People often ask me which is my favorite national park. Before we started on this epic adventure, I always said Grand Teton. Now, after visiting a dozen or so parks since January, I can confidently say my favorite is still Grand Teton.
I’ve always been drawn to mountains, to scale their summits and ski their slopes, to admire their snow-capped peaks from afar and yearn for them when it had been far too long since my last visit.
There’s no other place I can think of where the majesty of the mountains is so front and center as in Grand Teton National Park. There are no foothills between the end of the plains and the rise of the Teton Range. The mountain rise 6,000 to 7,000 feet straight up, a wall of rock with jagged tops, a natural skyline that puts any man-made city scape to shame. Wherever you travel within the park, the mountains are always in sight.
Point of fact, there is only one Grand Teton (and yes, it was named by lonely French trappers with the french word for breast). I will look at you with righteous indignation if you ever refer to them as the Grand Tetons.
I had the great fortune of climbing the Grand about 10 years ago with a group of climbing friends from Oregon. It remains one of my favorite summits ever.
It was still a bit early for climbing when visited in June, but the park has plenty of great hiking as well. The trails around Jenny Lake, while beautiful, are packed with tourists, aided by a boat that crosses the lake and cuts two miles off the trails. I had hiked those extra two miles to get around the lake on my way into Cascade Canyons. It took another two or three miles before the crowds started to thin. The trail runs more than 6 miles along a creek through the forest into a large alpine bowl carved out by glaciers. Along the way I saw three moose.
Other trails in the park provide a lot more solitude. I hiked up to Signal Mountain meeting just a couple of other hikers along the way. Maybe that’s because the previous weekend a hiker on that trail was mauled by a grizzly mama protecting her cub. She attacked so fast he hadn’t even had a chance to use his bear spray. His life was saved only when the sow inadvertently bit down on the spray canister during her attack. The can exploded in a cloud of pepper spray chasing the bear away.
The park service shut down the trail for a few days. I had heard about the attack but didn’t realize I was hiking the same trail till I got back. I didn’t see any bears.
Bears generally only attack when threatened, protecting a cub or a kill, or startled. I try to avoid those scenarios by indiscriminately yelling, “Yo, Bear!” every couple of minutes.
People talk about Yellowstone as a great place to see wildlife, but the megafauna in Grand Teton are just as plentiful. In our week in the park, I was treated to moose, grizzly, black bear, elk, bison, marmot and pine marten sightings without the help of binoculars or a spotting scope.
All told, I hiked about 50 miles of trails over six days. We didn’t even get to participate in many of the park’s other offerings — cycling, paddling, mountaineering or skiing.
I’m open to the possibility that maybe a week in a park like Yosemite or North Cascades might supplant Grand Teton as my favorite national park. But right now, it’s a high bar for them to cross.
Days: 136
Miles Traveled: 19,921
Next stop: Yellowstone National Park
