CENTENNIAL, Wyo. – Itap not entirely Dick Cheney’s fault, but Wyoming has never been my favorite state to visit. Sure, I love Jackson Hole, Grand Teton and Yellowstone, and as best I can remember, the Wind River Range offers spectacular backpacking.
But the interstates are boring. Every time I cross Wyoming north on I-25 or west on I-80, I can’t wait for the Montana or Utah border to arrive.
Last summer, my wife and I met a couple who serve as volunteer campground hosts every August in Wyoming’s Snowy Range, which lies a mere 25 buzzard-flying miles north of the Colorado state line. They beguiled us around the campfire with ravings about the area’s beauty. Needing a destination for a late-summer, long-weekend getaway, we decided to venture north and verify their veracity.
Located off Wyoming 130 northwest of Centennial, Wyo., the Snowy Range lies at the upper end of the Medicine Bow Mountains, which stretch northward from Colorado’s Cameron Pass. As we pulled into our reserved site in the Sugarloaf Campground, we realized that our friends were right in lauding the place.
An escarpment of silvery gray summits reminiscent of California’s Sierra Nevada spread north from our near-timberline site. True to its name, even in August patches of snow still clung to its hillside couloirs. Along the base of the peaks stretched a string of lakes, each a shining shade of shimmering blue, and the surrounding hillsides and meadows lay dappled with an FTD-worthy array of wildflowers.
“No bear, but we often spot moose in the meadow below,” brags friend Karl Konrad.
The national forest campground he and his wife host is somewhat primitive and cheap at only $10 per night. It features 16 sites scattered around a loop. Campers share a pair of pit toilets, and water comes from an old fashioned hand pump, not a faucet. The full hookups craved by the big-rig crowd are absent, which means pretty much so are they.
The area is crisscrossed by 23 named hiking trails, so after breakfast our first morning, we donned boots and started up the Gap Lake Trail. Outside of a few anglers flinging flies and drowning worms, the area seemed deliciously uncrowded. A backpacking family we met on the trail said they camped three nights at a nearby but out-of-the-way lake and never saw another person. We made a mental note to add the spot to our calendar for “sometime next year.”
The following day, we explored the area by car. The highway and much of the infrastructure in the Snowy Range was built in the early 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Their rock work, which can still be seen in bridges, trails, picnic areas and overlooks, gives the area the look and feel of a deliciously unvisited national park.
“So what do you think of this part of Wyoming?” Karl asked that evening as we shared a bottle of Two Buck Chuck back at camp. “Pretty nice, isn’t it?”
I had to admit that yes, I was impressed with the Snowy Range. But after all, we’re only 25 buzzard flying miles north of the Colorado border. Crossing the state north on I-25 next month, I’ll still be longing for the Montana border to arrive.
