Finally getting a post up about the four days we spent backpacking the Teton Crest Trail! For some reason Blogger has been a total nightmare about uploading photos...I should probably switch to an actual website but that seems like a lot of work for something that nobody really reads!
Anyway, a year ago or so we managed to get backpacking permits for the Teton Crest Trail in July, which is a pretty big deal! My dad came along with us (his wife Ana was planning to come but had to cancel at the last minute due to a health crisis in her extended family).
We gave ourselves three days in the Tetons to acclimate before heading up on the Crest trail. Since this was our first *really* big backpacking trip as a family, we opted to take the tram up from Teton Village to cut off 4000 feet of elevation gain and I was SO glad we did this! (Our full route was Teton Village to Marion Lake to Alaska Basin to Cascade Canyon South to Jenny Lake.) We also opted to skip the climb up over the Paintbrush Divide since it's notoriously sketchy late into the season, and when we were there it still had enough snow that it was a mountaineering situation so I was glad we had planned ahead to skip it.
We had absolutely beautiful weather the whole time.
The initial descent from the tram is through a gorgeous pine forest. There was still quite a bit of snow here and I was glad we all had poles (we carried spikes but never used them).
Absolutely gorgeous views!
We weren't at peak wildflower season but even so the wildflowers were AMAZING.
I was surprised at how tough this first day was; it was only 6.5 miles but there were a LOT of climbs mixed in and on the last one up to the lake...whew.
But eventually we made it and set up camp! You can see the little stream here and the two trees close-ish together are where we stashed our bear canisters and the copse behind it (which you can't see) is where we did all our cooking. Thankfully we did not see any bears on this trip but dang those required bear canisters are so so so heavy. Luke was really struggling with his so my dad ended up carrying it for the last couple of hours on the first day (we repacked everything the next day so Luke had an empty can).
This was behind our tents looking back down the valley. Absolute heaven.
No fires in the backcountry, so instead of sitting around and staying up too late we went to bed as the sun was going down and slept so soundly we did not hear the porcupine munching on all the handles of our trekking poles...
The next morning I woke up pretty early and walked over to see Marion Lake but for some reason didn't take a photo of anything but the big boys' tent. (For this trip Matthew and I shared a tent, then Luke and Isaac were together, and Nathan with Neil.) You can see our first climb up the day up the shoulder to the left there!
Thankfully we had lots of energy to tackle it! We had passed a group the previous day that was REALLY struggling and their guide told us they were camping up on the shelf that night, yikes. We actually never saw them go by so I don't know if they came past when it was full dark or ended up camping somewhere that they didn't have permits for, but yikes, I would not have enjoyed doing this climb at the end of the day.
But it was a gorgeous view of Marion Lake behind us!
Then we spent the day crossing Death Canyon Shelf which was so, so, so beautiful (the canyon running up to it is Death Canyon and then the shelf is a miles-long plateau that sort of sits at the top of the canyon).
Death Canyon is the one behind Nathan here...you can see Teton Valley in the distance.
There was tons of snow/snowmelt everywhere on the shelf and the boys were in heaven sawing away at it in slabs so that it would fall into the caves below.
And in this photo of Dad you can start to see the Grand Teton in the background there!
And in this photo you can see a bit of how the shelf curves along the top of the canyon and leads to the Tetons.
We saw so, so, so many giant fat marmots.
Lots of trails everywhere so I was glad I'd brought a map! And it was really fun to see how intently the boys studied it at every trail crossing.
We ended up making crazy good time across the shelf and opted to keep going into Alaska Basin (which is a forest service area where you don't need permits) instead of camping on the shelf, which is where we had permits for the night. No photos working our way down the Sheep Steps, which were snow-covered and a little precarious, or crossing Teton Creek, which was in full raging meltwater stage with no bridge...we ended up using a snowbridge which was honestly pretty freaky. When we got back to Jenny Lake we told the rangers that they probably needed to put something in there temporarily or give people a heads up about the crossing; it is not something we could have done safely with our little guys in the water.
And speaking of water--this was pretty scary too. We were super hot so we opted to go swimming and the water felt delightful near the shoreline and then got INSANELY suddenly cold near the middle to the point that it was a full-body freeze and so hard to keep swimming. Matthew started to go down and yelled for help; Luke grabbed him and kept him up long enough for Neil to get there. I was struggling too to get across fully; it was just so shockingly cold out of nowhere. So I'm really grateful that we all made it out and it was a good reminder about not getting cocky about your skills in the outdoors...
Then it was super windy and cold and a fire would have been very nice...we ate dinner pretty quickly and went to bed!
Matthew chose our tent site for the view and while you can't quite see it in this photo, we could look across the entire valley into Idaho (I should have taken this from the other door, oh well). He set the tent up all by himself and was so proud! Both Nathan and Matthew were very concious of their contributions for this trip and insisted on carrying parts of the tents (Neil and I had originally planned to carry everything but let the little boys carry poles and stakes, if I recall correctly).
Hanging out waiting for water to boil!
As we were taking our tents down a GIANT fox ran through our camp which was pretty cool.
And I had Neil take a photo to memorialize my giant pack...no ultralight camping here.
Then we headed across the remaining bits of Alaska Basin toward Hurricane Pass!
Here's Isaac looking down at Sunset Lake after yet another climb...
And even higher with the lake receding into the distance!
It was so amazing to have my dad along with us!
It was a long climb up to the pass but the views up there were absolutely insane.
Apparently I didn't upload any of the pics from lunch, but we spent about an hour on the rim of Cascade Canyon looking at the views and talking about my grandfather Don Decker, who was a very experienced climber with lots of first ascents in the Tetons and former NPS ranger and
died in a fall there in 1982. My dad spent a lot of time in the Tetons as a kid but this is the first time he had been back up to the pass since his dad's death and the recovery of his body from the Schoolroom Glacier, which was just below our lunch spot. (When we went back to the Jenny Lake ranger station to return our bear cans, somehow in our discussion with the rangers there we ended up making the connection that the volunteer checking us in was the retired head of the Jenny Lake climbing rangers, and was one of the ones who responded to the 911 call for my grandfather and had known him really well.)
The descent into Cascade Canyon had the second sketchy bit of the trip; there was quite a bit of snow on the trail and we basically had to slide over a switchback and my dad caught everyone so we didn't fall off the mountain. Fun! (The other sketchy bit was in Alaska Basin earlier that day where we had to do a hands-and-feet scramble up the side of a rock ledge for about 15 feet where the trail was similarly snow-covered; it was tough enough that we ended up tying a rope to Matthew's pack and pulling it up the cliff so he could climb without the weight on his back.)
Cascade Canyon lived up to its name--the runoff was roaring! About halfway to our campsite my dad decided he was going to hike out the rest of the way so he could drive home that night and get back to Ana earlier, so we said goodbye to him and then went on to make camp.
This was a really gorgeous site but the gnats were so so so so annoying. Matthew ended up having a bloody nose about 15 minutes after we went to bed so that was pretty scary worrying if we had missed a spot of blood in the clean-up that would lure a bear over in the night, but thankfully we slept undisturbed.
And then the next day we hiked down out of the canyon very very fast, got annoyed by the endless hordes of extremely slow-moving tourons all around Jenny Lake, took the boat back to the parking lot and spent an hour repacking our car while a guy sat there and waited the entire time (which tells you everything you need to know about how horrific the parking situation is at Jenny Lake) and then drove up to St. Anthony where we checked in to a very lovely little hotel and blessed day!!!! did a million loads of laundry and then had frozen pizza and ice cream for dinner, which was AMAZING after four days of backpacking food!
All in all--one of the most incredible and beautiful hikes I've ever done and I was SOOOOOO glad we had the chance to do it!
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