Grand Teton Part 2: Death Canyon

Demanding. Starting our second day in the backcountry with an argument was probably not the way to do things. Alisha and I had driven to the trailhead for our second night's camp at Death Canyon in Grand Teton National Park a little later in the morning than either of us really liked, and Alisha was trying to convince me to forgo camping that night in favor of not running into the thunderstorms that were sure to build. I was obstinate, even to the point of telling her I would go alone and she could camp wherever she liked, as long as she was back to pick me up the next morning. We were in the Tetons, damn it, and it rains in the mountains. We'd been wet before, we survived, it would be ok to get a little wet this time too. I ended up winning, although not without hearing her grumble about it for a long while afterwards.

Unfortunatley, I began wishing I wasn't so stubborn about halfway up our hike to the camping area. The trail was not nice, one continuously strenuous stretch of exposed loose rock along a mountain side under a sun that beat down and forced us to stop in the shade at every chance. We passed other hikers, some of whom showed obvious signs of altitude sickness, and determinedly forged ahead all while silently (on my part) wishing we were done. It wasn't until we turned onto the camping spur that the clouds began to build, and with the first rumbles of thunder and drops of rain came my sister's glare. We hurried along, trying our best to make noise so we'd give any bears nearby a warning that we were there so as not to surprise any on the trail. Then it began to rain, though we were under enough tree cover that the light rain only gently dripped down on us. Until it rained harder. And harder. And began to hail. At that point I'm pretty sure my sister was so mad at me she would have spit fire if she were physically capable of doing so, and I suggested dinner right there on the trail, sheltering under a thick bough of evergreen limbs, because what else could we do? We couldn't move in the hail, and didn't particularly want to move in the rain if we could avoid it, so hey, let's eat.

We made dinner right in the middle of a muddy trail, and I did my best to make the most out of the situation and not wish for the warm and dry interior of my car. We got pretty lucky and as the rain eased when we finished eating, and we made our way forward as quickly as we could, eager to get the tent up at the first suitable site. Once again, though, my stubbornness won out and we passed by a few sites that were either too exposed to the weather, or tucked so deep into the forest that we'd be eaten alive by mosquitoes the second we stopped. I really wanted to make it to the far end of the camp area where other hikers had promised good views, but the skies continued to threaten us with buckets of rain, so we picked a site on the edge of a small meadow where we would be protected by trees but open enough to help keep the bugs down. We set up quickly and all but dived into the tent when we felt more sprinkles falling from the sky, calling it a night way earlier than we normally would have in an attempt to forget about the hike.

I woke up to a whispered "do you hear that?" Now, anyone who's camped with me knows I sleep like a log and pretty much need to be directly spoken to or shaken awake if you want my attention. I was drifting in the dreamy state between slumber and wakefullness when I swore I heard a clock ticking. It took me a little bit too long to realize I was deep in the backcountry forests of the Tetons, and there were definitely no analog clocks ticking anywhere nearby. Alisha and I lay still, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, when I remembered with a jolt and a curse that we had been warned by another hiker of the porcupines that had an affinity for hiking gear in the area. I grabbed my headlamp and directed the beam out my side of the tent, only to watch one of my trekking poles get slowly dragged out of sight into the darkess. You know that scene in every monster movie where a person gets pulled out of sight to the sound of crunching bones by an unseen monster? Yeah, if I hadn't known it was a porcupine stealing my trekking pole I would have been terrified out of my mind. As it was, I ripped open my tent door and grabbed at my pole, unleashing a viscious stream of colorful and imaginative curses at the culprit. Pole rescued, Lisha and I tucked our sets deep under the tent and settled back down, giggling hysterically and feeling far better about the camping trip than we had all day. I was once again on the verge of dreaming bliss when I felt myself rocking gently, a snuffling noise that I couldn't pinpoint in my ear. I asked Alisha if she was moving, and she responded negative. It took me a second longer to realize my poles were slowly sliding out from under me, resulting in my body moving as it was repositioned. I bolted upright, ripped open my tent door for the second time in an hour, and snapped my headlamp on, finding myself facing a very confused porcupine who had my pole in its little paws and my wrist strap between its teeth. We stared at each other for an eternity, before it promptly dropped my pole, turned tail, and waddled away.

We pulled our trekking poles inside the tent after our second encounter, but the determined little bugger wouldn't take the hint. It kept us up for the better part of two hours - two hours - with its snuffling and scrapping and general inspection of our camp. I was worried it would start gnawing on my tent fabric, and kept telling Lisha to help me kick the sides of the tent, hoping to scare it off. Eventually it wandered off and didn't return, though in the morning an inspection of our site produced a number of quills stuck into my tent doors and scuffs in the dirt around us. We left the site in high spirits, giggling about the porcupine antics and happy to be heading down the mountain. A storm blowing in behind us hurried our progress until we were nearly jogging down the mountain, taking cover from the rain as best we could while still moving forward. When the rain let up and the clouds began to lift, morning in the Tetons was something to behold and I found myself grateful for insisting on making the hike in the first place, despite the weather. The rest of our hike was thankfully animal-encounter free, and we made good enough time to reach our car before noon. We were only a few days into our week-long adventure and it had already proven to be a jam-packed trip. I couldn't wait to see what else the week had in store for us.