Crest Trail Fox Creek Pass – No, you didn’t miss it. There is no “Day 1” post about our first day on the Teton Crest Trail because there’s not too much to say and more importantly, I didn’t even take any pictures.

For the first day, we had ridden the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort tram to the top of ski resort. It had been a perfectly beautiful morning, but after about 4-miles, just as we had begun the climb up to Marion Lake from the North Fork of Granite Canyon, the weather took a turn for the worst and it was just a deluge of rain (and hail) for the next seven hours. 

It was incredibly miserable, but honestly, kind of beautiful at the same time.

After the storms finally subsided enough to get camp set up on Fox Creek Pass, just outside the national park boundary, they left an ethereal fog behind in their wake.

The following morning, I rolled out of my sleeping bag around 5:15 a.m. and found everything wet, cold, and caked in mud. It didn’t matter though. I was still really excited because when it comes to landscape photography, enduring some terrible weather typically means you get rewarded with epic light.

As I stepped out of the treeline from camp in the early dawn light, I could barely see 50-feet in front of me… we were still in the clouds. I went right back to my tent and crawled back into my dry sleeping bag.

I should also know better by now… Right at sunrise, the light outside the tent began to glow orange. I quickly found myself sprinting through the fields of wildflowers, camera in one hand, bear spray in the other, towards a cliff band above Death Canyon.

This sunrise as my reward for that miserable first day…