Packsaddle Lake

Will and I just returned from our annual backpacking adventure trip. Every summer since we have been married (except for the 1st one) we go on a backpacking trip.

It was quite the adventure this year, as always. This year we hiked to Packsaddle Lake. We took off driving Thursday night after we were done with work and got to the trailhead about 11:00 p.m. Well, we decided just to pack up and start hiking. The moon was all-but-full so that helped us see in the dark along with the use of our flashlights. We hiked as far as we could until it started to rain, then we quickly set up our tent and slept. It was about 2:00 a.m. We are crazy night hikers, I know. The ground was very lumpy but it was the best we could find. Remember it was dark and raining? I'm starting to think that we are too old to be sleeping on lumpy ground. Our bodies were not happy with us in the morning. We woke up Friday morning to sunshine and blue skies. We packed up our tent and decided to keep on hiking that same trail. At this point we weren't even sure we were on the right trail. We read in a trail hiking book to get us this far and it sounded about right. We didn't have a map, just a borrowed GPS that we had entered the coordinates for the lake so that is what we were using. But the GPS didn't have trail software on it, so it was just telling us how far the lake was as-the-crow-flies distance. Well, we ended up hiking a long ways, mostly on mountain roads in order to get to the lake. Turns out that we took the wrong road to start with. The road that we hiked is the road we should have driven up the first night and parked. We found our way to our intended destination but now we were a little worried about getting back to our car. I would say that we weren't ever scared or worried that we wouldn't make it out alive or that we were lost so much that we wouldn't find our car again, but we definitely weren't very excited about hiking that same distance that we did in order to find the lake. We were definitely blessed in many ways in order to make it back. Friday when we got to the lake there was a family there that was just there for the day. They had hiked in to the lake with a cooler and picnic lunch. Well we talked to them and they ended up giving us their bag of ice that they were just going to throw out before their hike back up the trail. So we were able to fill up all our water bottles with the ice a couple of times and have ice water! It tasted so good! We didn't end up having to filter any water for drinking. Another blessing was that Friday afternoon a group of deacon scouts and 2 leaders hiked in and were planning to stay the night. We talked to them, too, and told them how we had hiked in "the long way" and they were totally surprised that we had hiked as far as we did when we told them where we parked. They told us they had room in their truck for us and offered to give us a ride back to our car the following morning. We totally took them up on that offer. We camped at the lake that night. It was a little better sleep because the ground was fairly flat this time, but it was still SO HARD and our hips and shoulders and backs were sore in the morning. We slept like babies, meaning that we were up every 2 hours to turn over, etc. We woke up to thunder and rain Saturday morning. So we packed up our stuff and hiked out with the scouts and they were able to drive us to our car. From there it was an easy drive home. We were so grateful for this because it was raining pretty hard part of the morning that we would have been outside hiking, had we not gotten a ride with them.

We stopped in Rexburg to eat at Gringo's Mexican restaurant, because it was the restaurant that one of the scout leaders owned. We figured that it was the least we could do the pay him for his saving us. We ordered the fajitas and I am pretty sure our stomachs shrunk over our backpacking trip because we could only eat a little bit of it and took the rest home in a box. I guess eating granola bars, pudding, stew, and canned meat will do that to you.

The fishing was great at the lake! We caught quite a few cutthroat trout. None of them were monstrous in size but they all put up such a good fight. The water was so clear, that we could see the fish take the flies. i think that is awesome. One fish I caught reminded me of "shark attack" because I was pulling the fly in to recast and it came swimming at it and got hooked. I didn't know that the fish was following my fly in, but when the fish thought the fly was going to get away, he decided to really go after it. It was cool for me to see. I haven't ever seen it before. I wanted to make sure and remember it.

The scenery was beautiful. We saw a bull moose across the lake from where we camped. I hadn't ever seen a bull moose in the wild.

We hiked 6 hours total between the two days. On our GPS it said we hiked about 2.5 to 3 miles per hour (less if it was uphill and steep). So....that equals about 12-16 miles? Yikes. Next time we will know where the right trail is and avoid "the long way." Sometimes it is the road less traveled, though.

It is always good to get away and go on a pack trip to truly realize how blessed we are to live in such a beautiful world. We are blessed to have so many nice things in our lives, good food choices, and great health to be able to go out and do things like this. It's a wonderful tradition that I hope to continue as much as we can. I don't know what we'll do when we have a baby and still try to pack everything we need.

Enjoy the photos!

Ready for the night hike

On top of the world! Pretty view of the Tetons and Swan Valley

We saw some gigantic mushrooms!

I think this was our first campfire together. We cooked a can of stew in the fire for supper.

This is where our tent was.