Hardly deserving of an official Altitude Slickness trip report, I spent the night outside in my car last week up in the Grand Teton National Park, and blogged a bit about the evening’s activities over on The Armchair Mountaineer.
Selah.
A long time ago, in a little town called North Bend, I once set my alarm clock for 4:00 in the morning. I threw my bike in the car and drove out to a trailhead below Mount Teneriffe and started up by headlamp. It was all downhill AND uphill from there. Mornings before work in downtown Seattle found me on top of Rattlesnake Ridge, or Little Si, or Guye Peak, or Teneriffe, or Washington, or any number of places around Snoqualmie Pass. Word spread, connections made, and so it continued for a couple of years – until we moved to Vancouver.
That was a tough move for me, even though it was the right decision for our family… I didn’t find a lot of people in our immediate social circle (church) who had even close to the same passion for early morning suffering that I did, unless you count golf as suffering, which I honestly do. Dawn patrols slipped away into Weekend Warrior Mornings, and slowly became fewer and farther between. I have yet to get back into the level of fitness I had going back in North Bend, but now that we’re in Wyoming and so close to the hills again I’m hoping to remedy that situation.
The inaugural Wyoming Dawn Patrol took place on September 25, 2008, joined by only myself and five moose, six elk, and seven deer. I drove up through Jackson in the dark, wide awake and grinning the whole way. I had my pack in the back along with my laptop and work stuff for the day, as well as a couple of cameras and a tripod. The plan was to head up into the Teton National Park and catch the sunrise, and then head over to the Taggart Lake trailhead for an ultra-quick run up to the water and back before heading to the Jackson Library to work for the day.
The sun had just started making things light up when I got to the park. Just before Blacktail Butte, I looked over to the right and saw a couple of moose, so I pulled a touron and edged the car over. Two bulls were slowly trying to work each other over, pushing and twisting with their giant racks. You could hear the clicks and snaps of their antlers locking and as more cars pulled over, they started to break it up. There were a lot of big lenses out now along the road, and the moose just started walking south through the parking lot there at the Butte and then proceded to cross the road. People were getting awfully close, and I was really surprised at the bravado (stupidity) of some of the early morning tourists in getting that close up moose butt shot. They made it across the road without any problems though, and I moved on. 
A little farther down the road I pulled off to the left and drove down a rutted dirt road to Schwabacher’s Landing. It was just me and about 20 other cars and photographers down there, so it was nice and cozy as we all snapped away at the reflected Tetons and the ever-increasing glow of sunrise. It was a pretty spectacular view, and I managed to get a few shots I liked before moving on to the actual hike part of the morning. Driving back into Moose Junction and into the park, I saw a small herd of elk, a large bull and about 5 cows on the north side of the road, and then five seconds later, a bull, cow and calf moose on the south disappear into the aspen. They say mornings and evenings are the best time to see wildlife in the park, and they weren’t kidding.
The parking lot for Taggart and Bradley Lakes was nearly empty, except for a few construction vehicles, so I parked up close and got my stuff out. The trail was easy, and with the rising sunlight coming through the aspen, it was hard not to stop and shoot the trees the whole way up. In the interest of time though, I stashed the poles and just ran up with camera in hand.
I was kind of nervous about meeting a Large Carnivore or Horned Herbivore, so I tried to sing and just make as much noise as I could as I went along. 
Easing out of the lower open scrub and into the thicker stands of pine and aspen, it was easy to imagine large creatures around ever corner, but nothing materialized. The trail is really a beautiful one, with some really nice views of the Grand (it’s not hard around here I’m guessing) and quickly let me to the edge of Taggart Lake. The wind hadn’t picked up so there were a few good reflection shots taken and a handful of dried peaches eaten before turning and saying farewell to my first Dawn Patrol destination.
On the way out I stopped to butcher my 6th grade French phrases with an older tourist couple before landing on Spanish as a common language, which was kind of fun. I wished them “bon voyage” and then trucked it back down the trail, managing to flush out another good handful of deer. The parking lot was full when I got back down, and there were two groups of kids coming up with a decibel level guaranteed to eliminate any wildlife viewing that morning. I threw my stuff in the car, changed in the bathroom and then headed into town to find the library and start my day. The sun was up – the sky blue – aspen yellow – and I was happy.
The leaves are turning at the bases of the mountains, and it’s nice and chilly in the mornings when we wave goodbye to the boys on their way to school. September in Wyoming means hunting season, and although I’m technically not a hunter, I’ve managed to get out a handful of times now with Boone. We’ve gone bow hunting up to his tree stand up above the Greys River a few times, and once down on the south end of the valley along the Emigrant Trail, both times looking for elk – but with no success. Rifle season began on the 15th of September up here, so Boone wanted to get an early start and see if our luck would change.
Sunday night we packed up our overnight stuff and headed back into the Salt River range past Murphy Lakes to see what we could see. It ended up being quite a bit – by the time we started walking the full moon had crested the ridge and we were casting shadows and turning off headlamps. We had a general direction, and knew we wanted to get back into a small lake that we could see on our map. In the darkness, we thrashed our way across the side of the hill, trying to keep the sound of the creek below us within earshot. Presently, we came out of the thickness and crossed a small stream that led us into some small aspen, and then into a wide, slightly sloped meadow. There was no sign of the lake, so we figured it was just up a bit farther and around the corner. Making our way up the meadow, we sidled up to the biggest rock we could see and started to make camp. It was late enough that we were pretty hungry, so we quickly got our sleeping bags and bivy sacks out and got the water boiling for dinner.
After a quick meal of dehydrated stroganoff (Boone) and vegetable lasagna (me) we called it a night and tucked ourselves in. The ground was pretty lumpy in spite of our best efforts to level things out, so you had to be quite flexible to get comfortable by wrapping yourself around rocks and roots and whatnot. I slept pretty good, and didn’t even wake up after Boone started puking a little after three in the morning.
Dawn came soon enough, and we were up and getting sorted before the sun crested the far eastern horizon. That morning’s entertainment was watching the alpenglow on the walls of the bowl to the west of us change colors and postion while nibbling on breakfast. With the sun still on its way up over the near eastern ridge, we pulled out the binoculars and spent the next few hours trying to stay warm and looking for any sign of life around us. We did spot a couple of bucks up high to the west of us, but no shots were fired as Boone contemplated the process of going up and then bringing them down in his condition.
So we waited a bit longer, and watched a couple of hunters below us set up a scope and start scanning the hillsides for deer as well. Eventually Boone felt well enough to shoulder the rifle and move around some, so we each grabbed an apple and split up. I headed north up towards the side of the bowl and then traversed back around, trying to make some noise and flush out anything that was bedded down still. It being opening day of rifle season, I had my orange beanie on, and Boone promised not to shoot me. 
It was pretty steep stuff, but there was a lot of scrub and I had my trekking poles so it wasn’t too bad. I stayed pretty high, and didn’t hear anything, so just kept on moving. Over and around small ridges, I would pause every once in a while to peer back at Boone through the binocs and take a few pictures. The view back down the valley was pretty good and there were a lot of little interesting plants and shells(!) as I went along. 
I was up there a good couple of hours at least, and I guess I did flush out one buck that we’d seen that morning, but he took off the wrong way and Boone didn’t get a shot. Eventually I made it up to the high bowl above our meadow, still a few hundred feet below the skyline ridge, but I only had half an apple left and wanted to meet up with Boone and get some water.
I worked my way back down the ridge onto the high shoulder we couldn’t see from our camp. We ran into another hunter looking for a wounded buck he’d shot that morning – we had heard the shots – but the blood trail ran out and we were needing some water so we only stuck around to help look for a bit before heading back down. Boone was still feeling a bit under the weather, so we rested a bit under the shade of our rock before shouldering packs again and bee-lining it back to the stream to refill the water bottles. Boone had his handy-dandy UV light water purifier, so we traded back and forth a couple times until the batteries died, but both ended up with enough to get us back to the truck. We weren’t feeling too bad about the lack of deer – it would have been tough for us to get anything out of there with Boone’s stomach acting up, and we both had simply enjoyed being able to get into some new territory and explore a bit. The truck was still where we left it, so that was a plus as well. Packs went into the back and we hustled back to town to wrap it up.
Not a bad way to kill a Monday, and not kill a deer.
So I’ve resolved to quit doing this half-baked trip report stuff. The stream-of-consciousness lists of memories don’t really do justice to the experience for anyone who reads it, other than myself. It’s embarrassing to be so lazy about something I feel so passionate about, so there you go – no more laundry-list trip reports.
That said, please bear with me as I try to extract a readable report from my saved laundry-list notes on hike up Table Mountain this last August. I do wish that I’d have sat down and really put this together when my emotions were still as fresh and personally poignant as the day we got back, but this will have to do.
We’d been looking forward to this trip for some time. My brother-in-law Boone had suggested a hike with the oldest kids as a kind of ‘end of summer’ adventure, and so we put a date down and called it good. The cousins Ian and Bailey were excited, although Ian was honestly a little intimidated. His biggest hike to date had been Little Si, a round trip excursion of around 5 miles, and he wasn’t interested in climbing any huge mountains quite yet. We assured him we’d just be going to look at the big mountains and that this would be nothing more than a long walk up a steep hill.
Poor guy.
So we’ve made it – the big transition, I mean. The Grand Experiment, Neilson’s Folly, whatever you want to call it. We’ve settled (for the time being) in Star Valley, Wyoming and so far, are loving every minute. Saturday morning I took a quick run/hike/wheeze up the only place I was really familiar with up here – a little place called Strawberry. Just east of Bedford and about 15 minutes to the southeast of us is a canyon which supplies about 9 gigawatt hours of power annually to the valley via a little hydropower setup that’s created a nice fishing hole at the start of the trail. The actual trail heads up for about 7.5 miles into the Salt River range before connecting with other trails that lead you even deeper into the Bridger-Teton wilderness. I only spent a couple hours up there and didn’t get too far, as the photographic opportunities were pretty much overwhelming, so hopefully next time I can actually get some mileage and altitude underneath me.
Photos soon.