With all the snow in McCall, it is already time to head down to the lower elevations of the Salmon River to do what has turned into an annual warm up hike for the season.
Right after you cross the Wind River Bridge, one finds a tribute to the remote harshness of this country as there are a couple of graves from the late 1800s.
Luckily the trail starts out relatively mellow to get the winter cobwebs off the legs.
It is not long before the heat is turned up and the climb intensifies.
Up higher on the hill, Carl does his best JP impression.
It is really difficult to capture the vertically of this country. Many thousands of feet above us you can now make out the mountains of the Gospel Hump Wilderness.
Below on the trail, Irene makes her way up and gives some scale of the mountains.
We soon drop back in a bit and cross the Wind River.
Now the climbing really sets in as we head up towards a ridge and our turn around point for the day.
Finally, after a couple hours, 4 miles, and about 2000 vertical feet, we crest a ridge where the trail starts its contour upstream
Lunch break and more NTP! Along today are Carl, Irene, Anne, and Art, All are repeat cast members here on Davefaitlemonde.com
2000 feet below, the Salmon River and the Wind River Bridge which we crossed earlier today.
Here is an extreme blowup so you can make out the bridge.
A couple of final images of the view and we head back down. We are at about 4100 feet here which is well below the elevation of McCall.
A couple images from well down the hike along the Wind River.
Finally, a brief moment back at the Bridge to soak it all in, What a beautiful day with some amazing friends!
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