Blast from the past: Popo Agie & other Wyo stuff

I've been sitting on this disk of photos from a Wyoming trip some years back. Shane & Bryan Urakawa came all the way out from a dry NW summer, and apart from the Middle Popo Agie (say it: po PO' zha, or just Popo will suffice), we got pretty well skunked. Warm Springs Cr sucked. We hiked this other thing that some local had high hopes for a 1D & it turned out to be a POS. The Popo was scary high, but turned out to be pretty fun once we got in there. Why we didn't paddle the lower roadside stretch I still haven't figured out. We also attempted a supposed 1D on a stretch of the Little, but got severely shut down by sieves & skanky limestone; almost lost wee-Conor to a hungry undercut on that day. We got turned around on the NF Popo by access issues & loss of critical time. Spencer & Daniel had sent out a camera for me to do some filming for LVM & I think I only got like 3 worthy shots outta the whole trip! Still though, looking through these photos, I'm remembering it as a really good time. We kicked it off at a huge party at the Mangy Moose in Jackson & we rode that vibe into Lander where wee-Conor whipped the local girls into a frenzy. A bunch of traipsing around in the Wind River Range, & then we ended up back in J-hole before Shane & Bryan headed back home through a mid-summer blizzard & by way of the NF Payette.

At any rate, at my urging, a couple friends from Colorado last weekend made a trip up to the Lander area, and basically just reminded me that I never even really looked through all these shots. So I dug through my boxes of random crap down in the basement & found the disk .. & to my surprise, found a buncha shots worthy of sharing. The Popo is very high quality & here's the thing; it's got reliable flow, & it's a reasonable drive (I've made it to Lander in as little as 3 hrs from Ft. Collins), & yet, no one from CO ever paddles it. Why?

So here's an assortment of mostly "lifestyle" & scenery stuff from that trip back in '04 ('03?)


Dorks dorking out near some marginally runnable cascade thing up on Togwotee Pass


Togwotee eastside scenery. There's a big lake at the bottom of this mountain that is the headwaters of the Wind River.


Popo Agie Falls


We did a lot of walking around near creeks .. & not so much paddling on said creeks on this trip. Here's Shane scouting out a runnable bit of Popo Agie Falls that we did actually run.


Me scouting a creek that didn't get run.






Oh, we had high hopes for this thing. But it was kinda ragin' given the size of the streambed, no eddies, & every drop had something wrong with it. We probably should've just run it.


More of the same


One of the only redeeming qualities of Warm Springs Cr: you paddle into 2 dark, drippy, stalactite-infested caves.


Middle Popo


Middle Popo


Walking into the Poop, oops, I mean Popo.


We ran a bunch of laps on this fun slide-to-vert falls, which was actually the bottom of Popo Agie Falls on far R-left. Young Conor dropping. Local reds & kids come up here & butt-slide this thing at lower flows.


We hit it pretty high. Here's Conor in the maelstrom leading up to the normally-run falls-type drop on the Popo ...


... and a little offline in the meat of the drop. It was pretty chaotic & hard to stay online. No carnage though.


Me, TG Boofenheimershmidt


Beautiful Red Canyon scenery looking north toward the cowboy/hippie town of Lander.


Brief period of Wyo pride .. post skunkin' on the Little P.


OH SNAP! Young Conor laying down the mack on a local heater. This young lady is waaaay too good for that dirtbag.