Of Mind or of Matter? - Bull Lake Creek, Wyoming

Lost in my own thoughts, fading in and out of reality, I navigated the mossy alpine forest of the Wind River Range. For a moment, I was possessed by the June sun of Wyoming, gleaming through the sea of Lodgepole pines, splitting the light that hit me with an overwhelming sense of serenity. Despite my sense of comfort, I was confused. There were spiritual figures tending the land all around the forest, collecting firewood, sampling soil, and studying trees. Almost everywhere I looked, they appeared, aware of my presence yet consumed by their own endeavors. I thought to myself how wild it was to see others in this environment that I had assumed was inaccessible from the outside world…

Snapping back into reality, I looked back over my shoulder to check on my friend Willie, and reality came crashing down upon me like Thor's hammer. We were 23 hours into our one push attempt of Bull Lake Creek. We were indeed the only ones in this forest; every figure I had seen was the result of severe sleep deprivation, coupled with dehydration and a caloric deficit.

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to Bull Lake Creek. The trip has been put on a pedestal since its first kayak descent in 2001. This river has served as the ultimate test for multi-day paddling in the greater Rocky Mountains. Growing up as a grom at the Jackson Hole Kayak Club and working at Rendezvous River Sports, I sat eagerly listening to hours of tales from those who had passed through this rugged realm. In July of 2019, I spearheaded a trip with a crew that included some of my greatest kayaking inspirations: Erik Boomer, Todd Wells, and Ben Stookesberry.

The trip instilled my love of this river and, more importantly, sparked my love for "expedition kayaking”. Since that trip, I have traveled far and wide, experiencing some of the greatest waterways on earth. However, Bull Lake always stayed firmly ingrained in my mind. I ventured back in 2021 with my brother, where we initially joked of a one-day descent of the river, the hike, the lake, the river, EVERYTHING in one go. As the years progressed, this joke became a dream that evolved into a goal. This past year, I told myself it was time, I wanted to do the one push. I knew I had mental and physical fitness for the task, but most importantly, I was missing Bull Lake. There is a special connection I have there, and I felt the call of the Bull strong this year.

Going into the trip, I struggled to think of a person who would meet the requirements to do the trip. First off, said person had to want to do it; they needed that weird mental tick to push beyond the walls of sanity and see what they are capable of. Next, I needed to be able to put 100% blind trust into this person. If shit hit the fan, I needed to fully trust my partner would be able to do everything possible to pick up the pieces. Lastly and most importantly, my partner would have to get along, because as serious as I like to make this sound, I want to have fun, fuck around, crack jokes, yell at someone, and then apologize and move on in a manner that good friends do, with humility and love.

After milling over people with my brother on the phone while he was in the Anchorage airport on his way to a fishing boat (he was the obvious first option, but was unavailable), he tossed out our close friend's name: Willie Henkel! Of course, why hadn't I thought of him sooner? He was the perfect combination of physical strength, mental tenacity, and a person I can be my truest form of self with. After a brief chat with Willie, he was 110% in. We were fucking doing it, Bull Lake vision quest here we come.

Not less than one week later, Willie and I were linked up in my parents' garage in Wilson, WY, frantically checking gear, weather, and flows, hoping the looming cold snap would drop the river to our desired flow. The next morning, nursing our wine hangovers from a classic evening with my Mom we waffled in fear of the severely cold weather and high flows. After about three hours of this Willie, eloquently said: “fuck it, bro, let’s just do it”. I was instantly convinced, knowing that the only thing worse than failing is bailing. Within minutes, we had my truck loaded, our friend Bella running the shuttle, and were flying down WYO 191 to Boulder Lake Trail head, which would serve as our starting point. What was once a joke was now a terrifying reality.

At 4:20 pm on June 22, we waved goodbye to Bella and my truck and took our first steps of the 22 miles and 4500 ft of vertical that marked the first section of our journey. The first 10 or so miles seemingly flew by; it felt as if things were off to an unrealistically good start. Willie and I stopped along the banks of Lake Winona and ate a dinner of avocado salami and cheese and we watched the sun fall behind the veil of western Wyoming. Nightfall set in strongly and instantly served us a full new plate of challenges. Temperatures instantly dropped into the low twenties, posing risk of hypothermia and instantly put me on edge. For the next 8 hours, Willie and I navigated the frozen alpine swamps in the pitch dark with intuition and the blessings of 21st-century technology. We slogged our boats through freezing streams that would instantly freeze the bottom half of my drysuit every time I stepped out of the water. These hours of the trip were the pain cave, legs too tired to move, and air too cold to stop in. It felt like a losing battle. Despite the odds, we topped out in the 11,000 foot Hay Pass at 4:10 am just in time to see the first signs of light emerging over the cattle lands of eastern Wyoming, after 8 hours of life threatening dark and cold Willie and I welcomed this sight near teary-eyed. We descended the pass with ease due to the daybreak and sun cupped snow fields that had remained from winter and posed as a reminder to the severe and unstable weather patterns that haunt the Winds. We had reached the river. Beaten down, sore, and cold as fuck we began to prepare for the second leg of the trip.

On the banks of Golden Lake, we found a dry spot nestled between the four-foot snow banks that lined the shores of the lake. I started a fire to cook a freeze-dried meal and warm ourselves briefly before pushing off into the icy waters of Bull Lake Creek. After an hour or so we somehow mustered up the motivation to leave the fire and drop into the Bull.

We slowly navigated the alpine section of the river, portaging through mossy alpine forests, wheelchairing through seemingly endless sections of boat destroying mank broken up by beautiful high elevation lakes teeming with the highly sought after Bull and Golden Trouts. It pained me to breeze past the world-class trout fishing that the Wind River mountains offer. However, it felt so amazing to be making our way down the river, knowing that every stroke we took in this first section, we were just that much closer to the amazing rapids and canyons that keep me coming back to this wild, rugged, and unforgiving place.

After a long morning of alpine kayaking, we reached the bottom of the Norway Gorge portage, marking the turning point in the river's characteristics. Here, the Middle Fork and South Fork Bull Lake confluence allows for the steep, rugged river bed to be full enough to make for world-class whitewater. Willie and I heaved ourselves into our boats and dropped into the 2-mile boulder garden that weaves through the torched forest from the summer of 2009. With this in mind, we moved diligently and purposefully through this section. As expected, we encountered various logs in this stretch that, without our revised approach, certainly would have been likely fatal hazards. Safely through this section, I capped it off by running one of the Bull Lake Classics, an awkward 15 foot boof into a log filled mini gorge. This drop is most recognizable on the cover of the greatest guidebook ever, Whitewater of the Southern Rockies.

Pushing onward, I routed us through the joyful slides and boofs of the lake to lake section right up to the lip of the behemoth known as Haagen Daazen, named after Brad Higgenbotem who stepped up to this drop 20 years ago. His descent went pretty poorly after getting rejected by the top hole and running the left channel upside down. However, the name stands to this day! Good lines are rarely remembered, but bad lines will live on forever. Willie and I happily walked around the top features and launched into the slide part way down for a big, yet chill slide boof. Wasting no time in the pool, we continued downstream to the Fork Tongue Gorge. We quickly ported the entry drop and ran to the midsection of the gorge. Due to the high water and severe exhaustion, Willie and I decided to portage the bottom drop of the gorge.

This is where things started to feel weird. I began to feel very dissociated and carefree while portaging this part. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but looking back, it was pretty fucked up. Getting back in our boats, we made quick work of Dolphin Hole and Norway Drop and began entering the Jim Bridger canyon, the crux of the river in terms of gradient, portaging, and exposure to danger. Being sleep deprived and dehydrated was not the ideal state to be dropping into this section in.

The class 4 above the Jim Bridger portage is always an eerie place. I know where to get out, but every time I am so on edge dropping into this part of the river. This day was no different, I was leading us through the chill lines looking for my “landmark” eddy that marks the start to the portage. In one swift move I went from sneaking a rapid to being fully vertically pinned in a slot, head barely above the surface. I tried to wiggle, but nothing happened. The severity of the pin set in.

Luckily due to Willie's fast thinking, he was able to get me a bag and pull me and my boat out of this pin in one powerful yank. “Fuck that was sketchy!”, I exclaimed, trembling with adrenaline.

​We moved over to the eddy and began the double stack of Jim Bridger 1 and 2. These portages were where Willie and I both realized we may have gotten ourselves in over our heads. The exposure felt so real we were so tired and so alone, it felt as if we were at the bottom of the food chain. After some hyphy bouldergardens, hallucinations, and some heinous portaging, we found ourselves atop the Bull Lake Falls Portage.

We sat on a log at what is a perfect campground eating salami and cheese in silence. After a few moments, we opened up and addressed the elephant in the room. Was it time to throw in the towel? Were we taking too much of a risk by continuing? Or could we muster up the strength to complete the task at hand?

After a heavy conversation, we decided that we were going to saddle up and push onward. So we chucked our boats on our shoulders and began to navigate the hellacious scree field that makes up the Bull Lake Falls portage. We made it to the bottom with relative ease and pushed off into the poorly named Rocky Mountain Mank #2. With Willie close on my stern, we bombed flying off the infinite boofs and dodging the occasional tree. The section lets up with meandering class 2 sandwiched between 3000 foot granite walls with a massive red and orange sandstone wall in the foreground. There was a massive feeling of relief at this moment, after hours of stress, suffering, and exposure, we found ourselves overwhelmed with accomplishment and joy. For the first time, we saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

With our second wind, we breezed through the lower section of the river. Routing off the Ski Jump boof, tip-toeing across the sketchy limestone portage, and routing through the epic pillowline boulder gardens that punctuate the class V section of the run. Willie and I basked in the glory of our descent as the sun set behind us, and we drifted through the pastures above the final hurdle of the trip, 9 miles of flatwater across Bull Lake reservoir. I knew how awful this part was going to be, but Willie, blissfully ignorant of what lay ahead, had the positivity to get us both across the lake.

The light faded behind the Wind River Mountains, Willie and I paddled into the darkness and began the 3 hour long battle with intense hallucinations and inner demons caused by the stress we had just put our bodies through. The surface of the lake was covered by snakes slithering over each other as fins darted around me, all the while a Loch Ness Monster-esque figure would come in and out of view somewhere on the horizon. While I knew these creatures were consequences of sleep deprivation, I couldn't fight off the fear that came along with these visions. I could see a small light across the lake and like a moth to a flame, I paddled towards it.

A finish line, the actual light at the tunnel. Exhausted, stepping out of our boats, I felt like an alien, with wobbly legs, and disoriented. We dragged our boats up the bank of the reservoir and used our last bit of energy to lift our boats into the bed of my truck. Our second shuttle driver Luke, greeted us with beers which we were too fried to drink and a bucket of pasta and red sauce which we scarfed with our bare hands in an attempt to replenish our haggard selves.

Was it worth it? Did we learn anything? My questions have only continued as I ponder the full physical and spiritual complexity of the Bull. I wondered further as the truck pulled out and my hands trembled - looking back at Willie in the back seat, seizing from cramps, vision blurry. This class V Wyoming vision quest was an experience of mind, body, and soul.  The Bull. Allowed for safe passage, mystery and hysteria - that has bonded Willie and I for life. Until next time.

Owen Doyle, is a whitewater kayaker and carpenter based in White Salmon, Washington. He is one of a growing circle of writers, athletes, and river people contributing to RIVERS — a publication built on the belief that the best stories about rivers come from people who live and collaborate with them most often.

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