Travels with Tucker: Medicine Bow Mountains

We were kind of glad to leave Cheyenne and the trappings of what Wyoming calls civilization. We had a week planned in the Medicine Bow Mountains of Wyoming, also called the Snowy Range. Just about no one knows about these mountains outside of people who live in southern Wyoming and die-hard outdoors folks in Colorado. It is a beautiful little mountain range near the Wyoming/Colorado border that you can drive right into the middle of at 11,000 feet. Imagine a slice of Yosemite high country dropped into the middle of nowhere with a good road through it. It is a real gem.

We camped at Brooklyn Lake, a tiny campground with its own traihead into the back country. There are about 130 lakes in the Snowy Range. We would easily pass 12-15 on a four-hour hike. The wildflowers were stupendous and there were many snowfields still frozen. We hiked a lot and the photos below are only a few examples of the many beautiful places we saw. I hiked to 12,013-foot Medicine Bow Peak the day before we left--my first high Rocky Mountain peak (though far from the difficulty of the “14ers”}.

These are truly lovely mountains and it is good to know that there are still places like this in our country. Places no one is making a buck on or visiting to death with tour buses. Places with absolutely no services and where people have been camping since their father took them there who was taken there by HIS father. We were very sad to leave.

See more of our Medicine Bow adventures on the Outdoor Project website:
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/shelf-lakes-gap-lakes-trail
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/lost-lake-trail
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/medicine-bow-peak-lewis-lake-trailhead
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/twin-lakes-sheep-lake-trail