Issue 029:
GRAND TETONS
Backpacking with the Boys
I’m back from a series of activities and I’m fired up to tell you what I’ve been up to! It has been a whirlwind couple of days realizing what I just subjected myself to. At the end of September on the 26th, I ran Boulderthon in Boulder, Colorado. I’m not particularly fond of the marathon as a race, but I do appreciate the distance as a standard measurement of fitness for long distance runners. What I was proud of in myself was my consistency and relative comfort throughout, holding a steady 8 minute mile the entire way. Not chasing anything, not expecting anything in myself, just being present and being strong and having fun within my abilities. That’s what I value in running.
Only two days separate these two pictures. One of me happily done running in Boulder and the other, 10,700+ feet above sea level in the middle of Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.
Roughly a mile uphill from the Cascade Canyon north/south fork split, we settled into our campsite, each wedging themselves between trees and rocks to get a level patch of dirt to sleep on. My bivy was nestled in the rut of a trail providing some cradling effect on my sleeping pad. The day started out at 7am with Mike jumping up to announce the morning.
He reasoned it was better to get up and start moving than to sit still in his tent and remain cold. That night was especially cold by 3am, the deepest point of the night settling somewhere in the 30s. After Jonathan and I ate our “sludge,” his word for our dehydrated meals, and our campfire coffee, we had the largest ascent of the trip ahead of us as we left Paintbrush Canyon up and over to Lake Solitude by 11:50am. That’s where we rested for an hour to eat lunch.
The views were very striking and vast. I’ve especially enjoyed seeing the Fall colors throughout. As we headed south along Cascade Creek, we came across a moose and its calf bedded in the grass about 50 feet back around 2pm. That was our first on-trail encounter compared to 5 or so we saw just within the town of Jackson Hole.
We took our time. Jonathan collected water, Mike gathered wood and I built and maintained the fire. Most of the wood was wet, but I managed to get a big enough flame going to stage wood to dry before it burned out.