Big Sandy Opening
— — a meadow that opens, then climbs.
Not only on a wall.
“A long meadow on the Big Sandy River, at the southern edge of the Wind River Range. The trailhead leaves from the far end and climbs eight miles to Big Sandy Lake and the saddle into the Cirque of the Towers. Big Sandy Lodge has stood at the meadow's mouth since 1929. Most years the road in opens in early July, with the last miles rough enough to slow a passenger car to a crawl.
Big Sandy Opening, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Big Sandy Opening is a broad subalpine meadow along the upper Big Sandy River at the southern end of the Wind River Range, within Bridger-Teton National Forest in Sublette County, Wyoming. The trailhead at the meadow sits at roughly 9,080 feet and serves as the main approach to the Cirque of the Towers, an enclosure of granite spires that ring Lonesome Lake at the head of the drainage. The last seventeen miles of Forest Road 850 are unpaved washboard, opening in early summer and closing with the first heavy snow.
The Wind River Range is among the least roaded major ranges in the lower forty-eight, and the Opening is its quietest gate. The Bridger Wilderness, which begins a half mile up the trail, covers 428,169 acres without a single road. Mid-week in September a hiker can walk to Big Sandy Lake and back without passing another party. The river runs cold over granite cobble, the lodgepole stands close, and on calm evenings the meadow holds the kind of held silence that the high country gives only when it is empty.
The road into Big Sandy is usually drivable from early July through late September. June is mosquito season at the trailhead; by mid-August the bugs are gone and the meadow grasses have begun to go gold. Snow can fall in the Cirque any month. Big Sandy Lodge, in continuous operation since 1929, runs from June through September. Bridger-Teton National Forest updates road status on its Pinedale Ranger District page; the Wind River Backcountry Horsemen post current trail conditions through the season.