Up close and Personal - The Tetons on Foot.

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Well…after extending our stay at the campsite and our trip to the Tetons once, here we are doing it again… We felt that our Teton experience wouldn’t be complete until we did some hiking… So we got up early enough to make lunch and load up our day packs before taking the short-cut to the park and then on to Jenny Lake to meet the boat, unfortunately…

Statistics

Starting Destination: Jackson, Wyoming
Ending Destination: Jackson, Wyoming
Ending Destination GPS: N: 43° 31.220’ W: 110° 50.397’ Elev: 6245’
Miles Driven: 81.3
Miles Hiked: approx. 11 miles
Miles Traveled by Boat: approx. 3
Feet Climbed on foot: approx. 1400 feet

Cascade Canyon

After all our advance planning we arrived at Jenny Lake with so little time to spare that Maria nearly forgot to put sunscreen on and had to pack her hiking sox in her day pack (to put on later) and Carl left the binoculars in the truck! But we got to the boat dock in time for the first scheduled boat at 10am. The boat trip across the lake cuts 2.5 miles off the hike plus we thought it would be neat to ride the boat, but today was the penultimate day of service and they were running on a reduced schedule. Our plan was to hike as far up the Cascade Canyon trail that we could and still make it back to the boat dock to catch the last boat back at 4pm… So off we went, first to the Hidden Falls and then to Inspiration Point where you could look back over the lake and the Snake River valley.
The hike from Hidden Falls to Inspiration Point (far left) was quite steep, so by this time we were thinking that we wouldn’t get too far if all the trail was similar. But… Not much further up the trail it flattened out, we speculated that the glacier that created the canyon left a moraine? It was a spectacular walk up the canyon, again the tree’s and bushes provided a spectacular accompaniment of color and it was so quiet, you almost felt that you were alone - that was after we passed some of the other tourists on the trail ahead of us!! Along the way we had some “wild” animal (oops blob) encounters - while these were indeed wild, they had become accustomed to humans as the young Mule Deer buck practically ignored our clomping along the trail and the Moose and her calf acted as if we weren’t even there (not like the ones we encountered before - blog “Ghosts, snow and white knuckles…”), the squirrel actually followed us along the trail running between us for about 100 yards - could it really smell the peanuts we had packed for lunch? We reached the forks about 12:20 and figured we had until 1:00 to walk - with a choice between the trail to Solitude Lake and the Hurricane Pass Trail - we selected the lake trail and followed it as it wound further up the canyon…
We stopped by the side of the trail (in the sun and somewhat out of the wind) at 1pm and ate our sandwiches taking a 30 minute break before starting on the return trip. It is amazing that when you walk the same trail in reverse you see things in a different light—both literally and figuratively. Many of the patches of color were not quite the same in the after noon sun - but the peaks were just as spectacular, if just a little hazy… We arrived back at the boat dock with minutes to spare ’till 4pm (somehow is takes just as long to go down as up) only to find that there were at least 2 boat loads of people ahead of us in line! We hadn’t seen any of them on the trail so we speculated that they had taken the boat out and done the little loop trail that takes you from the arrival to the departure points, at least we hoped they had!

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Taking an Alternate Route Home

The next stage of the day’s adventure involved driving, both Carl and Maria agreed that after all the hiking it felt very good to sit down! First we drove over to the adjacent trail head to see if we could find the Taggart Lake “field guide and map for the trail” that had the peaks to the South of the canyon - we obviously weren’t thinking too good as the visitors’ center was still open at Jenny Lake and we should have asked there!! Then we drove back to the campsite the long way - there is a road on the Eastern side of the Snake River. There was nothing really new to see, the mountains were just further away! We didn’t take the short cut home to the campground even though it was prime time for blob viewing and there was some good habitat, we didn’t even wait for the sunset despite the high cloud that Carl likes - we went into Jackson, bought Chinese food and went back to the cabin and collapsed! A fun day had by all…

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Compressing Space and Time?

One thing really struck Maria as she was walking today - in the Tetons it really felt like you were making progress… Often on hikes you can feel like a spec in the universe, you walk all day and the macro environment around you changes little relative to your position. But here, in the space of two hours we had hiked almost the complete length of the canyon—the mountain that was initially far away was suddenly up-close-and-personal. The same thing happened on the bike ride - we started South of Mount Moran and by the time we had reached the top of Signal Mountain it was to the South of us—all in the space of 15 miles…

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Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: 32.9 mph
Today’s Question: What is the “thing” pictured left?

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Comments

[Marv Bush]

What's this thing?
I need more and closer pics. Signing off now. See you when we get back. MB

[Paul Cox]

the thing
your picture is not very close, lacks detail, my wild guess is some sort of trash incenerator.

[The Odyssey]

Details...
See today's blog for explaination - It's an almost "I can't believe it!"

[The Odyssey]

P.s.
I guess it depends on what type of trash!! I think this would actually do it all...

[Kristi Tafolla]

Tourist Trap
It appears to be a trap for all the particles left behind by the tourists, hikers and bikers. Once the particles are trapped inside the machine joins them and shoots out a brown blob.