South Fork Little Wind

July 10-12th, 2026

Background

I became enamored with the glacially sculpted granite of the Wind River Range in 2021, around the same time that I was just beginning my journey as a whitewater paddler. I returned in 2023 for the Wind River High Route, a fantastic hiking trip that deepened my passion for moving through this type of geology. By then, I was aware of class V granite packrafting, and dreamed of one day partaking, but was not yet ready.

By the spring of 2026, I had become a much better paddler, and was looking at a variety of objectives. I heard on a Tales from the Cripps podcast about a run I had never considered, the South Fork Little Wind, which seemed in some ways like a good, clean place to start. The location of the Winds fit well into my annual drive north, and all I had to do to convince Quinlan and Andrew to join was send them a forum post from 2009, the only other piece of online beta that seemed to exist. They love this type of stuff. 

In a year with a lot of doom and gloom around the snowpack, we held on to a few other options, primarily Bull Lake Creek, which ended up being way too high at 800cfs. We had 212cfs on the South Fork Little Wind which was on the low side of good.

Surveying the Headwaters

The simplest way to packraft the SFLW is a closed loop from Moccasin Lake, but I knew this would leave me feeling disconnected from the grandeur of the high Winds. Since I arrived a few days early, I decided to go for a hike to get an idea of where the river comes from. I bought my weeklong Wind River Indian Reservation permit in Lander for $110, put 12lbs of things into my 20L backpack, and headed out after 1pm.

I endedup hiking 46 miles over two nights for a nice lollipop from Dickinson Park. I aimed for the Cirque of the Towers first, which I walked right past to head up New York Pass. On the WRHR, we had opted to take the easier Texas Pass, but I thought New York looked cool and was eager to return.

I walked north from the backside of the Cirque towards Hailey Pass, where I finally really dropped into the SFLW watershed. Here, I found great views of the next major attraction, Mount Hooker and the Baptiste Lake basin. Hooker has striking 2000ft big walls on three aspects, making it look like the El Cap of the Winds, but on the WRHR I  only seen it from the uninteresting west side.

I then walked past the massive Grave Lake, the outflow of which was contributing most of the water for the SFLW. I didn't visit the confluence, but once I saw the mainstem near Payson Peak it seemed like there would be enough. I stopped for the night near Little Valentine Lake, then strolled back across the massive and beautiful Bears Ears Plateau to the car, where I returned to service and waited for the team to show up.

Packrafting

We began our hike into the river at 5:30pm and decided to call it a night at Gaylord Lake after only 5 miles. It was the best spot along the way, and the next morning we strolled down to the river, putting in near Raft Creek around 10am. 

Showing ourselves down the river with no geographic beta was a great time. We confidently boat scouted countless III-IV drops, but still got out maybe 25 times to check out horizon lines. I didn't count, but we probably portaged about 8 times. Half of those were due to wood, and half due to unrunnable river character. We only skipped one runnable rapid called This Ain't SeaWorld, because it simply looked a little too big. We camped in the flat, mile long meadow a little over halfway through the river. On day 3 we finished the good rapids, hiking out after Andrew ran an awesome 30ft sliding falls. Below that was a complex rapid culminating in an unrunnable 50ft waterfall, followed by a flat meadow near Moccasin Creek, then a gorge that drops 1000t in one mile, then a "heinous limestone gorge" than kayakers are recommended to portage as well. With packrafts, we opted to skip all those portages and instead do a 6 mile, 2000ft hike back up to Moccasin Lake where we had started.

All of my media from the paddling trip lives in the video below: