Scott Hunter swims in the cool water of the Greys River in the Wyoming Range
The Wyoming Range runs for about eighty miles in a north-south direction in western Wyoming. These mountains are a mixture of rolling open slopes dotted with sagebrush and aspen groves and forested hills with pines, spruce, and fir trees. Waterfalls plunging over high cliffs are tucked in the remote rugged mountain peaks. Many of the peaks in the range rise to over 10,000 feet the highest is Wyoming Peak at 11,363 feet. These magnificent mountains remain in relative obscurity due to their proximity to the more famous Wind River Mountains and the Grand Tetons; this makes solitude more achievable here. The Wyoming Range is not as rugged or remote as the nearby Wind River Range or Gros Ventre Mountains.
Camping and hunting are popular in Northwest Wyoming
Wyoming Peak is the highpoint of the Wyoming Range. The mountain is located about 30 miles west of Big Piney. Other high peaks in the range include the 11,242' Mount Coffin, the 10,864' Hoback Peak, and the 10,780' Mount McDougal. However, despite its prominent stature, Wyoming Peak appears to be a relatively unknown mountain overshadowed by more prominent mountains in the nearby Wind River and Teton Ranges, Wyoming Peak gets little respect. It's off the beaten path, and exists in relative obscurity in the heart of the Wyoming Range. Even many of the locals have never even heard of it, however, for those willing to venture off the beaten path, Wyoming Peak is a great climb.
The Wyoming Range¡s roadless areas are hidden treasures
of Wyoming's backcountry. Grayback Ridge and South Wyoming Range Roadless
Areas embrace a long chain of sedimentary peaks crowned by brilliant red
summits on the western edge of the Upper Green River Valley. The Wyoming
Range National Recreation Trail traverses the spine of the roadless areas
from north to south, offering awesome backcountry opportunities. Grassy meadows
interspersed with groves of whitebark pine and sparkling streams provide
habitat for rare wildlife like wolverine, lynx, and cutthroat trout. Visitors
to the Wyoming Range enjoy outstanding hiking, hunting, horseback riding
and wildlife viewing in one of the wildest and most remote mountain ranges
in the west.
Trail ride, Little Greys River
Many backcountry-hiking trails traverse these mountains, including the Wyoming Range National Recreation Trail. Trails are open to hikers, horseback riders and mountain bikers. These trails traverse remote, primitive country, and in some places trails may be hard to find. Roads usually are snow free from mid July until mid October. During the winter, roads serve as a network of snowmobile trails.
The high alpine meadows have prolific wild flower displays in the summer months starting with the balsamroot in early June. Many Meadows contain little grass, but many tall perennials such as cow parsnip, penstemon, lupine, monkshood, and western coneflower. These plants grow so tall that they obscure lightly used trails by mid summer.
The Wyoming Range is home to elk, moose, deer, antelope, grizzly and black bear, mountain lions, lynx, and many other species of wildlife. While grizzly bears do not currently occupy the Wyoming Range they do wander in occasionally, a grizzly bear was mistakenly killed near the allotments by an animal damage control agent in 2002. Moreover, leading grizzly experts agree that the Wyoming Range contains high-quality grizzly habitat, and they believe that bears will reoccupy this area if domestic sheep are removed. Grizzly bears should be discouraged from inhabiting the Wyoming, Salt River and southern Wind River ranges, state wildlife officials recommended.
The Wyoming Range is famous for its huge Mule Deer buck trophies
The hunting in the Wyoming Range for elk, mule deer and rocky mountain bighorn sheep is hard to beat. If you are unfamiliar with the area you may want to hire a guide and there are many to be found in the region. The Wyoming Range has long been noted for its trophy mule deer.
As
a major source of the mighty Snake River Blue ribbon trout fishing is to
be found throughout the range. The range¡s many tributaries are spawning areas
for the Snake River trout but many trout make these tributaries their year
around homes.
The regions numerous lakes also provide great fishing.
There are many opportunities for dispersed camping throughout the Wyoming Range with scenic views and room to play. There are a number of developed campgrounds with restrooms and picnic tables in scenic locations as well as countless privative camping spots.
Expect summer time temperatures to range from highs in
the 70s-80s during the day to lows of around 30 at night. Afternoon thunderstorms
with lightning and rain showers are common in the summer. It can snow any
day of the year and has, so visitors should come prepared for a wide variety
of weather and temperature conditions. Remember Murphy¡s Law and pack accordingly.
The west side of the Wyoming Range is the Snake River and it has lots of whitewater fun.
The Wyoming Range can be accessed from the west, east and north sides. Commercial
services are available in the small towns of Daniel, Big Piney, Marbleton,
LaBarge and Kemmerer are located on the east side of the mountains along US
Highway 189. These are not large towns, but you'll be able to find gas, food
and lodging. On the northern end, Bondurant and Hoback Junction are along US
Hwy 191.on the perimeter, but none are available within the range. Get your
gas and food in town, and be sure to have a full tank of gas and a good spare
tire along.
Backcountry visitors are asked to practice Low Impact Camping to protect the pristine values of the wilderness area. Dogs are allowed, but must be kept under control at all times.
Piney Creek on the South side of the Wyoming Range
LaBarge Meadows
Hobble Creek Drainage in the southern Wyoming Range
The Smiths Fork in the Southern Wyoming Range
Wildflower bloom in the high country of the Wyoming Range
The Upper Greys River
Star Valley Hunting Outfitters
Non-Typical Outfitters • (Star
Valley) Robb and Dr. Brenda Wiley make their home in one of the most beautiful places that God ever created, the mountains of western Wyoming. Brenda practices veterinary medicine and Robb lives his passion, providing your hunting and fishing opportunities in the Wyoming back country..........We feel that Non-Typical Outfitters has the ability to provide an unmatched opportunity for trophy hunting in Wyoming. The amount of time that we spend in the field before your hunt starts is one of the things that separates us from the rest. We spend extensive days in the preseason locating our trophy animals. For us trophy hunting is a year around job.
Greater Yellowstone Mountain Ranges
Grand
Teton Sunrise
The Grand Teton Mountain Range • One of the things that sets
the eastern view of the Grand Tetons apart from other ranges
is there are not any foothills to obstruct the view. The actions
of nature’s elements have sculpted a monolith of sharply notched
peaks accented by deep U shaped glaciated canyons that are
truly a sight to behold. If you think the Grand Tetons is awe
inspiring from the valley floor a trip into the center of them
will set new benchmarks for beauty for the hard drive in your
skull.
The
Gros Ventre Mountains • The Gros Ventre Mountains
of western Wyoming is another fine example of western Wyoming’s
embarrassment of riches in the natural wonders department. The
range is composed of high craggy peaks, glacier scoured valleys,
and rolling sagebrush foothills. The Gros Ventre Mountains
receives
much less visitation than the more well known Grand Teton Range
which you can see from much of the Gros Ventre’s northern
and western flanks. Views from the high country also include
views of the Absaroka Mountains, Wind River Mountains, the Snake
River Range and the Wyoming Range. The name Gros Ventre is from
the French word for "big belly", and originated from
Indian sign language meant to convey the idea of "always
hungry".
A
trail ride is a great way to get an up close look at the
mountains of Jackson Hole Wyoming.
Scott
enjoys a trail ride into the heart of the Snake River
Range.
The
Snake River Range • The Snake River Range starts
at the southern end of the Grand Teton Mountain Range between
Jackson
Hole Wyoming
and Teton Valley Idaho and is part of the Targhee National
Forest. The range extends northwest to Victor Idaho, west to
Swan Valley
Idaho and south to Alpine Wyoming. The Snake River is the eastern
boundary back up to the Tetons. This is rugged country, and
has plenty of water; glaciers and running water shaped the
numerous
deep canyons. The lush vegetation will impress the visitor,
the land is dynamic and unstable, rockslides and earth flows
are
common, landslides created both Upper Palisades and Lower Palisades
Lakes a couple of jewels of the range. Mount Baird, at 10,042
feet, is the highest point in the Snake River Range.
The Wyoming
Range • The Wyoming Range runs for about eighty
miles in a north-south direction in western Wyoming. These
mountains are a mixture of rolling open slopes dotted with
sagebrush and
aspen groves and forested hills with pines, spruce, and fir
trees. Waterfalls plunging over high cliffs are tucked in
the remote
rugged mountain peaks. Many of the peaks in the range rise
to over 10,000 feet the highest is Wyoming Peak at 11,363
feet.
These magnificent mountains remain in relative obscurity due
to their proximity to the more famous Wind River Mountains
and the Grand Tetons; this makes solitude more achievable
here. The
Wyoming Range is not as rugged or remote as the nearby Wind
River Range or Gros Ventre Mountains.
Scott
Hunter enjoys a dip in the Greys River wich drains the
Wyoming and Salt River Ranges.
The Wind River Mountains from Green River Lake on the north end of the range.
The Wind River Mountain Range • The Wind River Range is a remote hundred plus mile range, stretching through Wyoming along the crest of the Continental Divide. Among the Winds unrelenting height, contain seven of the ten largest glaciers in the Rocky Mountains, as well as more than 2.25 million acres of public land. They are in the southeast section of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest environmentally intact temperate-zone ecosystem in the lower 48 states.
This narrow mountain chain includes eight craggy summits over 13,500 feet, which rise above the wide-open spaces of the Green River and Wind River Valleys below. Three thousand feet below these rugged peaks, small lakes, and streams nestle in boulder-strewn glacial morainal alpine meadows. There are large glaciers on some eastern slopes, including the largest glaciers of the U.S. Rocky Mountains on the flanks of Gannett Peak (13,804 ft.). Gannett is the highest and northernmost peak of the range. The Winds are the apex of the contiguous United States in another way: they are the hydrologic triple divide. In this section of the Continental Divide, waters flow either to the Pacific via the Snake River drainage, to the Sea of Cortez via the Green River drainage, or to the Gulf of Mexico via the Yellowstone River, or Platte River drainages.
The Absaroka Mountain Range • The Absaroka Mountain Range is a sub-range on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains stretching for about 150 miles across the Montana-Wyoming border. A complex range, it takes significant effort to learn all the various groups, sections, and drainages. More specifically a member of the Central Rocky Mountain Chain stretching from Livingston (Montana) to a point east of Dubois Wyoming, it forms the core of the Yellowstone region of the Central Rockies. Some 165 miles in length and 75 miles wide at its widest. It is, depending on how one measures, the largest individual range in the 1200-mile-long Rocky Mountain Chain. The Continental Divide passes through the southwestern corner of the range but not near the crest. The range wraps around the eastern and northern boundary of Yellowstone National
Absaroka Mountains and the Yellowstone River
Hyalite Reservior high in the Gallatin Range
The Gallatin Range • The Gallatin Range rises in as a mass of sharp peaks, craggy ridges, and expansive alpine plateaus, split by steep canyons, accented with snowdrifts, draped with verdant evergreen forests, and rich with creeks, and waterfalls. Douglas fir and aspen grace the lower elevations, along with scattered juniper and limber pine. In the higher elevations lodgepole pine, englemann spruce, and subalpine fir mix with rich mountain meadows. Near treelike, whitebark pines dominate the hillsides above 9,500 feet in the subalpine region you find alpine tundra and scattered groves of Subalpine Fir and Engelmann Spruce. Because of the Gallatin’s embarrassment of riches it is a major playground of Bozeman Montana’s 12,000 students of Montana State University as well as most of the residents there not to mention all who live and play in Paradise Valley, Big Sky, and West Yellowstone. Oh yeah, and the tens of thousands that come to play here from elsewhere.
