cloud peak wilderness

Ever since @Scott Chandler made several posts about the Cloud Peak Wilderness a few years ago I've been looking at it for hiking trips. For a couple years I have been contemplating a 4 day loop that involves a 10 mile off-trail section across a ridge line above tree line. Last year, an old...

It's been hard for me to get out this year. I used up all of my vacation time on other pursuits and I realized that the only way this was going to happen was over a long weekend like Labor Day or Thanksgiving weekends. Thanksgiving is always pretty iffy because of weather and family stuff so I...

8/28-30/2015 I showed up in the office on the 28th and had a big question thrown my way: "Would you like to go on a fire starting next week?" I had just gotten my Red Card this year and it would be my first fire so with a little trepidation I gave an affirmative. Given the day of leaving as...

8/13-16/2015 Without the novelty of my first year much of the Cloud Peak Wilderness has become same old same old, hardly a fun thing to say about such a gorgeous place but true none the less. Luckily, after a couple weeks of little zest or amazement I found myself with a tour to the northern...

Over the past few weekends I've been in familiar areas of the Cloud Peak Wilderness doing familiar things. Thus I can't say I have the best of stories to share but I do have some pictures of what everyone sees that are pretty darn pretty. 7/16-17 I spent patrolling and doing trail maintenance...

07/09-12/2015 The job of a wilderness ranger varies a lot. Sometimes it is pretty rough (like the 4th of July weekend… rain, horses, long days…) and other times it can be downright pleasant. Here at the Cloud Peak Wilderness, I find the opportunities to visit the northern end fall into the...

7/1-7/5/15 I can hardly wait for these "special" weeks to be over and I'm just doing my job... Next weekend! The beginning of July saw the wilderness crew attending a training for two Wilderness Watch interns. I say attending because we weren't being trained, nor were we training, we were...

Finally I have some time to visit the library and utilize some internet! So I'm back in Wyoming for the summer, again patrolling the Cloud Peak Wilderness. June is fairly early in the season though so not much patrolling has happened. It's mainly been a month of trainings that didn't amount...

After our failed attempt to tackle the snowstorm of early September, we wilderness rangers of the Cloud Peak headed north again, hoping another week of seventy degree temperatures would have melted off all the snow. The first day of this project tour included a trip to Stull and Coney Lakes to...

With the coming of September and the end of my scheduled patrols, it has become a little hard to organize my time outside. So I’m going to just lump September as one thing and split up what has gone on during my summer in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. Sept 5-8 With the snowy weather we’d been...

Recently I hiked to the top of Cloud Peak with my dad, David Frahm and a family friend, John Harrington. After my returning to the desert of Southern Utah, my dad sent my sisters and I publications from the WY Daily News from those who had also reached Cloud Peak’s summit. Some of the stories...

The beginning of September marked the end of guaranteed work for my summer in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. My final tour was to be on the eastern side and the weather was forecast to be as awesome (sarcasm) as it was last time I was in this area. Changes in scheduling shortened my plans but...

It was slated to be a crazy weekend. A big cold front was to sweep through Wyoming, dumping rain, dropping temps and possibly laying the first snow of the season in the high country. This in mind... I made the choice to backpack far out instead of dayhike for my second trip to the northern end...

Again I found myself scheduled to patrol the infamous west zone of the Cloud Peak Wilderness. The first time I went here the trip was four days of winter trying to hold on into July. The second, the visitor use was picking up, Cloud Peak had just become hikeable, and I ran into 50+ people in...

After a few adventuresome "weekend" days I finally have some interweb to share more summer goodness. The weekend fun will pop up in another TR soon. So a while ago now (August 1st) I started my fifth tour in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. I'd made the full rotation of our wilderness schedule and...

After a month of patrolling my time finally came to venture to the northern end of the Cloud Peak Wilderness. While technically a part of other ranger districts, because the CPW is managed as a whole unit we wilderness rangers get to patrol up there. With only a few trailheads, most accessed...

After hanging out in the heat of Utah for a few days it was time to return to my mountains. I was slated to spend six days on the west side. My first tour in this area was a bit rough, rainy, snowy, thundery, windy. This one was much nicer. Day 1- 7/16 The first day of my tour I was joined...

Finally I have time to interweb and can catch up on trip reports. After working a couple tours in the Cloud Peak Wilderness I had a six day weekend. I originally had plans to backpack in the Wind River Range with my friend Richard from Salt Lake... until we checked the forecast. Every...

Summer has finally hit Buffalo and the Bighorns and with a balmy 90* day down in town I was ready for my second tour to begin. I had some trepidations about how this hitch would go. It was Fourth of July weekend and those that have been here multiple seasons talk about this weekend like...

I suppose I must be a glutton for punishment. I'm essentially paid to hike hard, and on my weekends seem to hike harder. Maybe it is just a twisted sense of adventure. Ever since arriving in Buffalo the impressive views of the southern peaks of the Cloud Peak Wilderness have beaconed me. I...