A Snapshot and The Scoop: Grand Teton

Formed by earthquakes along the Teton Fault, the Teton Range at the center of Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming houses some of North America's youngest mountains, and they're still growing up. The Teton's sharp ridges speak of their age, as time has yet to dull their peaks with wind, water, and ice. The Tetons soar above the surrounding plains, sticking out from the surrounding mountains in the western states as something to be envied. We certainly spent a good amount of time getting to know those mountains during our time backpacking in the park, but we still only scratched the surface. Grand Teton, I can't wait till we meet again.

The Happy Jar of 2018

Upbeat. It's already January 1, 2019, I have my travel Wrap-Up posted (read it here), so I guess that means it's time for my Happy Jar summary! All year long I write down what makes me happy and slip the little colored papers into a glass jar on my dresser so that I see it every day. Usually just seeing the jar and the tiny pieces of happiness it contains is enough to get me out of a bad mood, but in the case of extreme melancholy I'll take out those slips and read each one of them, reminding myself that I have a lot to be happy about. This year's Happy Jar contained a whole lot of animal-related joy, as well as a bunch of excitement and accomplishment regarding our house. In case you missed it, Jared and I bought our first house in December 2017, and we moved in during January 2018. The house has kept us (mostly me, because I'm a busy-body) occupied with minor improvement projects, including gardening. Gardening, surprisingly, also featured heavily in my Happy Jar this year, as did travelling (duh). Check out a few examples of my happiness below, and feel free to share bits of what made 2018 great for you!

Last year Alisha and I scored permits to hike the Grand Canyon, this year we got permits to backpack the Tetons! Backpacking permits for major national parks are notoriously difficult to come by, and you usually have to book your trip on the first day it becomes available to reserve. The first Wednesday in January saw me glued to the NPS website, waiting as the site crashed for a nerve wracking two hours until I could be sure our reservations were accepted for our desired hike and dates. We got them!

2018 was filled with babies! Not mine (don't get excited) but there were a whole lot of the furry kind of babies that filled a vast majority of the year. The first was Leonard, an infant ring-tailed lemur who I took in turns with a couple coworkers to care for. Leonard was tiny when we first got her, about the size of my palm, and her favorite place to be was clinging to my neck. She still prefers sitting on shoulders, and it was our pleasure to have her home with us for a few days over Christmas.

I did say our house has been the source of a lot of my happiness, and I meant that. Including buying "adult" things, like a new couch! Of course, we had to make sure it was big enough to fit Jared, myself, Marley, Callie, Ghost, and all of the cats. It is!

I have wanted chickens for years, ever since some friends of ours had a flock back when we were kids. One of my requirements for buying a house was it had to be able to accommodate chickens! Just over a month after officially moving in, we got chicks!

Gardening has always been enjoyable to me, and I've kept at least a few potted plants throughout the years and several moves. Now that we have a house of our own, I can put plants into the ground! I started working on garden plots within a few months of moving (winter in Texas is a great time to do so!) so when spring came and I had the time, I planted my front and back gardens. I still have a lot more I want to do, including gardens along the sides of my house as well as a vegetable garden, but that's what this year is for.

Never underestimate the amount of joy I get from having visitors. Jared and I really aren't the most sociable of people, but when we have the time and energy to entertain, we love having people over. My sister in particular seems to practically live at my house for as often as she shows up here, but Jared's parents, my brother, and my mom and aunt have all come to visit in the last year, and we're always open to hosting more!

An absolutely enormous part of the last half of 2018 was the addition of Luna to the Tiger Creek family. Luna was a six week old little white ball of lioness fluff when we got her at the beginning of July, and to everyone's utter delight most of the staff at Tiger Creek were allowed to help raise her. As in, we got to take her home on a rotating schedule and care for her. Yes, we had a lion in our house. Frequently. And holy cow did she cuddle hard! It was awesome.

You guys, I finally got my orange kitten! This is not news to anyone who's been following along since August, but Jared surprised me with a couple of kittens at the end of July, one of whom happened to be a fluffy little orange tabby. Hoodoo and his sister, Rey, have settled in wonderfully with our already extensive personal zoo, and Hoodoo regularly accompanies me on my trips, including hiking six 14,000 foot mountains in five days (read it here)!

My last visit to Nebraska was not only a surprise to my sister (who graduated with her Masters Degree, woohoo!) but also a bonding moment for myself and Torrey. We've known each other since we were in grade school and have travelled together to Pikes Peak every year since 2014. This year, we decided to commemorate our annual vacation with a tattoo! That's right, we got a matching tattoo of Pikes Peak, where our artist took one of my photos and drew our tattoo from it. Torrey had the vision to color the mountain in shades of purple, and I think it turned out amazing. So much love!

I have always had a thing for photographs, going so far as to take as many photography classes in school as possible and even considering going to an arts college in Denver to pursue my passion with an acutal degree. I didn't follow that path, but my love of taking pictures has trailed me through the years. Now that I actually have a house where I can knock holes into the walls as I see fit, I knew I wanted to start hanging up my photos. The only problem was, I didn't know where to start. It was a conversation with my sister that inspired me to turn my hallway into a photo gallery, with various canvas prints of my favorite photos lining the walls. I finally began to turn my dream into reality (canvases are expensive, if you didn't know!) and have slowly started hanging my pictures. I love seeing my art on the walls of my home, and can't wait to take and print even more photos as the years and my travels progress.

So there you have it, a few examples of my pride, happiness, and accomplishments throughout 2018. There is absolutley nothing wrong with reflecting over each year and picking out the best parts of it, remembering the year based on the things that made you happy. I already have several things I know will make me thrilled during 2019, but I also keep in mind that I can find joy in little things. Unexpected happiness could be waiting in the future too, but I won't know it until it happens. So here's to saying goodbye to 2018 while ringing in 2019 with a bright and hopeful smile.

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.

Grand Teton Part 1: Cascade Canyon

Undaunted. How are you supposed to feel when you're finally hiking (and not just hiking, but backpacking) in a place you've dream about hiking ever since you first visited more than ten years previous? I wasn't entirely sure, but astounded awe seemed like a good place to start when my sister and I finally hit the trail on this year's visit to Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. Like many places in the West, my sister and I had visited Grand Teton on one of our two-week long summer family vacations years ago, and we were determined to go back and see it anew with adult eyes. This time, our itinerary included a two night, three day backpacking loop through the rugged Tetons backcountry, and I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to it. As we checked in at the wilderness office, however, we were informed that avalanche risk along our intended route was high, and unless we had the proper equipment to deal with it we were advised to make alternate plans. After a brief discussion Lisha and I amended our hike, still planning camping two nights but making both nights out-and-back instead of a loop. Neither of us have the gear or experience to deal with much more than ankle-deep snow, and we didn't really want to test ourselves and end up needing a rescue. We're crazy, but not stupid.

It was with high spirits that we hit the trail, though it wasn't long before we were huffing and puffing with exertion and altitude. We slogged along slowly, but it wasn't a bad thing; the scenery of the Tetons is something that deserves to be appreciated at your own pace. We eventually made it the four or so miles up to South Fork Cascade Canyon and set up camp at the first unoccupied sight, settling down to nap the afternoon away. I know I drifted off, but have no idea how long I was out before voices woke me up and I found Alisha chatting with another hiker who was asking if they could set up somewhat close by. We had no problem with it (safety in numbers, and we were in a highly populated bear habitat) and ended up making friends with the couple. Ben and Beth live out east, and Ben turned out to be a teacher, so he and Lisha chatted away over dinner as we watched evening settle in around us while Beth and I held our own conversations. Not too long before sunset we bid each other goodnight.

Our wishes for an uneventful slumber were somewhat put out by a thunderstorm that echoed through our canyon in the early hours of the next morning, Lisha and I lying in bed watching the flashes of lightning illuminate the canvas above us as we waited for the rain. We were relieved when the storm moved up canyon without dumping on us, though we continued to hear thunder bouncing off the mountain sides as I slipped back into sleep. We were up before the sun that morning, climbing out of the tent when there was enough light to see and breaking down camp. We needed to make good time in order to reach the next camp that night, so we weren't in the mood to linger overlong. To our surprise Ben and Beth were up too, and we ended up leaving camp together after figuring it'd be safer to move through the dawn with a bigger group of people. You have no idea how happy I was to have them with us when Alisha spotted the first moose, a cow and her baby, next to the creek not too far off trail. It wasn't until a little while later, when I almost walked right into Alisha after she abruptly stopped with no warning, that I became incredibly grateful for the two of them. A cow moose had bedded down just off to the side of our trail, and there was absolutely no way we would be able to continue on trail past her. We approached slowly, tightly pressed together in an attempt to make us less of a target, but she stood up quickly and we dashed for cover behind a large boulder. We were there, trapped behind that boulder, for a good ten or fifteen minutes, with Ben and I keeping watch on either side of the boulder, trying to keep her in view. The moose didn't seem all too bothered by us unless we were in her path, and as long as we kept the boulder between us and her she left us alone to graze. The problem was, there was no cover between us and the trail and if we wanted to make it around her we were going to have to run for it. We waited until she moved down towards us, hopefully far enough that if she decided to charge us as we made for the trail we'd have a head start, before we made a break for it, crashing through the small meadow and through to the safety of trees, running full out down the trail until we put enough distance between our group and her.

Of course, when we stopped to pant for breath and congratulate ourselves on getting away without incident, I realized I'd dropped a water bottle and my tripod in our mad dash for safety. If it were just the bottle I would have left it for someone else to have, but that tripod was expensive and I wasn't about to give it up that easily. I eased back toward the meadow, Ben following behind to keep watch while Alisha and Beth waited down trail. I didn't see the moose, thankfully, and darted out from the cover of the forest to where we'd gotten back on trail. I found my stuff right on the edge of the trail, meaning I wouldn't have to go searching through the long grass and waste time, grabbed it, and ran back, looking over my shoulder convinced an angry moose was about to charge me. She didn't, and Ben and I returned to Alisha and Beth triumphant.

We were still exclaiming over our escape from the moose when Alisha once again brought us up short as she spotted another animal at a curve in the trail ahead of us. All four of us were keyed up, and it didn't take much to convince us that the huge humped brown back we saw belonged to a grizzly bear. That is, at least, until we saw the gigantic rack of antlers and realized that the huge humped brown back actually belonged to an enormous bull moose. Still nothing to lift your nose at, bull moose can be ferociously territorial, especially if there were females around, and we didn't exactly thrill to the idea of testing our luck a third time that morning. As we watched, another group of hikers passed by the bull with no incident, and by the time they reached us we were willing to give it a shot. He ended up being further off trail than it initially looked, but we still quickly and cautiously passed by while keeping wary eyes on his grazing rear. That he was facing away from us gave me enough courage to snap a few pictures of him as I had with the cow before we continued on our way. The rest of the hike passed uneventfully, and we said goodbye to Beth and Ben at the parking lot. There's nothing quite like making it through an eventful hike with strangers to bring you together, and this has become one of my favorite hikes of the past several years. Ben and Beth, thank you for being awesome and I hope you're doing well!

A Snapshot and The Scoop: A Hike to Hidden Falls

This year's adventure with my sister found us all over the place from mountains to desert, but our first stop was Grand Teton National Park in northern Wyoming. We spent two nights backpacking (stories for another time) and our hike began with a visit to Hidden Falls. A short ferry ride across Jenny Lake dropped us off at the trailhead for the falls as well as for our first camp site, so we figured a visit to the falls was in order. On our first visit to the Tetons way back when as a family (like, 15 or so years ago) we took the ferry across the lake and visited the falls, and this time around my sister and I couldn't pass up the chance to see them with grown up eyes. We were both glad we made the trip! We had the viewpoint all to ourselves thanks to the early hour, and we were left in peace to contemplate the thundering falls, the rising sun, and the hike in our very near future. It sure was great to be back in the mountains!