There’s something about high mountain meadows in brilliant reds and yellows that signifies autumn for us. Earlier this fall we packed up and trekked into a less visited corner of the Wind River Range. A stiff hike over a ten-thousand foot pass took us 9-miles back to the head of the Stough Lakes Basin. We set-up camp for a couple days and explored the cirques, lakes and streams all around us. Our three-year-old son Dusty loves sleeping in the tent, so he really gets excited for these backcountry adventures. Of course he also loves playing in the dirt, throwing rocks into lakes and finding ‘treasures’ like a metal camping pot that dad got to carry out for him. We could have stayed in that basin for a week, but the first storm of winter made a hasty retreat necessary. A foot of fresh snow covered the mountains the day after we hiked out.