Andrew Skurka’s Wind River High Route

8/30/25—9/5/2025

Lynn Froetscher and I hiked Skurka’s 100 mile high route across the backbone of the Wind River Range in WY over the course of 7 days. We had uncommonly perfect weather and only dealt with smoke from nearby fires on our final 2 days. We stayed true to Skurka’s route except on two occasions—we took TX Pass instead of NY Pass and took the Dixon Camp Lakes Alt around Douglas Pass.

We carried eight days of food, which weighed heavily on us at the start, especially as we negotiated the class 3 downclimb in the West Gully off of Wind River Peak. From beginning to end, the way was fraught with nebulous moraine fields, loose scree, and boulders the size of cars. We utilized the waypoints provided by Skurka, his guidebook, and his annotated paper map set; we did not use a pre-established gps track and chose, instead, to do our own route-finding.

I’d love to return to these mountains and complete the route again one day, perhaps when I hike the CDT!