A Mountain Wedding & Backpacking

Friday July 11th Mike, Beck, Cassius, and I took off for Ketchum, Idaho to camp out for a couple of nights. Our friends, Ron & Amy, were getting married on Saturday at Galena Lodge and we wanted to make sure we had a good campsite for the next couple of nights. We arrived late in the afternoon and secured two great campsites for the weekend. After setting up camp we had a great time hanging out and taking Beck to the river for a swim.

The Holley Pack (North Fork Camp Ground, near Ketchum, ID.)

Beck taking a dive into the river

Saturday we spent the day hanging around with Mark, Stevie, and Theresa. We all got as dolled up as we could considering we didn't have any running water and headed to Galena Lodge for the wedding. It was really great to see friends that we haven't seen in a long time.

D & Mike standing near the meadow where the wedding ceremony took place

I guess being a fire fighter really does get a guy chicks :)

L-R: Jen, Deb, Mike, D, & Sarai

After a night of sleep we packed up our stuff and headed over Galena Summit into the Sawtooth Mountain Range. We parked at Pettit Lake and headed into the mountains. We started in the middle of the day and holy crap it was HOT! I went through three liters of water in no time, mainly because I was giving most of it to the dogs. We reached Farley Lake about 2 hours later and filtered more water and had a snack. Next it was off to Toxaway Lake. We initially tried to find a camp site on the lake, but the mosquitoes were horrible so we kept on moving trying to get out of mosquito land. Finally we settled for this camp site:

The bugs were still pretty bad, even at a higher elevation. Did I mention we ran out of bug spray? And that I have a flashing neon sign above my head that is only visible to the mosquito population that says "Buffet"? Needless to say I got eaten alive and the dogs were getting pretty beat up too. I am actually surprised that I don't have West Nile and that the dogs haven't shown signs of heart worm. So after a hurried dinner I stuck the dogs in the tent to keep them from the bugs.

Mike and I soon joined the dogs in the tent, which is only a 2 man, 0 dog tent, so it was quite a squeeze with all of us in there. I think next year's REI dividend will have to go to a three man backpacking tent.

The next morning Cassius didn't feel like getting up because it was too cold, so he ended up sleeping while Mike, Beck and I filtered water and started the coffee.

Rather than hiking over the pass, we didn't know if it was open or not, we headed back down the way we came in to the car. We made pretty good time getting out. We drove into Stanley for the standard after back packing meal: burger and fries. We made another stop just outside of Stanley where I made the dogs pose in front of the Sawtooths. Obviously, they were interested in something moving in the bushes and could care less about my need for blog photos.

After our stops in Stanley we took our time driving to Placerville where we met up with our friends Cody and Kelli to spend a couple of days with them at their family cabin. It was so nice to have running water again! It was a great trip and I can't wait for more backpacking trips.