A short story of a day in the Tetons
Eighteen miles total, we started the hike too late in the day. Originally we were going to hike in and hike out about 4.5 miles each way. Then we split up and the adventure began. John and Wes turned around early and according to our calculations we still planned on meeting back at the ferry at Jenny Lake at 7:00PM. After we split up Dan, a long distance runner, and I met a lot of people encouraging us to see water falls just up the trail, and then the lake just up the trail. The name of the trail was Cascade Canyon. It was beautiful --the most prettiest place I've ever seen. We got in one place in the canyon where you could turn a full 360 degrees and see mountains on every side, surrounding us, engulfing us -- awesome. We met a couple people camping in this spot --what a place to wake up to! We made it to Lake Solitude and took a refreshing swim. We were then wondering where the trail went. I thought that the trail was going to go around a mountain but the lake was surrounded by a half cut bowl of mountains. Where do we go from here? Then Dan noticed a diagonal line going way up to the top of the bowl of the mountain. We figured that the walk back would be about the same as going back the way we came so we headed up the mountain. I'll post some pics of this trip soon on Facebook. It was amazing. We finally got to the top and found a plush green grass hill watered by a stream of melted snow. The snow had red algae growing on it. We filled up our water bottles with this water half way up the mountain. I laid down on the snow and made a snow angel and as I was sitting on it I started to think that I could slide down it to save some walking. This is when we needed John and Wes's caution. Dan tried to talk me out of it but I thought that it would be fine -- it was. It was only about a 50 foot patch of snow that led me to a pile of crumbled rocks and I walked down the rest of the 50 feet to the winding trail below. Then Dan started thinking that he was going to do the same thing. I said, "Dan, the safe way is going around on the path." There was one point in the slide that I felt like I was going a bit too fast. There were some questions and instructions and Dan decided that this is what he was going to do. He turned on his camera that was around his neck and started sliding down the snow. Dan was going fine but half way down he got turned sideways and slide into the rocks below. I froze. He did a few cartwheels before miraculously landing on his feet on the path. A couple of fearless kids from Nebraska earned that mountain's respect that day. Dan had some minor scraps on his back, shoulders, knees, elbows, and hands. He missed hitting his head and he was also happy that his camera was unscathed. He was ok! Wow! I feel very stupid for what I decided to do that day, but that's the story as humbling as it may be. Now we were in the Paintbrush Canyon by Holly Lake and met some campers that let us call John and Wes. It was then that we found out that we had the key to the pickup's ignition and they just had the door key so they couldn't come and pick us up once we made it to the nearest road at String Lake. The sun was on it's way down and we had seven miles to go. The campers told us with a laugh that we would have to hurry. Dan and I jogged some and walked some. Before the sun went down Dan sprained his ankle that he has had problems with for years. He was still able to walk and jog on it but he continued to roll it as we went down the rocky trail. Dan thought that we would have to continue to talk loudly as we walked down the near dark mountain trail so we both shared our scriptures that we have been memorizing. Dan shared 1 Peter and Romans 6 I shared verses from Philippians and Psalm 118 and shared worship songs. We heard big animals moving in the brush and some screaming things on the way back. Dan had a 40mm. that he actually fired into the woods at one point -- again Nebraska boys earning the respect of a dark mountain that night. "Just keep going.", I would say as Dan was wanting to stop and see what he heard in the trees. Once we made it to String Lake we saw lights peering into the woods. I thought that it was the search party that John and Wes sent for us but it was the lights of cars from a nearby campsite. We flagged down a car and a young man gave us a ride 10 miles up to our campsite. Dan and I were thankful to be back at the camp. John and Wes were relieved and were glad that they didn't have to send a search party which they where a half an hour away from doing.
That was the only dramatic thing that happened on the trip. This was day 7 of 8. I have another long story about tracking down my bag that had my wallet in it that I left in a group of Spaniards RV and an incident concerning a coon with a shoe fetish, but I can save that for another post.
