Snacks, Bear Spray & Just Enough Inspiration – Hiking the Tetons
Hiking in the Tetons is a wonderful adventure. It’s also a little more of an adventure because Backroads guides aren’t allowed to guide us on the trails inside Grand Teton National Park. So basically, Backroads loads all the routes onto an app, fills our backpacks with as many snacks as we can carry, makes sure we have water and bear spray, drops us off at the trailhead and says, “See you later!” I had a vague recollection of dropping Cam off at Six Flags years ago using essentially the same parenting strategy. Here’s some money. Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be back at 4. Except now I’m the one being dropped off, I’m in charge of my mother, and instead of teenagers running around unsupervised, there are bears. I’m not sure who approved this.
Our first hike was the Jenny Lake Loop—or technically half of the loop because we took a boat across Jenny Lake and hiked back around. The boat ride turned out to be an experience all by itself. Our captain pulled away from the dock and went through the usual safety briefing about life jackets and what to do in an emergency, even though the lake was as smooth as glass. Then he got to the information that really got my attention. There are no bathrooms on the other side of the lake, and apparently there are now too many people visiting for everyone to just poop in the woods. “But we’ve got bags,” he told us.
Well, now I had questions. Lots of questions. I really wanted to ask for one of these bags because I needed to understand the logistics. I’m very familiar with poop bags. I own dogs. But when Carmen and Freddie poops, I put it in a bag and then put the bag in a trash can. There are no trash cans on the other side of Jenny Lake. So what exactly happens next? Are you hiking around carrying your poop? Does the poop ride back on the boat with you? Are there people standing in line at the dock holding little bags of poop while everyone politely pretends not to notice? And where do you put it while you hike? Does it go IN your backpack? Because I had my lunch in there.
I was still mentally working through the poop-bag situation when the captain moved on to dehydration. Apparently they regularly have to bring dehydrated hikers back across the lake, so he pointed out coolers on the dock where everyone could refill their water bottles and repeatedly reminded us to drink water. At which point a woman asked, “Well, where can I buy water?” I just stared at her. Lady. He literally just explained that if you poop, you have to carry it around with you. You think there’s a 7-Eleven over there? The captain, who clearly has dealt with tourists before, calmly told her they would find her a water bottle she could use. I assume there is a giant Lost & Found bin somewhere filled with water bottles people have left behind and they just hand them out to the unprepared. Meanwhile, I was sitting there feeling pretty smug because I had enough supplies in my backpack to survive until Tuesday.
Once off the boat, we hiked up to Hidden Falls and then started toward Inspiration Point. We made it partway up before it became very clear that Inspiration Point involved more elevation than Mom was interested in experiencing. So, we stopped, looked around and decided we had received enough inspiration. Frankly, I felt inspired. Mom felt inspired. There was no reason to overdo it. Inspiration is very personal.
We headed back down and started hiking around Jenny Lake toward the boat launch, which ended up being a little over three miles and exactly the right amount of hiking without killing my mother. That has become one of my primary measurements for this trip: beautiful scenery, good exercise, mother still alive. Successful hike.
Ed and Eileen had told us that if we made it up to Inspiration Point and continued into Cascade Canyon, we would lose most of the crowds. Since we had chosen to limit our inspiration, we stayed around the lake with everyone else. This gave me plenty of time to study the different types of people who go hiking in a national park. First, there are people like me, who apparently believe we may be called upon to survive in the wilderness indefinitely. In my backpack I had a raincoat, rain pants, my lunch, Mom’s lunch, water, sunscreen, snacks, hiking poles in case Mom needed extra poles, bear spray and an extra battery for my phone. I’m pretty sure Lewis and Clark packed less.
Then you have another category of hiker wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, carrying one half-full bottle of water. Nothing else. No backpack. No rain gear. No food. No bear spray. These people fascinate me. Either they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing or they have reached a level of inner peace I will never know. Meanwhile, I’m carrying enough emergency equipment to establish a FEMA command center beside Jenny Lake. I will say that I did not see anyone hiking in flip-flops that day. But I was actively looking because I knew someone would eventually disappoint me.
A few fun facts about Jenny Lake: glaciers carved Cascade Canyon and the lake basin roughly 12,000 years ago during the last ice age. The lake covers about 1,191 acres and reaches more than 420 feet deep, which is another fact I’m glad I learned AFTER taking the boat across it. And naturally, there is a gift shop. But if you visit, make sure to go into the Crandall Studio, the historic cabin that belonged to artist and photographer Harrison Crandall. They’ve turned it into a small gallery with some of his work and contemporary pieces, and there is a wonderful little gift shop tucked in the back that hardly anyone visits. Finding an uncrowded gift shop in a national park made me feel like I had discovered my own secret trail.
After our hike, we headed to Teton Village and checked into Hotel Terra, where we were staying for TWO NIGHTS. Two nights! At this point that felt like buying a vacation home. We had been moving hotels every night, which sounds exciting until you realize it means constantly asking yourself which suitcase compartment currently contains your underwear. For the next 48 hours, I could take something out of my suitcase without immediately having to put it back. I could leave my shoes on the floor. I could charge my headphones and not worry about abandoning it in Wyoming. This was luxury.
On the drive to the hotel, we were all watching for wildlife when we noticed several cars stopped ahead and then saw a wildlife management vehicle with two people in bright yellow trying to keep traffic moving. Obviously, there was something out there. One of them pointed toward some bushes, and we saw something brown and furry while the bushes moved around quite a bit. Did we actually see enough of the animal to identify it as a bear? No. Could it have been something else? Possibly. Are we counting it as a bear? Absolutely. I did not come all the way to Wyoming to tell people I saw some bushes move.
That evening, Mom and I took the gondola up the mountain for dinner, and on the way up we saw a moose. Already worth the ticket. The view from the top was beautiful, and on the ride back down I was completely focused on finding more wildlife. Sure enough, we saw a mama bear with her cub AND another moose. I was so excited that I immediately took approximately 47 terrible pictures. Every photo looked like photographic evidence submitted to prove the existence of Bigfoot.
Naturally, I suggested that we simply ride the gondola all the way back up and come down again so I could try to get better pictures. Mom looked at me with the saddest puppy-dog eyes and said, “But that will be another 30 minutes, and I really want to go to bed.” Apparently a mom who has been hiking for several days has limits. Who knew? So I agreed to go back to the hotel and accept my blurry bear pictures.
But Mother Nature apparently recognized that I had made the correct daughterly decision, because the next morning after breakfast, a mama moose and her baby appeared right outside our hotel. They couldn’t have been more than about 15 yards away. I kept my distance, because unlike some national park visitors I have absolutely no desire to appear on the evening news under the headline WOMAN APPROACHES MOOSE FOR BETTER INSTAGRAM PHOTO. But I got some great pictures, and I felt completely redeemed.
Our second full day in the Tetons took us to the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve for a hike near Phelps Lake. By now, I should have known that Ed and Eileen weren’t simply going to load us up with snacks, water, bear spray and hiking poles and release us into the wilderness. Apparently, we also needed education. And what better way to teach adults history than to make them perform a skit in a parking lot?
Eileen started looking for volunteers, and somehow I ended up with what I considered a starring role as Dave Spalding, who attempted to homestead near Phelps Lake in 1903. Dave quickly discovered that rocky mountain soil wasn’t exactly ideal for farming, so eventually he sold the property to people who wanted to turn it into a dude ranch, reportedly with the condition that he be buried on the land. Apparently Dave is still buried somewhere out there. Then John D. Rockefeller Jr. came along and quietly began buying up property in the area because he wanted to preserve the land without upsetting all the locals while he did it. Eventually much of the land was donated for conservation and became part of Grand Teton National Park. I feel fairly confident somebody videotaped my performance, so if you would like to see the exact moment my acting career both began and ended, let me know.
The Rockefeller Preserve is absolutely beautiful. The trail winds through the woods and eventually reaches Phelps Lake, which is stunning. The parking lot at this trailhead is very small, so it limits how many people can access it at one time. Unless, of course, you’re traveling with Backroads. Then they just pull up, open the van doors and release us. By this point, I had stopped questioning the process. Give me my snacks, tell me where the shuttle is and point me toward the woods.
This was our last hiking day, and Mom was understandably worn out. It had been several days of walking at higher elevations than we’re used to and navigating trails that sometimes required more attention than putting one foot in front of the other. So we stuck together, went at our own pace and stopped whenever we needed to. Mom did great, although I suspect by this point she was seriously questioning the word “Easygoing” in the title of the Backroads trip we had selected. In my defense, there were other trips labeled “Challenging,” so clearly this could have been worse.
When we got back to Teton Village, we sat outside in Adirondack chairs and ate our picnic lunch. Teton Village in summer is exactly what you imagine a ski resort should look like without snow—mountains, flowers, kids playing, people wandering around and everyone looking considerably more relaxed than we did when we left the trail.
And sitting there, I realized we had done it. Mom had hiked the Tetons. I had managed to keep Mom alive while hiking the Tetons. We had seen moose, bears, a baby bear, a baby moose, waterfalls, lakes and some suspiciously moving bushes that I am absolutely counting as additional wildlife. I had made my theatrical debut, carried approximately 40 pounds of things we never needed and spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about how strangers transport their poop.
And after all of that, neither Mom nor I ever needed one of those bags. Sometimes it’s the little victories.
