“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
This hike began with a very solid dose of stoicism for me. As the summer moves through the Tetons, I still have several very long hikes to complete, and I am motivated to get into the high country. With that in mind, I planned to do a loop up Granite Canyon and back down Open Canyon over the weekend. It didn’t occur to me to check the feasibility of this until the Friday night before I planned to leave at dawn. It’s a long 20-mile loop up and over some tricky mountain divides, and according to some vague trip reports I read, still very much covered in snow. I am mildly comfortable on snow with an ice axe and crampons, but not really by myself, in the middle of nowhere, someplace I’ve never been.
I decided to scrap that original plan and hike / jog from Taggart Lake to Teton Village which I think is about 12 miles. From there, I was going to take the bus back to town for a solid nature / urban assault route. Clearly the tourist season is in full swing here because even at 6:45 AM the Moose entry gate of the Park was packed and I had to wait for about 15 – 20 minutes just to enter the Tetons. Running a bit behind schedule, I hurried to the Taggart Lake Trailhead. As I set out on the trail I immediately came across a sign that stating that the trail I selected was closed for “human safety and resource protection.” Human safety? I’ve never seen that ominous of a warning on a Park sign before, and wanting to protect my resources, I decided that I needed to go somewhere else.
Remembering my new found Stoicism and realizing that I couldn’t control any of this, I tried to accept the change of plans and stay positive – even as I watched the parade of cars pass by me at the trailhead as I considered my options . At this point, I have crossed off many of the lower valley hikes, and I didn’t want to “waste” an early Saturday morning on something short and easy. Also, for my original goal, I wasn’t planning to bring water or carry a pack, so I was unprepared for something too long or challenging, so I searched my brain for an alternative. Eventually, I decided on Garnet Canyon, so headed for the Lupine Meadows Trailhead.
Arriving at Lupine Meadows, the lot was nearly full. I essentially found the last parking space, and it seemed that people were everywhere. Undeterred, I leapt out and began hauling ass up the trail in a fast race-walk pace. Aimee and I had done most of this trail earlier in the summer, but we took the right fork to head to Amphitheater Lake. Today, I was going to take the left fork up Garnet Canyon. Since I had already hiked most of this trail this summer, I wasn’t super thrilled to be doing it again, and I just sort of wanted to get it over with.
I made my way up the familiar and gradual trail until I reached the switchbacks that allow for some pretty quick elevation gain. This trail serves as major artery for climbers attempting the Grand and other peaks, people heading to Amphitheater Lake, and others heading to Delta Lake. Needless to say, it was packed – solidly crowded. Fixated on getting up and back quickly I forged ahead and passed several groups.
I wasn’t grumpy or annoyed – just mildly peeved that my plans hadn’t worked out. As soon as I made it into Garnett Canyon though, I forgot all about that. I had been up here once years before when I climbed the Middle and South Tetons with my friend Michael, and I totally forgot how spectacular it is. Garnett Canyon is absolutely beautiful, and in my opinion, a much better destination that Surprise and Amphitheater Lakes. As soon as I rounded a corner to arrive in the mouth of the canyon, a spectacular alpine canyon exploded into view from nowhere. It really is something.
The official trail ends as it enters the canyon, but I continued a bit further to a place called the Meadows. It is a backcountry camping area for climbers, and is where Michael and I camped on our climbing adventure of the Middle and South a few years back. It’s a really special but fragile spot, and I spent a while there just soaking up the views, and recalling my previous trip there.
In fact, I spent the majority of my time at the Meadows and nearly the whole way back thinking of that climbing trip and of Michael. When I first moved to Jackson, he was working at the surgery center, and we became friends over our mutual love of the mountains and climbing. He was (and probably still is) a climber and mountaineer and I wanted to be a climber and a mountaineer. Over the years, I’d read about climbers, followed Nat Geo climbing adventures, watched documentaries, obsessed over Everest stories, read Rock and Ice magazine, and climbed some in the past. I even climbed the Grand in 2000 with Aimee and her brothers. Michael, however, was an actual climber. He climbed pretty relentlessly in the Tetons. As far as I know, he climbed at least every weekend.
Eventually, he agreed to take me climbing, and he decided that we should climb both the Middle and South Tetons in one attempt. We would hike up to the Meadows, camp, get up at 4 AM, climb both mountains the next day, and return back home before dinner. Simple, right?
Here’s the thing about Michael. He’s younger than I am, ex-military, and at the time, in crazy shape, climbing every weekend, unattached, and living in a van. Aimee hugged him hello on the day of the climb, and later told me that it felt like hugging a “piece of iron.” He’s just way more badass than I am.
What I discovered on that climb is that I like the idea of climbing more than actually doing it. While I did enjoy it overall, I was nervous much of the time and never comfortable. At one point, while summiting the Middle I felt like my head was going to explode. I could barely walk the next day and I even wound up in the ER with a kidney stone a few days later. Meanwhile, Mike had done like three more epic climbs in the Tetons. It honestly wasn’t the physicality of the climb (I had just come back from a 2 week sea-level trip to Italy, so I was jet-lagged and still digesting pizza and red wine), but more the risk that it involves. I just wasn’t comfortable with the exposure and the small, but real threat of falling from a high place.
After that trip, I decided that I was more of a hiker than a climber. I am a father and a husband first, and I like it that way. Do I want to live on a sailboat for a year? Sure. Do I want to still have adventures into my 80s? Yes. Do I want to get buried in an avalanche backcountry skiing? Hell no. Over the years, I have come to realize that I have a reasonably low risk tolerance, and I am ok with that. In that way, I think I know myself. So when I passed several climbers on the trail today, I felt excited for them and their high adventures, but happier for myself that I had a great morning hike and was now heading back down the trail to my family.
Side note: When Michael picked me up for the climb in his van in 2016, he dumped a fairly large bottle of urine in the yard of the house we were renting – a site that the kids and I still joke about to this day. That house is now for sale at the reasonable Jackson price of $5.6M if interested.
Mileage – 9.25 miles
Time – 3 hours, 6 minutes
Animals – none
PS – many