Walking in the Tetons

Teton Backpack 2008

August 15 - 18

August 15 - Death Canyon 

4.5 hours hiking / 6.5 miles

After a 5:30 A.M. wake up call, Kim and I hustled out of bed, slogged through some oatmeal and headed a few yards down the road to pick up our friend, Jim Hauser, for our annual Teton backpack extravaganza.  

Unlike last year where we fought marginal weather and delayed starting our adventure one day due to the storm from Hell, this year’s trip came off without a hitch.  Perfect 70 degree hiking weather, coupled with good company and the amazing visuals of Death Canyon made the hike “almost” perfect.  

“Almost,” you ask?  

Well, sadly the trail was steeper and the packs were much heavier this year.  I also found that the oxygen supply was lacking, undoubtedly sucked up by the many rogue bears and moose lining the trail.  The essence of the matter was that it was a hard hike and we were all hurting by the time we rolled into our favorite campsite overlooking a huge meadow under the rocky ledge of Death Canyon Shelf.

Upon pulling into camp, we all anxiously threw off our packs and exhausted, sat down in the meadow sucking down a massive volume of water while cursing our poor physical conditioning.  Stories were told, politics were argued and the unbelievable alpine surroundings were ogled.  

After a disgusting dinner, dehydrated mule dung in gravy, we hit the hay at 8:30, already feeling the temperature plummeting quickly into the lower 30’s or high 20’s.  Needless to say, we rummaged through our packs to find every bit of our clothing and put it on before climbing into our bags.

August 16 Marion Lake

3 hours hiking/5.5 miles

It was much, much better today.  The trek up and over Fox Pass (over 9500 feet) and down to Marion Lake was actually enjoyable.  The day started with coffee on the rocks, sitting out in the meadow soaking up the warm morning sunshine.  As we sat there solving humanity’s problems, a large cow moose ambled across the hillside in front of us.

The trudge up and out of Death Canyon was brutal, the legs burned like Chicago on fire and the lungs just couldn’t find enough oxygen, but other than that, it was a nice walk.  The wildflowers were absolutely eye popping spectacular.  Purple, yellow, blue, red, pink, and a wide range of other colors dazzled us.  Once we crested the top of the pass, we stopped for a long rest, enduring tasteless energy bars and downing a massive volume of water.   

The second part of the walk was a breeze, with the trail mostly down hill.  The terrain was more moon scape, the elevation much too high for most things to grow well, and small snow banks dotted the country side.  I thought that we had a good distance to go, so when we pulled into a perfect alpine cirque and questioned a resting backpacker, I was shocked to find that we had already reached our day’s destination.  I’m sure that we had made Marion Lake in record time, breaking Carl Lewis’s long standing record.  

The evening at the lake was almost magical.  The setting, a small, aquamarine colored lake below the steep cliffs of a major mountain, was impressive, but our campsite, a few yards up from the lake, was even better.  A small brook gurgled past our tents on one side, while off the other was a thousand foot drop off into the North Fork of Granite Creek.  Pet deer grazed 20 feet from our site.  

August 17 - Lower Granite Canyon 

5 hours/ 7 miles

The full moon of the previous night made sleeping a challenge, so I didn’t wake up until 7:00 a.m.  Jim, as usual, had secured our packs and bear proof food containers, making waking up easier than it ever is at home.

We lazed about camp that morning, leisurely drinking our coffee and wolfing down granola and breakfast bars until about 9:00 a.m., when the caffeine finally kicked in and we broke camp like a wayward bunch of Marines on a mission.  

The early going was amazing, with the same brilliant array of wild flowers and huge, vibrant green meadows interspersed with small stands of lodge pole pine.  The meandering creek and towering mountain walls of the canyon filled out this living post card.

At one point, we happened upon a cow moose and her calf placidly dining along a hillside a few yards above the trail.  Even though we stood there for minutes on end, taking pictures and talking at full volume, mom and the baby couldn’t have cared less.  All they were interested in was eating, paying less attention to us than the black flies buzzing their heads.

We stopped an hour or so down the trail to rest at a rustic park service cabin, pumping more water and injecting small parcels of fuel into our bodies.  Again, the setting was spectacular and character of the old cabin made one want to stay there indefinitely.  It was so cool.

The hours rolled by and with the loss in elevation the vegetation grew denser and the rocky walls of the canyon closed in around us.  Huge rock slides dotted the terrain and the creek became a fast moving collection of small water falls and log jams.  An occasional fat marmot would bleat at us, before scrambling for cover.

Kim, walking like a woman possessed, led the way down the valley.  Jim followed and I brought up the rear, stopping to take the occasional picture and dine on raspberries and huckleberries.  As she was wheeling around a particularly sharp corner, I heard her gasp and saw that both of them were frozen in their tracks.   Just a few feet away stood a very large bull moose, who had been laying down, but was now on its feet and looking at us with challenging eyes.  We held our ground thinking that he would eventually move off the trail. Taunting us, by lazily snacking on the shrubs that lined the course, he would occasionally return to his glare, as to say, “Come on, baby, bring it on!  Just try to walk by me.”  It appeared that he would never move, so after a few minutes of impatience, we went up the trail and found another route around him, leaving some other fool to be his next WWF opponent.

Finally, worn to the bone, we made it to the end of the camping zone, only to find a group of cheaters had taken the last good spot, camping for a day beyond their permit.  I begrudgingly walked back up the trail looking for another home for the night, finally finding a marginal spot near a torrent of rushing water.  This site was to be known as the “Airport,” as you couldn’t really talk without yelling, due to the high volume sound of the crashing water emanating from the nearby stream.

Again, we chatted the night away, Jim dazzling us with police stories of his days on the San Diego force.  Amazingly, we made it to 9:00 p.m., a full half hour beyond our scheduled bed time and actually after dark.

August 18 - Death Canyon Trailhead

4.5 hours/ 7 miles

Poor Jim had mangled his toes on the previous day’s steep descent into the lower reaches of Granite Canyon, making every step a painful reminder of the heavy pack on his back and the smallness of his boots.  Facing the possibility of losing a toenail, we directed him to hike out the Granite Canyon Trailhead, while Kim and I went up and over the hillside and around Phelps Lake to the trailhead.  At first, Kim wasn’t so happy that we were hiking all the way back to the Death Canyon Trailhead.  She thought it stupid to be taking the rolling, and somewhat boring valley trail, adding an additional five miles, when we could have joined Jim for a two mile stroll to our car.  “We should have taken two cars, David,” she complained, as the day warmed and the trail took another steep ascent.  Thankfully, the huckleberries were abundant and I was hungry, so I escaped most of her wrath by hanging back harvesting the little purple sugar pills and stuffing them into my oversized mouth.  

When we finally made it to our Toyota and were driving out the narrow, ultra-bumpy, extremely rutted road to the asphalt, we found Jim bounding toward us with new found energy.  “He’s thinking about a Blizzard,” I stated.  

“Yep,” Kim replied, “that’s a Dairy Queen walk if I’ve ever seen one.”

A few short minutes later, after returning our bear canisters to the visitor center, we found ourselves in Jackson sitting at the Dairy Queen, drenched in dried sweat, dust, and other caked on filth, relishing every bite of soft ice cream mixed with various high calorie, tasty additives.  It was a fitting celebration for a very successful, very enjoyable backpack adventure, the Greater Teton Death March of 2008.