Sky Rim Backpacking trip

This past week Jeremy and I went on a 3 day backpacking trip through the northwest portion of the park. We started out at the Daley Creek Trailhead and hiked through and open meadow for a few miles before ascending up to the junction with the sky rim trail. 

After about 6 miles we were finally up on the sky rim trail. This section of the trail is about 8 miles and is high up on the ridge line of the Gallatin Mountain range in the Northwest portion of the park. The trail took us up and down several mountain summits and was pretty difficult.

Sheep mountain in the distance:

Trail along the ridge line:

Jeremy taking a break!

A large valley below us:

Another break!

HUGE peak in the backdrop! (need to find out what it is!)

Lone man on the mountain!

After about 6 miles we finally came to Bighorn Peak which is the highest peak along the ridge line. There were steep cliffs on both sides of the mountain and there was no trail up to the summit; just a STEEP, STEEP climb. At this point we had both run out of water, so the climb seemed even tougher than it already was. We tried to just concentrate on the climb and the lake 3 miles away where we would finally be able to get water.

Bighorn Cliffs Ahead:

VERY narrow trail up the top!

Made it to the summit!

After finally making it to the summit of Bighorn Peak we hiked the final 3 miles to Shelf Lake, where we were finally able to get some water! We cooked our dinner by the lake and then hiked about 10 minutes back to our campsite in the National Forest. We were exhausted from our hike and immediately passed out.
The next morning we woke up pretty early and set out around 8am. We had about 12 miles to hike this 2nd day. We first hiked past shelf lake again to fill up on more water.

Shelf Lake:

There were tons of cool mushrooms along the trail. Nice to take pictures of, probably not so nice to eat!

About 5 miles in we came to Crescent Lake, which was beautiful. Crescent Lake is a snowmelt lake and is surrounded by mountain cliffs. We filtered more water here since running out of water the day before was not fun...

Jeremy pumping water:

Me taking a rest:

After Crescent Lake, we hiked high up on another ridge line and through some open meadows for a while. It looked like it was going to storm, but actually didn't start raining until the very end of the day.

Some cool rocks along the trail:

Nice reflection in a small pond:

A view of Electric Peak!!

After about 9 miles we finally made it to High Lake. It really looked like it was going to storm so we decided to put on our rain gear.  Crescent Lake was a lot prettier than High Lake, but it was still pretty nice.

We made it to our campsite around 530pm, which was nice, since the previous night we didn't make it until about 8pm. We made some dinner, set up camp, and explored the nearby creek a bit before hitting the sac. The next day we decided to take the short hike out which was only about 6.5 miles. The hike was mostly through burned forest, but was still very nice. Once we got to the road we hitched back to our car and then headed back home!