Dick Heimovics Fun Stuff 
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Backpacking,  trout fishing, travels, some  so-so tennis, plus a little bit of golf  are how I have fun. I picked up the game of golf in Fall 2005, as part of my retirement plan. I must remember to never call my "clubs," my "rackets."

Backpacking  See also: (Things about Hiking the Winds.) ( Notes about Deadman) (The Wonder of Seeing Falling Stars: Or Why I Still Go Backpacking in the Mountains) (Strands)

A longing to wander tears at my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind in the evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. Hermann Hesse from the book Wanderings (autobiographical notes trans. 1972)

Many summers I've hiked and fished the Wind River Range, Wyoming.  My first adventure in this wild place was in 1968 when a couple of buddies and I stopped near Pinedale, returning from a canoe trip on the Dean River in British Columbia.  Pinedale has changed a lot since then. The Wind River Mts. remain a constant. 

I promised myself after first seeing the "Winds"; I would return and hike this fabulous mountain range. My Wyoming mountain magnet was a Dartmouth buddy, Kent, who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for almost 40 years. Kent had the wisdom to go west the day he finished medical school. He's the one who said, “come see me and hike the Wind River." I took him up on the offer. Kent has retired from his practice in 2006. But I will forever be grateful for directing me his way. He set up our first trip for us in 1984.

Cathy my best friend for 34 years, stays home and reads books. When  I come home she tickles my belly.

The Trips

Robert's Mt Quad Aug. 2007

See July 2006 for the full story of the '06 trip.

An exception to the Wind River: July 2005 we depart from our Wind River routine and hike the Absaroka-Bitteroot Wilderness, MT, taking off from the Clark's Fork Trailhead. We base at Bald Knob Lake and day hike the high country. The flowers are spectacular. John, my high school buddy, joins us and puts up well with the family and our foibles. It was beautiful, but it wasn't the Wind River. Dave has wanted to see the Absaroka. We planned the trip for him, but illnesses kept him home.

July-Aug. 2004, we base camp at West Baer Lake, trailhead Worthern Meadows, for access to the Deep Creek Lakes which gave up very nice trout. We camp here again in 2006. A few of the hardy of our party climb Wind River Peak, but not this old man. A day hike up to 11,600 on an unnamed ridge above camp was enough for me. It gave us grand vistas. 

July 2003, we hike the Dry Creek watershed from the Cold Springs trailhead and base above Don and Cub Lakes. This is one of the most spectacular places in the Wind River. (I say that about a lot of places in the Wind River. The mosquitoes also liked it.) Moose Lake, halfway to base camp from Cold Springs, last visited by us in 1999, is a good fishery. This year, on the way home, I catch 2 19” cutthroats in 15 minutes while chewing bubble gum I find in the bottom of my daypack. The gum had been there for many years, very hard stuff on the first chew.

Summer 2002, we return to Deadman Lake, last visited in 1994, miles and miles up and over Tybo pass, and miles and miles across wide Paradise Basin. See the Journal entry about Deadman for details.

Summer 2001 we tackle Sweetwater Gap to explore high country above Taylor Park on the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River. A hiking boot gives out and I hike the last mile in a Teva sandal. You don't want to walk out of the Winds in your hiking socks. I almost did. We found the headwaters of the Sweetwater River.

Summer 2001. This is the year Kent and family host Cathy, Sarah, and me on our only Wyoming horse pack trip. We visit the Gros Ventre Wilderness where he hunts each fall. We experience another way to enjoy Wyoming. A pack train of four donkeys carries 650 #s of gear for 6 people. The steaks taste good. A horse runs away with Cathy but she reels it in. All are impressed by her horsewomanship.

Summer 2000, Sarah and I search find the headwaters of the Green River, one of the great rivers of the West, near Mammoth Glacier, a place of special beauty. Three Rivers Park where the Green picks up steam is a wonderful, easy trip.

Summer 1999 "our group" explore the area around Phillips Lake on the eastern front of the Winds hiking 60 miles in 9 days. I catch a 2 1/2# Rainbow at Moose Lake, 10,300 feet. This is the area in which half of our group in 1995 became separated from the other half, who had dropped far down into the Dry Creek Canyon.  Each half figured the other was lost. Separation happened while bushwhacking in deep forest.  Goes to show that understanding direction is all a matter of a point of view.  

Summer 1998 we hike over Bear's Ear Pass to Lake Wasakie where I caught a 3# Brookie whose teeth left huge gashes on my thumb. An infection followed. Cured thanks to some antibiotics from the docs among us and, thank goodness, my fingers were able to hold a rod again in a couple days.

Summer 1997, we became lost trying to reach Grave Lake because of trails not on the topos. Later we later found Baptiste Lake. It was so beautiful I cried. Thoreau knows places like this: A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature....  Thoreau from the chapter "The Ponds" in Walden

Summer 1996 we spend 9 days at Lake Sonnicant, and explore the environs, lakes Solitude, Polaris, etc. Not the best for trout but great for black flies.  Good fishing above Wykie, however for Dave and Bruce. Lake Solitude is nestled in peaks, deep in the Winds and is decorated with wonderful fields of flowers. It is one of my most favorite places. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you... while cares will drop off like autumn leaves...... John Muir

Summer 1993 we base camp at Deadman Lake with our Norwegian AFS son-exchange student, Amund. The Viking carried 60#. He's now a Lt. in the Norwegian Army, stationed above the Artic Circle at Harstad one of the northern most military bases in the world.  The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep....Amund likes Robert Frost.

In previous years we explore Alpine Lake, a couple miles east of Deadman via Hay Pass, an extraordinary place; we explore Upper Silas and Thumb Lake, and climb Medicine Bow Peak, south of the Wind River range.

Fishing


 

"A Fish on a Sand Strand Almost in Hand at Deadman"

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
An eternity in an hour.

William Blake

         This guy needs to calm down a bit and slow his back cast; he is just too excited, just like me, when I wet my first line of the season.

In 2002 Sarah and I caught 20, 15-20" cutthroat in a couple hours on a sand bar  where the South Fork of Bull Lake Creek meanders into Deadman Lake (see above.) Incredible. We named the place "Sarah's Island" in her honor for her first 20 incher. Low water drought levels let us wade out to this stream trough at the far end of the lake to fish this marvelous late afternoon hatch.
 

  This is me gently dropping a fly on the North Fork of the Popo Agie.

                                  

                  This is not me.  This guy needs a fly casting lesson.

Here are some other miscellaneous Wind River trip fishing notes:

I've tied my own flies and made my own rods for almost 50 years. I open the Fairway Kansas Fly Factory every Feb. and tie for a couple weeks for all my friends.

There is nothing quite like early August in the Wind River, pre-breakfast at 6:00 AM,  seducing  a Wind River trout with a Fairway Fly Factory #16 Adams, 6X tippet and hand-wrapped 9'/5 weight Loomis GL4, WF floating line, on an early morning mayfly hatch.  Cookin' the fish up for breakfast is a nice idea. Fly fishing talk. This actually happens yearly in the Winds.  Whenever I become despondent, I conjure up these memories in my mind's eye. All my sad feelings disappear as I think of trees blowing in the wind.

I sometimes catch more fish than others in our party, not because I'm a better fisherperson, but because I rarely put my rod down.

Here's what I'm told about trout fishing. "Give man a Wind River trout and he'll eat a delicious meal. Teach him to fly-fish and he'll grab a chance to fling a fly every time he can get one tied on."

Early morning 1998, I wandered alone about a half mile from our base camp at Lake Washakie to a lonely, isolated Macon Lake, Lizard Head Mt Quad. I arrived at 7:00AM just in time to witness the finish of an early morning midge hatch. I had figured out what to throw about the time the hatch ended and hooked a small cutthroat. I resolved to return next morning. Arising before dawn the next day, I arrived by 6:30 to a new hatch. I quickly hooked a gorgeous 18" cut, on 7x and a #22 midge. As I was carefully working the fish with  light tippet, the quiet of the beautiful morning was shattered by the bellowing cry of a bugling elk, his call echoed across the lake. It gave me cold chills. Focused on the cutthroat’s final run, I glanced momentarily upward to see the elk on a high ridge, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. I landed and released the trout as quickly as possible. During the next hour, as the morning sun light blanketed the lake, I watched the elk climb slowly up from the lake, over the ridge and well beyond sight. Every so often, the elk continued to cry his piercing call.  I realized fully what I had learned many years before. Fly fishing had become for me the carrier signal for many much more wonderful things than just catching trout. The elk was simply wishing me  a  "good morning" and leaving the lake for a nice day hike in the Winds.

When I returned to camp, breakfast was long over. "Where you been?" someone asked. "Oh just out looking round," I answered. The elk, the cut, and the sunrise were my precious secret. I brewed some coffee, ate someone's leftover oatmeal knowing, no one, anyplace on earth could have had a more incredible start to another incredible day in the Winds.

A thought for the future. When I die, the dust of my bones is spread  in Grave Lake. The nutrients from my ashes are transmorphorized into a mayfly,  which is eaten by a trout, caught by  another  trout fisherman and cooked  for dinner. The fisherman relieves himself in the woods and I once again become dirt which nourishes plants which......... ah, back to nature I go, round and round. I  think more about these things,  these universals  Maybe it is because Bob Dylan and I turn 66 in 2007. He caught some religion, you know, as he got older. I'm for catching one of God's best creatures, a Wind River trout.

\
Lake Miround Lake
43" Northern
Saskatchewan Sept. 1, 2001
 Big fish and the correct way to hold one to exaggerate the size.

Travels

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot The Four Quarters

May 13-June 2, 1998, daughters Sarah, Meg and I walk across England, 190 miles from Bee's Head, the Irish Sea, to Robin's Cove, the North Sea. Question. Do you know why English white sheep eat more grass than English black sheep? Answer. There are more white sheep in England than black sheep. Let me tell you about these 16 days sometime. They were glorious.

May 1999, I travel the Silk Road (by train, bus, air and by camel) from Lanchou China to Kashgar , Xinjiang Province, China with the UMKC Edgar Snow Foundation. I ride a Bactrian  camel two humper  on the  Taklimakan,  the desert which roughly translates in Turki to mean "go in and you won't come out." I went in,  got out, then wrote about it. If you want to learn more about one of my four trips to China, you might enjoy reading, The Silk Road: Making Connections, which I wrote on my return home.

Oct.  1999. Cathy and I  "road trip" to Hanover, New Hampshire for a Dartmouth football weekend: Big Green 20-Cornell 17. Only victory of the year. Far cry from Ivy League Champs in 1963. The game this year was delayed 15 minutes 'cause the band was late to play the national anthem.  Tromboners tipping whisky sours before the game in Topliff dorm, probably.  Some things never change.

Late May 2000,  Lo tech brother Jack, his wife, Nancy , Cathy  and I fly-in to Canon Lodge,  Ontario to fish for pike. We find other fish too. Cathy lands a nice lake trout which she says actually caught her, not the other way around. I caught a 42" Muskie on 6# test line, by mistake on  a very old  ZEBCO 33. The biggest of the year to date on the lake,but there are many bigger ones to be had I'm told.

August, 2000 I'm back to Saskatchewan for a week Pike fishing with my high school buddy Joby. This time we  catch a lot of really big ones. Fly fish for pike!

Oct-Nov. 2000 off  to China for another three weeks with Edgar Snow Foundation. I  travel to the Beijing,  Shanghi,  Chonqing,  the Yangzi river, Yicheng, then southwest to Guilin,  Kunming,  and Xiashangbanna near  the Laos border. Here we search for wild Asian elephants in the rain forest. Hear a barking fish, honest, but see no wild elephants.

Feb. 2001. Cathy and I visit daughter Sarah at the Teton Science School. Cathy is on cross-country skis for the first time up Pacific Creek. She falls and lies in the snow for quite a while not realizing  her head was resting 12 inches from fresh cougar tracks. When I told her of that she says, "this is only sort of fun, let's go back to the car." When I showed her the tracks, she said, "let's get the  hell out of here."

August 2001. Cathy, Sarah,  and I  horse pack into the Hoback with Kent Stockton and family. This was Cathy's first trip into the Wyoming wilderness.  She was a great sport about it despite having to reel in her run away horse twice.

Sept 2001 Back to  Saskatchewan for a week of pike fishing. Eight of us caught over 2800# of  pike in 5 days. This was my largest:

April 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 off to the Roaring Fork  CO, for the annual Spring  trip with  my high school homeboys Joby, Alan, John, Tom, and two Daves for a week at John's "The Ranch," Carbondale,  CO. We play poker, tell lies about our high school sweethearts, and share bad jokes. We drink good scotch (always Old Grouse in memory of Tom) and eat slabs of Rosedale Bar-B-Q.  DaveN., whose doctor  won't let him eat the ribs, puts Rosedale sauce on his salad. Once in a while we go to Stubbie's bar and look at girls the age of our daughters. Alans sings sad Russian folk songs if he can find a guitar. Dave and Joby sing, Zippidee do daw, zippidee day. We fish some, play some golf old man's tennis. Great therapy, good portfolio counsel. Great friends. I missed 2006 waiting for my first grand daughter Jonna Kaia to arrive who, like her mother Meg, will most likely always be late. But like her mother, always worth the wait.

May 2003 Cathy and I day hiked the San Juan's out of Ouray, CO and explored Ancient Puebloans ruins on the Ute reservation.

July 2006, Cathy and I board a Norwegian Coastal ship in Bergen, we wind our way for nine days through fiords, pass the Arctic Circle, see the mid-night sun, North Cape, touch Russia, and spend  wonderful time with our Norwegian son Amund (American Field Service) , his beautiful wife, Lilli-May and their lovely daughter, Julia, in Harstad. What a joy. Amund was 18 when he lived with us for a year in 1993-4. Now he's grown man, a career Norwegian army officer (An Arctic warfare specialist, he spends 60 day stretches, living in tents and snow shelters, in the dark of winter, training  in Finnmark, with average minus 40 degree weather. Talk about an "outdoors man."

            Tennis
            I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.  Robert Frost, 1935

My lefty,  3.5 forehand is problematic.   Tennis keeps my arm in shape so I can  go fishing and  keeps my legs fit so I can go hiking. Everything connects except my forehand, backhand, drop shots, volleys, serves and overheads. The picture above is a lie. I never get that much pace.

 

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            Golf  

Work in Progress

August 2005 Jerry Hamilton, my good friend, made me some golf clubs. Keep calling them my rackets. Guess I am gonna have to learn this game.

So that's all you'll ever want to know  about the fun stuff. 

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