Summer Vacation Road Trip - Western U.S.

American Road Trip – Summer Vacation

On a clear morning in Wyoming I was startled awake by a bugle reveille echoing through the forest.  “You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up in the morning!”  I lay in my warm sleeping bag while the boy scouts of Treasure Mountain encampment a mile upstream from our campsite rustled about and headed off to breakfast, excited for a day in the Teton Mountains.

I was kind of excited, too.  This was our first night out on a hastily-thrown-together backroads-backpacking-hiking trip in our country’s true west.  Normally, we stay around Alaska during the summer when conditions here are prime for outdoor activities.  But to date, the weather had been cold and wet and thus, we decided to jump ship and head south to join our fellow Americans on summer vacation.  We put together a two week route that would take us into new-for-us national parks, forests, and wilderness areas.

It was peak season in the Lower 48 states and while we ran into associated problems such as no vacancy signs, packed parking lots at some trailheads, and intense heat on the plains, we found mid-summer advantages counterbalanced those negatives.  With a little bit of finesse, we discovered a surprising number of back doors to some of America’s most popular places and by entering through these portals, discovered solitude, beauty, and open space.

Grand Tetons – Western Portal via Jedediah Smith Wilderness Area

Who knew there was a way to view the spectacular Tetons other than coming at them through crazy Jackson?  Matt zeroed in on the Teton Canyon trailhead located along the off-the-beaten-path western flank of the range.  The trailhead camping and the majority of the trail itself are within Caribou-Targhee National Forest and that means fewer people than in nearby, better known, Grand Teton National Park.  We snagged a “dispersed” camp site for free along the bumpy access road and then backcountry camped in Alaska Basin where permits were, likewise, not required.  If we had been set on camping in the park, we would have had to drive all the way into Jackson, deal with traffic, wait in line at the ranger station, and very likely miss getting a limited entry permit anyways.  Navigating the processes in these iconic parks can be frustrating and restrictive if you’re used to more open public lands like those we frequent in Alaska.

Our route took us on a 21-mile loop up Teton Canyon to Alaska Basin and then on to Sunset Lake and Hurricane Pass.  Alaska Basin lies within the CTNF’s Jed Smith Wilderness area and borders Grand Teton Park.  We spent two nights camping permit- and fee-free in the Basin, then walked into the national park on a fantastic spur hike from base camp.  We exited along a dramatic bench with a precipitous descent back to the trailhead via Devil’s Stairs.

Peak season pleasures abounded on this backpacking trip.  Aside from the surprise reveille that woke us on day one, I relished flourishing wildflowers, frequent trailside meet-and-greets with likeminded hikers, and rushing waters.

Wildflowers blanket America’s western mountain lands during mid-summer.  I stopped often to regard sunlit meadows studded with brilliant paintbrush, mounds of white columbine, big gold sunflowers, head-high grasses.  On our first morning out, dew soaked the vegetation and the land sparkled.  I couldn’t get enough of the flowers, I just soaked them up.

Record-breaking snow fell in these mountains during the past winter and even now, in late July, upper elevation trails were obscured by dense snow.  In these areas, we used the GPS to keep us moving in the right direction.  Streams of water drooled down rock walls and cut gullies into the trails.  Along the borders of melting snow, spring flora popped through the sodden dirt – lemony avalanche lily, bog violets, buttercups.

We chose a campsite the first night in the scrubby pines and watched a thunderstorm roll up the valley, crawled inside the tent and listened to the wind and rain beat outside for an hour, then wash itself out. 

The next day turned bluebird and we hiked toward Hurricane Pass, encountering a pair of women, a guided group of five people, two college students, several couples.  At pristine Sunset Lake, we stopped and refueled, wrung out socks that were soaked from trudging through snowfields and streams.  Marmots whistled at us and cautiously approached begging for snacks.

After sets of switchbacks that took us higher and deeper into the mountains, we reached the expansive tabletop of 10,338’ Hurricane Pass.  We looked behind us at the Teton Canyon, the dramatic Wedge formation, Alaska Basin far below, the bench we’d follow down tomorrow.  Then, we looked ahead, at the tremendous Tetons – like a jaw bone full of bear’s teeth.  Matt elucidated the area’s mountaineering history - first ascents, famed ski lines.  We dropped our packs and I wondered off across the national park boundary and visually tracked the sinuous trails that wound down ridges and into distant valleys. 

The sky was clear, but we never trust mountain climate to hold for long, so we returned to Alaska Basin.  The campsites in the Basin were spotty – little bumps of bedrock and soggy tundra amid thick patches of snow.  We located a spot with a view of a Teton peak and slept deeply – worn out from the hiking.

On our way down the next morning, we watched dark clouds roll up the valley casting dramatic shadows over the line of jagged peaks that rose to the west.  We dropped down Devil’s Stairs into a flower strewn subalpine meadow, gorgeous in the afternoon’s diffuse sun.  A mile from the trailhead, the clouds burst and it poured rain on us as we left the Tetons behind.

Mountain Men and Native America

Although the American west is visually and physically dominated by the northern Rocky Mountains with their celebrated rivers, lakes, and forests, the region is also rich in human history and culture.  We bounced in and out of wilderness areas named for mountain men and cut through tribal lands - Flathead, Blackfeet, Nez Pierce, Salish, Kootenai, Shoshone.

We drove the open highways from Driggs, Idaho to a tiny classically western Wyoming town called Pinedale.  We geared up, ate a huge dinner, and (by happy coincidence) attended the Wind River Music Festival.  The heat in

these valleys and plains was almost unbearable for northerners like us – we suffered as we dragged ourselves from car to air conditioned grocery store to hotel room.  Yet, the mountains offered relief and lovely fresh air – still much warmer than our typical rainy hypothermia-inducing Alaska hikes.

Matt pinpointed our next route – the Cirque of the Towers - on a map of the Wind River Range.  This area is part of the Bridger (a mountain man) Wilderness Area in the Bridger-Teton National Forest and we quickly found that even though it was not an actual national park and required a couple of hours’ drive on dirt roads to find the trailhead, it was still a focal point for hiking enthusiasts.  We reached the trailhead parking lot on a Friday afternoon and it was packed with jeeps, vans, Subarus, and SUVs.  We had to park down the road and walk fifteen minutes to the trailhead.  At first I was distressed by the crowded lot, but once we hit the Big Sandy Trail and began encountering and interacting with the gobs of boy scouts, youth groups, families carrying in fishing poles, horses on leads, and climbers hauling their gear, we fell into a slower pace – it became a summer time stroll, a social outing.

We pitched the tent at Big Sandy Lake in the middle of yet another Persian carpet of wildflowers, patterned and bold.  There were five other tents at the lake, but we eased into the idea of sharing the backcountry with other people.  It wasn’t so bad.

From Big Sandy, we hiked upward to the Cirque of the Towers, an area Matt told me contains world class rock climbing routes.  We passed numerous climbers coming out with helmets strapped to the tops of their packs, ropes tucked inside.  We crested the ridge that formed the bowl’s rim and stood in awe at the ring of phenomenal rock walls.  Dropping into the cirque, we encountered a deer, found our tent site and hiked in the afternoon up a lovely drainage on the opposite side to 11,200’ beneath the soaring Pingora summit.

That night, I lay in my sleeping bag looking out at the mosquitos swarming the tent, then past them to the pinkening walls of War Bonnet, the lateral cracks illuminated by the setting sun’s angle, black tar stains exaggerated by the waning light, rivulets of snow caught in the mountain’s shadowy couloirs.

Glacier Park – Two Medicine

We headed for Glacier National Park and learned that we were hitting this park during a record-breaking year.  The park hit a milestone the weekend we were there – for the first time ever more than a million people entered the park in a single month.  We waited in line at West Glacier entrance, then circled the visitor center parking lot for ten minutes trying to find a space before Matt finally let me out to go inquire about backcountry permits.  Of course, there were no permits available for backcountry camping.  I gathered information, grabbed a hiking guide map, and got the heck out of that visitor center as fast as possible.  Matt and I settled down with huckleberry milkshakes to read the park literature and figure out a Plan B.  We looked for key phrases like “off the beaten path” and “less traffic” and “fewer people” and quickly figured the Two Medicine area on the eastern side of the park was a good bet for smaller crowds. 

We drove up and over the spectacular Going to the Sun Road (there were no places to park at the most popular pull offs including the Logan Pass visitor center) and found our way to the blessedly calm Two Medicine district.  

We paid for a spot at the Red Eagle campground on the Blackfeet Reservation near a burbling creek and a full-sized teepee and the next day took a power hike to Scenic Point.  The switchbacks took us up a buttress of thirsty raw land covered with shards of slate.  From the top we looked east onto the Great Plains.  The unambiguous boundary between mountain and plain was jarring and we stayed there for a while to drink it in.