Trail Section: South Fork of Cascade Canyon to Jenny Lake.
The pitter-patter of rain against my tent in Cascade Canyon was not a welcome sound the next morning. It was still early, so I just kept lying there – no desire to get out of my tent until I could at hear someone else moving.
The last any of us had been able to check the weather was 3-days prior and afternoon storms had been expected during our third day out on the Teton Crest Trail. However, lingering precipitation was definitely not in the forecast.
After about an hour, I realized that all six of us were in an unintentional stalemate, each one of us waiting to hear someone else get up. Unzipping my rain-fly, a pile of snow fell on to my boots that were sitting just under the flap.
Sh*t.
I pushed the rest of the snow off my rain-fly and went out in to the sleet. It was a very, very wet snow and in looking around camp, all of our tents sat in half-inch puddles of water. With a very thin layer of white snow coating everything, it was a truly beautiful and peaceful sight, but within minutes, I was already cold an drenched to the bone.
As everyone else got up, we snacked as we waiting for a gap in the rain/sleet/snow in order to pack our already drenched gear.
Moral was low, to say the least.
Cascade Canyon (Not at camp, but muuuch lower.)
I expect we were all thinking it, but I was the one to finally throw out the fact that we did at least have the option to hike out the rest of Cascade Canyon and back to dry, warm beds.
We decided that we wouldn’t make a final decision until we talked to some day-hikers coming up Cascade Canyon – if the weather was predicted to clear and we’d be able to dry our stuff in the sun later in the day, we would keep going. If we were informed that we would continue to be socked in and rained/snowed on, we’d call it a day and hike out to Jenny Lake and back to civilization.
We bumped into a jogger (crazy person) about 30-minutes in to hiking down towards the north fork. “Is this weather going to keep going or is it going to clear up?”
“It’s actually supposed to get a lot worse later on.” He replied.
Aaaaaaaaaaannnnddddddd we’re done…
Jenny Lake
The 2014 Teton Crest Trail:
- Hiking the Teton Crest Trail
- Day 1: A Mellow Day to the Middle Fork of Granite Canyon
- Day 2 (Part 1): Marion Lake & Fox Creek Pass
- Day 2 (Part 2:) Camping Along the Death Canyon Shelf
- Day 3: Rushing Through Alaska Basin & Over Hurricane Pass
- Day 4: Bailing Out Cascade Canyon
- Day 5: Not on the Trail! Just Relaxing in the Tetons
0 Comments