On our free day, five of the six UBS-sponsored volunteers talked each other into taking a monster hike on Crags Peak trail. It's a 2,700 foot vertical climb into a "hanging canyon" and beyond. To get to the trailhead, we borrowed a van, drove to Grand Teton National Park, and took a ferry across Jenny Lake. It's fed by springs rushing down from the Tetons, and is beautifully clear and very cold.
We picked our way to the top, first on a steep path, and then across a boulder field. Someone suggested that we go "mountain goat style", leaping from boulder to boulder, which did speed things up. The altitude slowed us down as we went higher and the air thinned out.
It snowed late into the season in the Tetons this year, and we hit the snow line a third of the way up, some of it turned pink by a form of bacteria.
Three and a half hours after we'd started out, we stopped for lunch at a green lake fed by melting snow. Two brave members of our party jumped in, and headed back to shore just as quickly.
After two sweaty hours downhill, we jumped into the emerald depths of Jenny Lake.
It was a near-perfect day.
1 comment:
Intrepid, Lindsey, intrepid.
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