Green River
Not the Creedence Clearwater song...
The Green River starts in the Wind River range of Wyoming. It flows south from there, through two towns named Green River (one in Wyoming, one in Utah), through the heart of the Dinosaur National Monument, and joins the Colorado River inside Capitol Reef National Park. At its mouth, it is actually a larger stream than the Colorado, and if naming conventions had been followed, would have been named the Colorado. But the State of Colorado objected strenuously to that, so it’s named the Green.
Which is all kind of interesting, since the Colorado was originally named the Grand River.
The Green’s source is two lakes in the Wind River Range, now a part of the Bridger Wilderness, both of which are named Green River Lake (they’re connected to each other, in kind of an hourglass shape). Wildfires in Oregon were filling the air with smoke, making photography hardly worth it, and the road was so bad that I never went back. Here’s what I saw.
The lake itself is awesome.
Everything in the above picture, except the near shore, is in the Bridger Wilderness. That prominent mountain near the center is named “Square Top.” Here’s a view of one side of the canyon the lake is in:
All of the trees in the campground and the area around it - up to the Wilderness boundary - had to be cut down to control a pine beetle infestation. So, parts of the area are looking a little devastated. Here’s a view of the other side of the canyon:
I hiked a little way up the trail that goes along the side of the lake, into the Wilderness. I didn’t go very far. Here’s a view I captured:
A few days later, the smoke cleared a little bit but I wasn’t going back up that road. Instead, I went back to the viewpoint up above camp and got this fine evening photo:
Paid subscribers received a full-size, full-resolution copy of this photo, suitable for printing and framing, a couple of weeks ago.
I would like to go back to Green River Lake someday, and spend a week or two hiking - if they ever fix that road! It was rough, rough, rough.
The top photos with the hazy sky are wonderful, the peaks and cliffs look distant and mysterious, like a dreamy mirage of a prehistoric time. I really like them.
That’s a beautiful granite ridge. I wonder why it doesn’t have a name…🧐