Route Creek Pass: expect more traffic this year

7-Lazy-P wranger leads his pack string through the pass

Old Baldy, a beautiful peak on a beautiful day

Lady Slipper orchid along the way

Just a sampling of the numbers of orchids

Last year we stopped just yards short of climbing to Route Creek Pass in the Bob Marshall Wilderness at the head of the Middle Fork of the Teton.  We could have made it, but the winds were so fierce they knocked us down with each step.
On Tuesday, a spectacularly beautiful and clear day, I went to the pass in windy conditons, which I didn't let stop me.
This is a 13.6 miles round trip hike with about 2,300 feet elevation gain and loss.
As I had done on Sunday I was checking out the access roads to the Front and found the main road up the Teton River, through the canyon, is just fine but the South Fork Road to about Mill Falls is closed, effectively cutting off access to hikers' favorites Headquarters Pass and Our Lake.
It also cuts off a main access point into the North Fork Sun River country through Headquarters.
I figure those spots remain open, like the Middle Fork Teton and Route Creek, will be humming with traffic that normally would have gone through Headquarters.
I got up there before the horses on Tuesday and had a wonderful hike, marveling at the snow fields on the flanks of Old Baldy and impressed with the high water volume in this little stream and its waterfalls.
Along the way closer to the pass itself I saw evidence of some winter avalanches that shredded trees that now lay in the bottoms.
The area is SOOOO green and the flowers plentiful.  I was surprised by a significant stretch of trail that had the Lady Slipper orchids.  This is obviously not a beargrass year.  Only one stubby beargrass on the trail.
Since I was hiking alone I started to notice things that hadn't occured to me on previous hikes in the Middle Fork.  The most significant is that this is a large drainage essentially untouched by fire or pine beetle kill.  If you want to see how the Bob Marshall looked before fires started raking the area and the Front in the early 80s, this is the place to go.  It is refreshing.
I was a little intimidated looking at Baldy, thinking how difficult it would be to climb now that I'm in my 70s.  It used to be a hop-skip-and a jump to the top.  Once I even climbed it in transit to the North Fork and Wrong Creek country....something to do along the way.  I'm losing strength on a massive scale.
Once I reached the top the traffic behind came by:  a 7-Lazy-P Guest Ranch bunch of about 8 dudes, two wranglers and a pack string going to Gates Park, followed by three Forest Service summer workers headed to Wrong Creek for maintenance work.  It was fun visiting with them. The pack strings were especially scenic.  On the way down, a couple of miles from the pass, I encountered 11 boys and their leaders with pack rafts in their impossibly large and heavy packs, headed for a float down the North Fork of the Sun. 
This is more traffic than I like in a day.
Finally, I don't understand why a trail had to be built from the new parking area at the trailhead rather than relying on the old one, which is just fine.