How many Snowy Mountain lakes can we kayak today?

We're way behind in getting travel posts published because we were having way too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

July 20, 2023

We only had three nights reserved at our forest service campground in the Snowy Mountain Range of Wyoming. So we were on a fast track of hiking and kayaking as much as we could in this beautiful place. It's a 13-mile drive from our Ryan's Park Campground to the observation deck near the top of the pass. We stopped in to soak in the view--and to let it warm up a little before we got on the water. It was nippy on this mountain morning in July.

We didn't have the luxury of time to wait around for a blue-sky day to go kayaking. So we inflated the kayak and carried the Sea Eagle to Lewis Lake.

We visited this area in 2021, and we loved this high-altitude section of southern Wyoming. 

Lewis Lake's elevation is 10,700 feet, so even at the end of July we saw snow in every direction. While the sky was gray, we were blessed with little wind. At times the water was like glass, reflecting the mountains around it.

Then a little breeze would cross the lake, and the reflection would be erased. It was like someone had shaken the etch-a-sketch picture on the surface of the water.

We had wandered into another of God's wonders as we rowed our way around Lewis Lake and saw the mountains from every angle.

From the far end of Lewis Lake, we took a panorama shot of some of the Snowy Mountains. The pyramid-shaped mountain on the left was Sugarloaf, and on the right we saw Medicine Bow Peak that we climbed to the top yesterday.

We had to take a picture of the little glimpse of blue in the sky. But it was quickly covered by the impressive roll of clouds that were lining up in the sky.

We were off Lewis Lake by noon, because we had more lakes to kayak today.

It's less than a quarter-mile to the next lake. But as we walked down to the shores of Libby Lake, we realized why no one was kayaking here. We would have to carry the kayak a long ways down the hill to get the boat to a reasonable put-in spot. Should we do it?

Well, of course we should! We carried the boat and were kayaking right under the point of Sugarloaf Mountain by 1:00.

This is the Sugarloaf Recreation Area, and that pyramid-shaped mountain is probably the easiest peak to recognize. 

From the opposite side of the lake we could see a more rounded and less recognizable mountain. It probably had a name, but we unofficially named it, keeping it in the "loaf" family. Our unofficial name is Meatloaf Mountain, because doesn't it look like a meatloaf?

The arctic lilies poked their yellow blooms through the snow. They were at their peak bloom on the shores of  Libby Lake as the snow was finally receding.

When we finished rowing around the entire lake, we had to carry the kayak back up that long hill. Yes, it was worth the effort as we were seeing just how many lakes could we kayak this day.

The next lake was a couple miles away, so that necessitated strapping the kayak on top of the pickup.

We unstrapped and carried it to the shores of Lake Marie.

It was after 2:00 by the time we were paddling around the edge of yet another high alpine lake that was ringed by mountains.

It is hard to tell just how big those mountains were in a picture. We were some distance from the smallest patch of snow that was right on the water's edge. That looked like a tiny patch of snow, surrounded by the gray stones.

But if we zoomed into that tiny patch of snow, we can see a couple hikers and their dog. That little bit of snow was bigger than it looked, and that mountain was massive!

Rain was in the forecast, and the wind picked up as the storm front approached. We wouldn't be taking any glass-like reflection pictures of the water on Lake Marie.

The sun came out enough to get a nice picture of the mountains from the far end of the lake . . .

and then the rain started. You can see the raindrops hitting the surface of the water.

We had our raincoats, so we hunkered down in the kayak and hoped the rain didn't last long. Maybe we tried to kayak one lake too many on this stormy day?

It was a relatively short shower, and it didn't include any lightning. We rowed quickly off the water by around 3:00. That left us a little time to hike the Lake Marie Falls Trail just a few steps away.

Our plan was to kayak a fourth lake in the neighborhood. We drove down to check on Mirror Lake, but the clouds had rolled in and we certainly weren't going to see any mirror-like reflections on Mirror Lake today.

It was chilly on this July afternoon, but we stuck around and watched the clouds envelope the entire mountain range. We wouldn't be kayaking on Mirror Lake after all.

We drove back to our campground, to find that the storm at the higher elevation skipped us at Ryan's Park just 15 miles away. We were a little sad that we could only make a reservation for this forest service campground for three days, because we would certainly like to stay longer. When we talked to the nice campground host, he found us a first-come-first-serve site that we could move into and extend our stay. So after our day of hurried kayaking, we moved into this bigger and better camping site so we could stay a couple more days. We've been blessed again!

The answer to the question posed in the title of the blog, "How many Snowy Mountain lakes can we kayak today?" was "three". But we were happy that we got to extend our stay in this beautiful place, so who knows how many more lakes we'll get to enjoy!