November 29-30, 1975: A Weekend in Los Angeles
	June 8-12, 1975: A Week in Toronto, Canada
	Return to Index for 1975

Leaving Yellowstone National Park via the South Entrance, it wasn't but a few minutes before the spectacular scenery that is Grand Teton National Park came into view.

Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park is located just 10 miles south of Yellowstone. At approximately 480 square miles, the park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile-long Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole. Grand Teton National Park, along with Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding national forests, constitute the almost 18,000,000-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the world's largest intact temperate ecosystems.

Coming down the highway from Yellowstone the view of the Grand Tetons was just incredible, and I fortunately took two single pictures that fit together nicely into a panoramic view:

South    Middle    Grand                            Mount Moran                                        Doane Peak   The Tetons

The human history of the Grand Teton region dates back at least 11,000 years, when the first nomadic hunter-gatherer Paleo-Indians began migrating into the region during warmer months pursuing food and supplies. In the early 19th century, the first white explorers encountered the eastern Shoshone natives. Between 1810 and 1840, the region attracted fur trading companies that vied for control of the lucrative beaver pelt trade. U.S. Government expeditions to the region commenced in the mid-19th century as an offshoot of exploration in Yellowstone, with the first permanent white settlers in Jackson Hole arriving in the 1880s.

We decided to spend the night here so that we could do a hike this afternoon and do some more tomorrow, so we stopped at the Jackson Lake Lodge (just above the inset area in the park diagram at left) to ask about accommodations. We decided to treat ourselves and reserve a cabin down in Teton Village. (In 1975, Teton village was not the busy ski resort that it is today; it was more like a very nice campground with cabins in the place of campsites.)

With a place to stay lined up, we felt free to get some information on hikes we might do in the area that would be short enough that we could do them before dark. The one we settled on was the Hidden Falls hike just south of Jenny Lake. Before we headed down there, we took a short drive to the top of Signal Mountain, a small peak here on the east side of Jackson Lake, and that's where I got these two pictures:

Looking East from Signal Mountain

The Southwest View from Signal Mountain

So that you can orient yourself to the various hikes that we'll do today and tomorrow, I want to expand a section of the park map above, left, so you can see more of the detail of the area of Grand Teton National Park that we covered.

Even though the two hikes we did, today and tomorrow, were down southwest of Jenny Lake, I wanted to show you a larger area of the park so that you could see Signal Mountain as well.

Signal Mountain is a 7700-foot isolated summit, and this provides wonderful views in most directions right from the parking area below the summit. Though located adjacent to the Tetons, Signal Mountain was formed differently and at a different time. The mountain originally was formed by volcanic ashfall from one of the eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot. The peak is also partially a glacial moraine formed by a receding glacier that came south out of the Yellowstone icecap. This same glacier also created neighboring Jackson Lake.

We drove up the 5-mile road to the observation area, where the two pictures above were taken. There is also a trail that goes from the parking area to the summit, but since this is a 7-mile-round-trip trek, we didn't think we should do it, as the views right from the parking area were already pretty neat. But there were a lot of cars parked here, so we knew there must be quite a few people up on the trail.

But we were going to do a shorter hike down by Jenny Lake, so we left the top of Signal Mountain and got over to the park road that runs along the shore of Lake Jackson and then continues on down to Jenny Lake. Along this drive, I stopped to take a couple of additional pictures of the mountains of the Teton Range:

These are the southern mountains in the Teton Range.

Here are Mount Moran on the right, and Grand Teton on the left.

Driving south on the park road, the sun was ahead of us, and so that washed out some of the pictures. But when we got down by Jenny Lake and were able to get out and look behind us, the sunlight was in our favor for a beautiful view of Doane Peak.

The Drive to Jenny Lake

Doane Peak

Doane Peak is about 11,400 feet high, and is the highest point in the northern Teton Range. It is also located here in Grand Teton National Park, west of and across Jackson Lake from Colter Bay Village and Signal Mountain. We were told at the lodge that there were scenic waterfalls in a canyon immediately northeast of the peak, but were then disappointed to find that there are no maintained trails in the area. But this is what prompted me to ask about other waterfalls in the area, which led to a description of Hidden Falls.

Access to the summit involves off trail hiking and scrambling as the top of the mountain is more than 4,500 feet above Jackson Lake. The peak is named for Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane. Doane (1840 – 1892) was a U.S. Army Cavalry Captain, explorer, inventor and Civil War soldier who played a prominent role in the exploration of Yellowstone as a member of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition.

The Washburn Expedition of 1870 explored the region of northwestern Wyoming that two years later became Yellowstone National Park. Led by Henry Washburn and Nathaniel P. Langford, and with a U.S. Army escort headed Doane, the party made detailed maps and observations of the Yellowstone region, explored numerous lakes, climbed several mountains, and observed wildlife. The expedition visited both the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins, and after observing the regularity of eruptions of one geyser, decided to name it Old Faithful, since it erupted about once every 74 minutes.

One member of the expedition, a Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, later wrote a number of articles for a Helena, Montana based newspaper, describing the things the expedition had witnessed. In discussions with other members of the party and in his writing for the newspaper, Hedges was a vocal supporter of setting aside the Yellowstone region as a National Park, an idea originally proposed by former acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher.

Hidden Falls

The Forest Below Hidden Falls

Following the guidance we got at the lodge, we found the Jenny Lake Visitor Center at the southeast corner of Jenny Lake without any trouble at all. The actual hike to Hidden Falls begins at this trailhead which is actually adjacent to a boat dock. At the dock, hikers have a choice to make. They can take the Jenny Lake Trail around the south end of Jenny Lake, or take the shuttle boat across the lake to the Cascade Canyon Trailhead. The boat cuts-off roughly 2.4 miles of walking each way, and so since it was getting on in the afternoon and we wanted to make sure not to run out of light, we paid the couple of dollars to take the 12-minute shuttle boat across Jenny Lake.

Covering roughly 1191 acres, glacially-carved Jenny Lake is the second largest lake in the Grand Tetons. At 423 feet it's also one of the deepest. The lake was named for a Shoshone Indian named Jenny who assisted with camp logistics during the Hayden Geological Survey of 1872. Nearby Leigh Lake is named for her husband, Richard "Beaver Dick" Leigh, an itinerant trapper and early tour guide who helped guide the Hayden Expedition through the area. In 1876 Jenny and their six children died of smallpox.

Hidden Falls

The Spring 1939 issue of Grand Teton Nature Notes reports that "By far the most popular trail in the park is the lower portion of the Cascade Canyon Trail which leaves Jenny Lake and climbs above Hidden Falls." More than 35 years later that statement still holds true. From the boat dock the trail begins climbing upward through a pristine conifer forest. The little trail guide said we would see a lot of huckleberry patches along this stretch, which is one of the reasons why we would also need to watch out for bears. There were quite a few other people on the trail, and Tony and I were pretty certain we could outrun most of them.

Soon the trail crossed over Cascade Canyon Creek, and at roughly three-tenths of a mile, reached the Valley Trail which also serves as the western portion of the loop hike around Jenny Lake. Just over a half-mile from the boat dock we passed the horse trail, and a short distance later came to the short side trail that leads to Hidden Falls. We turned left here to visit the viewing area of this extremely impressive waterfall.

Hidden Falls is located on Cascade Creek, which at the falls drops approximately 200 feet near the eastern end of Cascade Canyon, and west of Jenny Lake. We very much enjoyed the 1-mile hike to get here, but when we arrived we could see why this is one of the most popular spots in the entire park.

We spent quite a bit of time here at the waterfall. First, we just sat on one of the benches at the base and immersed ourselves in the sight and the sound of the falls- not an experience I have frequently. Then we took another little unofficial trail up to the top of the falls, and again sat there for a while just marveling at what nature has created.

The little guide said that there was another trail that continued for a mile to a spot called Inspiration Point, which certainly sounded attractive, but we thought that this might be cutting it a bit close to get back down to the boat dock and back across the lake before sunset (it was already casting long shadows from the mountains to our west). So we just stayed here for a while and then leisurely worked our way back down to the boat dock and our return trip across the lake.

Back at the car, we headed further south on the park road to get to Teton Village where we checked in to our little cabin. We went out for some supper, and then returned for a good night's sleep.

Amphitheater Lake/Surprise Lake

Today, we are going to spend most of the day doing a long hike to a spot called Surprise Lake. This was one of the hikes mentioned to us at the Lodge yesterday, and it sounded exactly like the kind of hike we had in mind.

In thinking about our trip so far, and after budgeting a proposed schedule for the remainder of the trip, we definitely thought that we had the time to do one really memorable hike here in Grand Teton National Park.

We might have considered that hike to be the one to Hidden Falls, but we didn't even have to break a sweat yesterday to do that trip. Waterfalls are always neat, but there wasn't another one in this part of the park that could be accessed even after walking five or six miles, and we thought that to be overly ambitious.

So we settled for the next best thing- hiking to a lake. At the lodge, we learned about the hike to Amphitheatre Lake which also offered a side trip to an even more pristine location- Surprise Lake. I think they said that the hike all the way to Amphitheatre Lake is three miles one way, and that the trail to Surprise Lake was only another mile. These distances were measured from the south end of Jenny Lake. There was another trailhead for the same hike, but it was further away (and a good deal lower) and so would result in a much more strenuous hike. You can see both today's hike and yesterday's on the extract of the Grand Teton National Park map that I have put at left.

So we've returned to the Jenny Lake Trailhead to begin this particular hike. The hike will take us three miles in and about 1500 feet up into the Tetons, but the trail was advertised as being well-marked. The hike to Surprise lake will be a winding, switched-back, steep-in-places trail. Just as we started out, here are two good views of the Tetons taken in the early morning light:

Efforts to preserve this region as a national park began in the late 19th century, and in 1929 Grand Teton National Park was established, protecting the Teton Range's major peaks. The valley of Jackson Hole remained in private ownership until the 1930s, when conservationists led by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. began purchasing land in Jackson Hole to be added to the existing national park. Against public opinion and with repeated Congressional efforts to repeal the measures, much of Jackson Hole was set aside for protection as Jackson Hole National Monument in 1943. The monument was abolished in 1950 and most of the monument land was added to Grand Teton National Park.

From a ways up the trail, we are looking back towards the east, and you can see Signal Mountain and the Teton-Bridger National Forest in the distance.

Here is a similar view of Signal Mountain and the National Forest, but you can also see Bradley Lake down below. The Snake River runs across in front of Signal Mountain.

About an hour out, we had climbed high enough to get excellent views of the valley east of the Tetons, including both Jenny Lake and Jackson Lake. Of course, the very nearby views of the trail itself were pretty, too. Grand Teton National Park is an almost pristine ecosystem and the same species of flora and fauna that have existed since prehistoric times can still be found here. More than 1,000 species of vascular plants, dozens of species of mammals, 300 species of birds, more than a dozen fish species and a few species of reptiles and amphibians inhabit the park.

In this view, we are looking north along the mountainside, and you can see a part of Jenny Lake in the nearground, and also Jackson Lake further north.

Although Middle Teton was closer, Grand Teton was almost never out of sight on the trail; it was a constant visual companion from when we first began the hike.

When we got high enough, we could see all three mountain peaks, but it seemed as if our views of South Teton were very often obscured. The hike to Amphitheature Lake took about two and a half hours, and was one of the most pleasant hikes I have ever done.

Amphitheatre Lake and Grand Teton

Amphitheatre Lake was all that it was billed to be; it was a simply beautiful, oval-shaped lake in the valley between Middle Teton and Grand Tetoon, and, towering over it to the north was Grand Teton itself.

Grand Teton & Mt. Owen above Amphitheatre Lake

Grand Teton National Park is named for Grand Teton, the tallest mountain in the Teton Range. The naming of the mountains is attributed to early 19th-century French-speaking trappers, who referred to them as "les trois tétons" (the three teats). The French was later anglicized and shortened to Tetons.

At 13,775 feet, Grand Teton rises abruptly more than 7,000 feet above Jackson Hole, almost 850 feet higher than Mount Owen, the second-highest summit in the range. Though in a state of recession, a dozen small glaciers persist at the higher elevations near the highest peaks in the range. Some of the rocks in the park are the oldest found in any American national park and have been dated at nearly 2.7 billion years.

Amphitheater Lake lies in a cirque basin below 11,618-foot Disappointment Peak, which stands almost directly to the west. From this subalpine lake, arguably the most beautiful in the park, you can see, if you look to the west, Middle Teton, Disappointment Peak, Grand Teton, Mt. Owen and Teewinot Mountain, looking from left to right. The lake served as a base camp for many historic first ascents along the north side of Grand Teton. The peak was renamed as Mt. Hayden by the 1872 Hayden Expedition, but most people continued to call it Grand Teton Peak. In 1931 the U.S. Board of Geographic Names recognized its more common name, and then shortened it to Grand Teton in 1970.

Probably the neatest part about the area is that it is relatively easy to go scrambling about on the rocks, and to even climb a good deal further up for some very spectacular shots of the surrounding mountains and valleys. This was taken from about 200 feet above the lake itself, looking South towards Jackson Hole.

From about 400 feet above the lake now, the view of Blacktail Butte, the road to Jackson Hole, and the park visitor center and entrance station. The climbing was pretty easy in most places, although it was just exciting enough to keep it interesting. There were a number of places even I wouldn't go without a rope, and snow in the shadowed areas.

Blacktail Butte (7,688 feet high) is a butte mountain landform rising from Jackson Hole valley. It was originally named Upper Gros Ventre Butte in an early historical survey conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Most of Blacktail Butte is densely forested with a mixed fir forest of lodgepole pine, Douglas fir and Engelmann spruce, with scattered pockets of aspen. There are several large sedimentary rock outcroppings, which are used by rock climbers. This butte is a principal landmark in Jackson Hole, with much of the Jackson Hole valley floor and many portions of the Teton Range visible from its hillsides. The butte is named after black-tailed deer, also known as mule deer. Bighorn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope, and bison are commonly found in the area, along with grizzly bears and gray wolves. Most notably, many thousands of elk cross through the area during their annual migration to and from their winter feeding grounds on the National Elk Refuge.

I have not been to very many places that were as fun to climb around on before; indeed, I really can't think of any. I am not a rock climber, and I probably wouldn't try anything that required equipment, and I certainly wouldn't do anything dangerous, but the worst that might have happened to me here would have been a twisted ankle or something like that.

From another couple of hundred feet up, I can get an even better view, and I can see Taggart Lake down below.

Here is another picture from about the same place, but this view looks directly across Bradley Lake and the valley floor.

In total, I am some 2000 feet higher than at the trailhead, and that makes the views from here quite spectacular. Looking east and south, it's forest and grassland, but looking north and west, the scene is much more forbidding.

I climbed back around the rock column where I took the previous pictures so I could get some views of the mountains themselves. This is Middle Teton, recognizable by the notch at the peak. The glaciers stay year-round; a heavy snow was due, as a matter of fact, shortly after we were to leave.

In this view, from a little different vantage point, you can see Middle Teton on the left and Grand Teton beyone it in the background.

Middle Teton (12,809 feet high) is the third highest peak in the Teton Range, immediately southwest of Grand Teton; the two are separated from one another by the lower saddle, a broad high ridge at 11,600 feet. The Middle Teton Glacier is located on the eastern slopes of the peak. Middle Teton is a classic pyramidal shaped alpine peak and is sometimes included as part of the Cathedral Group of high Teton peaks. The 40-mile long Teton Range is the youngest mountain chain in the Rocky Mountains, and began their uplift 9 million years ago, during the Miocene.

Several periods of glaciation have carved Middle Teton and the other peaks of the range into their current shapes. From the lower saddle, a distinctive feature known as the black dike appears as a straight line running from near the top of the mountain down 800 feet. The black dike is a basaltic intrusion that occurred long after the surrounding rock was formed.

The first recorded ascent of Middle Teton was by Albert R. Ellingwood on August 23, 1923, via Ellingwood Couloir on the south side of the peak. Ellingwood made the first ascent of South Teton the same day.

Surprise Lake

We had some information from the Lodge that near Amphitheatre Lake there was a side trail that led another 200 or so feet up and then down over a ridge to another, much smaller lake. It's name was "Surprise Lake", since folks were surprised to find another lake here that wasn't on their official trail guides.

So I followed the instructions from the Lodge, found the trail, scrambled up the rocks, and came across the ridgeline to get this pretty amazing view looking down at the lake. You can see that the rocks afford ample opportunity for climbing.

I clambered down to the shore of Surprise Lake because I could see from my high-up vantage point that there was a shortcut that I could take to get back across the ridge to Amphitheatre Lake. But before I went down, I took some more pictures from this, about the highest point that I got to.

From above Surprise Lake, this view looks out across the valley.

Taken on the way down to the lake, this shot again looks northward, past Jackson Lake, to Yellowstone.

This view looks northeast towards Yellowstone.

From a slightly different point, here's another view of the Tetons.

In the pictures I've taken, you've seen numerous views of "Jackson Hole", which is the valley between the Teton Mountain Range and the Gros Ventre Range in Wyoming sitting near the border of Idaho. The term "hole" was used by early trappers or mountain men, who primarily entered the valley from the north and east and had to descend along relatively steep slopes, giving the sensation of entering a hole. These low-lying valleys surrounded by mountains and containing rivers and streams are good habitat for beaver and other fur-bearing animals. I haven't used that name a great deal, since most people associate it with the actual town of Jackson, or the various ski resorts in the area.

The Shore of Amphitheatre Lake

Coming down to the shore of Surprise Lake (see the picture below), I could see that the hillsides around this lake were all fairly steep, and that lining the lake shore there were numerous large boulders that have rolled down those hillsides and into the lake itself.

The Shore of Surprise Lake

We spent a little time at Surprise Lake, and then followed a second trail that I'd scoped out above to get back over the ridgeline to Amphitheatre Lake. Much of the western end of Amphitheatre Lake (where it backs up to the mountains) was a hillside covered by rock slides (see picture at right). These are caused by the action of the winter snow, or by wind and water erosion. While all the rocks may look like small boulders and pebbles, most of them are big enough to stand on.

Supposedly, at the height of the summer, Amphitheatre Lake can be quite crowded, as there are quite a lot of visitors to Grand Teton National Park who are in good enough shape to make the trek up here. It is also a very well-marked trail, and the trail guide was quite specific, so I am told that families will come as a group. Actually, from our experience, if you take it slow and don't try to race up the trail, most anyone who isn't winded from just walking can make the trek up here. And the reward if they do is this idyllic setting, with not one but two alpine lakes as your destination. For our part, we were very glad that we'd decided to do this particular hike, and after coming so far, we spent a fair amount of time here.

The Shore of Amphitheatre Lake

So we worked our way back around to the eastern end of Amphitheatre Lake, where you can again get a view of the rockslides at the far end of the water (see picture at left). There are trails that lead from here up into the mountains, but these are backcountry trails, not suitable for day hikers like ourselves. (Even so, one of the pictures above [and you can match up some of those big boulders to see this] was taken from a point on that far cliff, out of the picture to the left.)

Middle Teton and Grand Teton

Grand Teton, at 13,775 feet, is the highest point of the Teton Range, and the second highest peak in Wyoming. The Teton Range is a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, which extend from southern Alaska to northern New Mexico.

There is a disagreement over who first climbed Grand Teton. Nathaniel P. Langford and James Stevenson claimed to have reached the summit on July 29, 1872, but some believe their description and sketches match the summit of The Enclosure, a side peak of Grand Teton.

The Enclosure is named after a man-made palisade of rocks on its summit, probably constructed by Native Americans. Mountaineer and author Fred Beckey believes that the two climbed the Enclosure because their description matches it, because their description does not accurately describe the true summit, because their account does not mention the formidable difficulties found just above the Upper Saddle, and finally, because it was traditional with members of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 to build a cairn in such a place, but no such cairn was found when William O. Owen reached the summit in 1898.

Near the end of our time at the lake, I took my shoes off to go wading a (very) short distance out into the lake itself, just to confirm that the water was, indeed, very cold. The water is also very clear, although the bottom cannot be seen at all.

Note:
I have looked, but cannot find a reliable figure relating to how deep the lake is, but my guess, looking at the slope of the shores all the way around, is that it is not more than a hundred feet deep in the very center.

We didn't leave the lake until mid-afternoon; we'd put such effort into getting up here that it seemed a shame to rush our visit in any way. The trail leaves the eastern shore of the lake and immediately starts a fairly steep descent, and the picture at left is a view looking back up to the beginning of the trail down. The picture is dark because the sun is down behind the rocks.

I thought that the side trip up to the lake had been the neatest thing we had done thus far, and I thought that a vacation to this particular spot, without all the other traveling, would have been well worth it. There were so few people, that it seemed I was the only one there, as Tony did not clamber around much with me but chose to stay by the shore of Amphitheatre Lake. The day was perfect, although snow had been forecast. One of these days I will come back and spend the allowable week up here- maybe even with a tent and stuff.

Here are the last two pictures I have from our day in Grand Teton National Park:

From the trail down, a view of Blacktail Butte and Jackson Hole.

We are almost back at the car, and these are the Tetons.

Our time in the Grand Teton National Park was thoroughly enjoyable, but we had much more to see and do.

The Trip to Idaho Falls

For the rest of the day, we would be traveling to Idaho Falls, and we intended to spend the night somewhere near there. So from the trailhead parking area near Jenny Lake, we drove south out of Grand Teton National Park and down to Jackson, Wyoming. There, we picked up scenic highway Wyoming 22 west, which went through Wilson and on to Victor, Idaho.

At Victor we took Idaho Highway 31 to Swan Valley, and then picked up US Highway 26 all the way to Idaho Falls. Particularly for a Chicago boy, everything seemed very, very scenic.

Just inside Idaho I got this view of the Grand Teton National Park, a long way off in the distance.

This is a view of the farmland in the Eastern part of Idaho. In its own way, it is spectacular- much more so than the flat plains of the Midwest.

At Swan Valley, we found ourselves in a broad, high plain- the Snake River Plain- that stretches across southern Idaho, punctuated by all kinds of volcanic geological formations, as well as a few National Forests. This entire part of Idaho is about a mile above sea level.

For maybe forty miles past Swan Valley along Idaho Highway 26, we were paralleling the Snake River, crossing and recrossing it a few times, and the late afternoon light I got a picture of one of the places where it separates into multiple channels.

The Snake River is 1,078 miles long, and the largest tributary of the Columbia River. The Snake River rises in western Wyoming and empties into the Columbia River in Washington State. Its drainage basin encompasses parts of six U.S. states and takes in most of the country's active volcanic areas. Gigantic glacial-retreat flooding episodes that occurred during the previous Ice Age carved out canyons, cliffs and waterfalls along the middle and lower Snake River. Two of these catastrophic flooding events, the Missoula Floods and Bonneville Flood, significantly affected the river and its surroundings.

Prehistoric Native Americans lived along the Snake starting more than 11,000 years ago; salmon from the Pacific Ocean spawned by the millions in the river, and were a vital resource. By the time Lewis and Clark explored the area, the Nez Perce and Shoshone were the dominant Native American groups in the region. Sign language used by the Shoshones representing weaving baskets was misinterpreted to represent a snake, giving the Snake River its name.

An influx of settlers to this area led to commercialization of the river for hydroelectricity and navigation; this had a significant negative impact on the river's once-tremendous salmon runs. We stayed overnight in Idaho Falls, and broke routine and ate out (Mexican, I believe). Idaho Falls is a pleasant place, but offering nothing out of the ordinary.

So what interesting and/or beautiful places will we see tomorrow? To find out, just click the button below:

	November 29-30, 1975: A Weekend in Los Angeles
	June 8-12, 1975: A Week in Toronto, Canada
	Return to Index for 1975