You've all seen it before. The Grand Teton. Surrounded by infinite snowy peaks, with the iconic T.A. Moulton Barn and a field of wildflowers at sunset. It's a photo we've all seen. That photo is an American West classic. It is Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is Grand Teton National Park.
The Grand Teton National Park that everybody sees (2.75 million visitors per year, to be exact) sits on the Eastern side of the Teton range and covers 310,000 acres. Nearly everyone who enters the park simply drives through and stops at various lookouts and viewpoints to photograph the iconic Grand Teton (13,775 feet) and Mount Moran (12,605 feet)—undoubtedly with either Jenny Lake or the Snake River in the foreground. Occasionally, and perhaps more often than other highly-visited National Parks such as Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountain, tourists will leave the confines of their cars and venture into the "wilderness" on a simple day-hike up Cascade Canyon or even up to Lake Solitude if they're feeling rather adventurous.
The simple tourist driving through and gazing off at the iconic range that is Grand Teton National Park doesn't even begin to experience the absolute magic that is Grand Teton National Park; instead they snap selfies of their family with a selfie-stick and pick an Instagram filter on their iPhone. As I read in Desert Solitaire, "so long as they [the motorized tourists] are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the national parks and they will never escape the turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while".
It was after an easy three-day backpacking adventure last fall where a few friends and I completed the Death Canyon-Alaska Basin loop in the park, that I heard of the Teton Crest Trail. A lesser-known, whispered, but nonetheless iconic trail to backpackers, the Teton Crest Trail was the epitome of hiking in Grand Teton National Park. And I was determined to make it happen.
A few friends and I finally embarked on this adventure last Friday, where we, per usual, arrived at our camp outside the Park around 1:30am. We woke early the next day to get permits and began our hike up Granite Canyon, where we would start our 40-mile trek on the Teton Crest Trail.
We camped on Fox Creek Pass for our first night, and continued on to the Death Canyon Shelf and Alaska Basin region, a friendly reminder of the hidden gems of the Park that we had seen the year before. Our plan was to continue on to Hurricane Pass (10,338 feet), where we would camp for the night.
The four of us swam in the alpine lakes in Alaska Basin, reminisced of our trip a year ago, and continued up Hurricane Pass. I was breathing hard. I hadn't hiked at this elevation with a pack in a long time. We came to a stop less than a quarter-mile from the top of the pass, so we could stop and rethink our strategy for the night. One of us, Jason, was feeling courageous, so he dropped his pack and hiked up to the top to scout campsites for us. He chuckled when he returned and said, "you're gonna cry when you see the view up there". We all grinned.
A quarter mile more. And after that final step to the top of the pass, the four of us were speechless. We thought nothing.
The Teton Range opened up before us. The Grand and Middle Tetons rose 3,000 feet above us, with the peaks of Cascade Canyon and Paintbrush Canyon close behind to the left. It was nothing like we were expecting. It was nothing like what the majority of the 2.75 million tourists see every year.
Power. The only word I could muse up. The absolute power of the Teton Range stood before, a moment frozen in time. All we heard were the occasional gusts of wind and roaring waterfalls off in the canyon below.
We continued to set up camp and cook dinner at awe in the presence of our view. We watched the sun cast a golden light over the peaks, before setting behind a wall of smoke from wildfires nearby. We waited patiently for the stars to come out, only to be surprised by a blanket of clouds blocking our view. We instead were intrigued by occasional headlamp glows from the middle of the Grand Teton (surely climbers who were bound to summit the next morning), and the phasal red glow of the fire off in the eery distance. We fell asleep with an expectation for our sunrise view, and were happily surprised when our expectations were blown away by the colors and rays cast by the rising sun.
It was nothing like we had ever seen before.