely inadequate to convey the experience.

A section of an aspen tree and its explanation were intriguing enough and a stand-alone exhibit.  It is one of eight aspens left of hundreds that were carved with emigrant names & dates from 1858 to 1900 along a place called Witherspoon Hill, where the Lander Cutoff of the Oregon Trail crosses the mountain 25 miles west of Big Piney.

That tree died in 1960 after living 159 years, and was 56 years old when the first emigrants passed by it, a witness to the movement of thousands of emigrants, livestock & wagons.