Grand Teton
Sleeping on a boulder
We woke up on the Jackson Lake, packed a few days of food, went to Jenny Lake Ranger Station to get a hiking permit, parked the old Ford next to the nearby String Lake, and started hiking.
We had already bought a bear spray in Yellowstone, and the rangers kindly gave us another one, so we had one each. They also lent us food canisters, two large boxes made of rock solid plastic to prevent bears from eating our tasty but not too smelly food.
We started hiking up the Paintbrush Canyon, climbing amongst a beautiful pine forest, along torrent and lakes. I prepared some tea while waiting for Trevor. He had to go back few hundred meters to find the hat he had lost. On his way back, he spotted a black bear, eating some berries just a few meters from the trail!
Paintbrush Divide, 3.250 m
We kept going up, outside the forest and along beautiful lakes, all the way up to Paintbrush Divide, a pass at 3.250 m elevation. We found large snow patches on the way, it had been snowing only a few days before. On the other side of the pass, we went down towards Lake Solitude and pitched the campsite next to a large boulder, overlooked by the 4.000 m Tetons.
Flowers everywhere
At around 2.500 m, the night in the North Fork of the Cascade Canyon, lighten up by the full Moon, was magical. The next morning, we went down Cascade Canyon, filled with flowers brought by the recent rain.
Grey clouds were rolling in, the rain was starting, and the temperature dropping, so we took the safest path. Instead of continuing up and around the Tetons, we kept going down, all the way back to String Lake.
Hiking in Grand Teton had a special taste for me. It reminded me of the wonderful summertimes in the French Alps when I was a kid. Plants, animals, rocks: everything feels somehow familiar, but is also very different. Like exploring a new planet that looks like home. Less famous than the black and grizzly bears, we met the adorable pikas, and I spent long moments observing them, hopping from stone to stone, stocking up piles of dry grass.
Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We were already back in town. At the end of the streets, ski slopes everywhere. They get up to seven months of snow here, lucky them! Here Trevor took one of these life changing decisions: instead of going back East towards Chicago, he would keep driving West to settle in Portland, Oregon! All the best Trevor! I started looking for a roof to rest a few days before hitch-hiking South, direction Utah.