Not an actual trip report per se, but an enjoyable morning in Grand Teton National Park with the family. I’ve got some more photos stashed away back here somewhere I’ll be getting processed soon, but thought this little snippet was worth sharing out of sequence anyways.
10 Seconds in the Tetons from sethsquatch on Vimeo.
Last June my friend Hamish Tear and I spent the morning out on Jenny Lake in order to take a few shots from the middle of the water. It was tough to get the shots lined up because of the waves from the shuttle boats, but I think it was worth it just to get out and on the water for a bit…
It’s been a while.
I’m behind a bit in posting both trips and photos, but hopefully can catch up in the next week or so. There’s a trip into the Wind Rivers with the kids to post, and a little hike up Mt. Rainier to write up, so please stay tuned. I’m planning on a trip up in the Tetons tomorrow morning as well, so hopefully I can get some traction and get this all moving again.
To tide you over until I can do things right, please enjoy this wee video that Mark put together from the Rainier trip…
There’s nothing quite like a looming Big Trip staring at you from the calendar to inspire a Little Trip outside to get some miles and elevation under you… A couple weeks ago the weather was just perfect for a quick leg stretcher up one of the hills just behind the house. I didn’t have any pretense of being in shape, but wanted to see how it felt to climb something steep in the snow and to take advantage of the sun before the weather was supposed to come back in the next day. Prater Canyon sits directly to the west of our home in Star Valley Ranch, so it was just a quick drive up along the golf course to the mouth of the canyon. It’s a pretty rugged bit of country back there – you don’t see the jaggedness of the cliffs until you actually get back inside the walls of the narrow slot, or can get up on one of the shoulders of the neighboring hills – but it’s quite impressive.
The snow was packed down pretty well at the entrance to the canyon from the snowmobiles, and as soon as I stepped off to the north I was post-holing up to my thighs before I could get up on the steep stuff. It was already starting to melt out a little on the lower slopes as they’re so steep with a southern exposure, but with my big boots I managed to quickly get up into the more solid snows above. A small herd of deer was sitting above me in the shade of a scrubby-looking bunch of trees, but soon began to traverse back around when they saw me coming up. There really wasn’t much to this trip, other than a lot of zigzagging across the open snow and trying to keep a good pace. I stopped to take a few photos and managed to drop my camera case with the extra battery and memory card, which tumbled down for quite a while before I lost sight of it. It left a good trail though in the snow and I figured I could track it down pretty easily on the way back down.
Reaching the top of the main shoulder I turned and took a number of shots of the spreading valley below me. I had brought up a two-way radio and called up the family to go out on the porch while I used the signal mirror I’d brought and said hello with a few sun-flashes. The mini-summit where I’d landed leveled out only for a few yards before heading back up into the trees and onto higher elevations, but I needed to get back to my Saturday so I ate a quick bagel sandwich and headed back down, plunge-stepping back into my tracks and trying not to tip over forward on the steep sections. I quickly found my camera bag and shuffled back to the car, with only a mile and a half under me, but almost 1700 feet of elevation gained which felt pretty good. It was mostly just nice to get outside in my own backyard and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my back while the wind kept things nice and cool as I climbed. I’m going to need to pick up the pace if I’m going to be ready for any kind of Big Trip this summer, but it was a good little stretch that was worth the few hours away from home…
Actually, it was only my first time to Bradley Lake, so it’s kind of tough to say “back” – although my last trip to Taggart Lake did bring me within a mile or so, so there you go. It has been way too long since I’ve updated this thing, mostly because the trips were either really small and short, or non-existent. The timing was right this weekend though, and so was the weather – so I pretty much had to get out.
The plan was to get up early enough to catch the sunrise, but I took too long to pack the night before so it wasn’t too hard to sleep through a couple snooze cycles with the alarm. By the time I was in the park, the sun was already up, so I hustled up to Antelope Flats with the intention of first skiing over to Mormon Row and back before heading up to Bradley Lake. The skis were borrowed from my brother-in-law, so the fit wasn’t exactly perfect, but I managed to get about 200 yards down the trail before realizing what a terrible skier I was and that I’d be much happier and productive hustling up a trail to the lake on snowshoes.
I turned around and headed off across the road to the Taggart Lake trailhead. In the winter, the road between the trailhead and Signal Mountain up near Jackson Lake is closed to vehicles and opened up for skiers and snowshoeing and the like. The parking lot was mostly empty, with just a few cars full of dawn patrolers getting a late start like myself. I thought about putting on the skis, but knew it would be more painful than fun and resigned myself to clomping around for a bit on the Tubbs. The sky was cloudless and bright blue by now, and the sun was high enough to throw some long shadows in front of me as I plodded through the alternating pockets of powder and crust alongside the skin track. It’s tough to be stealthy and silent on snowshoes in those conditions, as I had wanted to try to see a moose or something, but the snow was really squeaky and the crust was thick enough that each step was a veritable snow implosion.
The trail was well packed in, but it didn’t stop me from doing a little cross-country trail breaking of my own. I tried to stay out of the track as much as possible, as the cleats and claws of a snowshoe can really tear it up for the skiers, and it made for a much more effective workout as I broke trail on the upper slope above the actual trail. Reaching the split to Taggart Lake, where the trail goes through some thick young post-fire growth, I opted to stay to the right towards Bradley Lake, just a bit farther up the trail. The way to Bradley stayed up on a bit of a ridge, so as I continued to climb, the flat white expanse of a frozen Taggart Lake came into view. The trail started to get a bit steeper here, and transitioned from the openness of the old burn area to the colder and thicker forest proper.
The ridge continued for only a little while before I could see to the north and where the lake sat at the foot of the imposing flanks of the Grand and her neighbors. A few ski tracks dropped down into the trees which I followed before picking up a more well-used trail which took me right to the edge of the lake. A quick breakfast of salami and cheese and crackers, as well as a few photos and I was heading back to the car.
Once I got back up onto the ridge it was nice and just downhill enough that I kept up a pretty good pace and managed to get back to the car without too much of a problem. My heels were feeling it and I ended up with a couple of blisters that I’m not too proud of, but other than that it was definitely worth the effort to get up and out of the house. If nothing else, as the first real outing of the year, hopefully it will get me moving a little more consistently as I try to catch up on my mileage goals for the year and take advantage of the amazing little slice of the world where we live…