“Well-being is realized by small steps.”
Zeno
After the hike to Marion Lake I was questioning my ability to pull of the longer hikes that I have coming up the rest of the summer. That hike was 15 miles and completely wore me out, so I was a bit concerned about the looming 20+ milers. During the week, I had heard a report that the snow in the high country had mostly abated – a rumor I was able to confirm from one of my patients on Thursday. Apparently, the only place still holding a significant amount of snow is Paintbrush Divide. With that in mind, I decided to do a long hike up Cascade Canyon to Hurricane Pass and Avalanche Divide.
Earlier in my planning for this summer, I kind of thought I would wind up hiking the Teton Crest Trail, but my new strategy has me not doing that. I did most of the southern part of the Crest Trail hiking to Marion Lake, and this hike will allow me to do the middle part of the Crest Trail in the Park. When I do the Paintbrush-Cascade Loop I’ll complete the northern section of the Crest Trail. This will leave a long hike across the Death Canyon Shelf, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I’ll do that. Also, the Avalanche Divide trail is a terminal trail meaning that it dead-ends at the divide, so I can’t really link it to any other loop hike.
So, the plan for the day was to take the boat across Jenny Lake, head up Inspiration Point through Cascade Canyon to the South Fork Cascade Canyon Trail. From there, I was going to head up to Hurricane Pass and Avalanche Divide eventually returning the way I came back to the boat and Jenny Lake. I was planning on about 20 miles, and my trusty friend, Danny, agreed to join for the day.
We arrived at the boat dock around 6:45 for the first shuttle across Jenny Lake at 7AM. Pro tip, if you are on the first shuttle and can pay with cash, they will only charge you $10 for the round trip rather than $20. Taking the boat across Jenny is always a nice refreshing way to start the day. We hopped off the boat and headed up to Inspiration Point quickly leaving the rest of the boat passengers behind. Inspiration Point is spectacular and never disappoints. We cruised up Cascade Canyon gaining slight and easy elevation all the time. We passed several groups of backpackers coming down the canyon, but even thought this is a popular trail, it didn’t feel too crowded.
After about 4 miles, we reached the Teton Crest Trail junction and headed down the South Fork Cascade Canyon Trail. We gained steady elevation at this point, but it was very manageable and the miles passed quickly. This trail provides amazing views of cascades, waterfalls, alpine meadows, and the surrounding towering mountains. We arrived at the Avalanche Divide Trail junction, but headed up toward Hurricane Pass.
This part was a bit more brutal. We had gained a lot of elevation already, but had to tackle the switchbacks up to the pass, and before long we were on top of Hurricane Pass. The view from here was incredible – Grand, Middle, and South Tetons to the east and Idaho to the west. We hung out for a bit, ate some lunch, and headed back down the way we came.
We wanted (? needed) to hike up to Avalanche Divide, but didn’t want to lose all the elevation we had gained, so we elected to do a little off-piste hiking. Instead of going all the way back to the trail junction we skirted around the base of Schoolroom Glacier and traveled through the alpine meadow in the direction of the trail. Aided by the map on my sweet Garmin Fenix 7 and plain old common sense we intersected the trail to Avalanche Divide after about 25 minutes. The trail was uphill, but not too bad and we reached top of the divide after 30 minutes.
The view from Avalanche Divide is spectacular, and in my opinion, better than the view from Hurricane Pass. We could see the main Teton Range, the northern Tetons, the southern Tetons, and down Avalanche Canyon. We had good views of Kit Lake and Snowdrift Lake, a feature called “The Wall” and Mount Wister. I could have stayed all day, but after a few minutes in awe and some more lunch we about-faced to return the way we came.
One of the amazing aspects of this hike was personally seeing how much water is created through seemingly small amounts of melting snow. Very few snow fields now remain in the high country, and the water that runs off from them is merely a trickle. As the water moves downhill, those small trickles merge together to form small streams. Those small streams coalesce to form slightly bigger streams, and so on. By the time those streams approach the valley floor they are powerful raging creeks. It is the perfect metaphor for how small steps when iterated, will make large impacts. It reminds me that in order to build habits (both bad and good) it’s just a matter of starting small and repeating the process over and over again. Making changes in our lives and in our world can seem overwhelming, but little actions repeated for months, years, and decades will yield large changes. We just have to start small and be patient.
Mileage – 23 miles
Time – 9 hours, 41minutes
Big animals – none (pretty surprising for this trail and how long we were out. Too hot?
People – many
Nice work – not too shabby of a time for the many miles
Love the pictures—only way I’ll get to some of those views. Gonna try part of cascade canyon in a week or so so thanks for the boat tip!
Mom