The Grand Tetons

When I graduated from High School my friends and I took a trip during the summer to Estes Park Colorado. We did a lot of hiking in Rocky Mountain National park which is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been. My favorite hike that we did on the trip was originally planned as an eight mile round trip to Black Lake. When we arrived at Black Lake we noticed that we could go further up the valley that we were travelling to get to the lake. We were feeling good so we decided to travel up to the end of the valley. It ended up being surreal as we were in a place that not many people ever travel too and has rarely been touched by humanity. It was quiet and peaceful and we all just took some time in silence enjoying nature. On the way back we ran out of water because the eight mile trip we were planning on taking turned into 13 miles so we ran the last half mile trying to get some water as soon as possible.

After our first trip the next summer we decided we wanted to do another trip. We decided to go to park city Utah. The trip to Utah did not run as smoothly as our trip to Colorado because the weather was not as nice as it was when we were in Colorado. The weather patterns caused us to change some of the hikes that we had planned. One hike in particular we decided to do because weather caused us to cancel another hike was to hike up Mount Olympus. We saw it was only supposed to be about a 6 mile round trip hike which was a short hike for us at the time. We did not realize how steep the trail was going to be and it ended up being one of the most difficult hikes that I had ever completed. 

The next summer we decided to go to Grand Teton National Park and do a three day hike along the Teton Crest trail. The hike was one of the coolest things I have done. We had to carry all of our supplies because we were staying in the back country where there was no human connection. We had to carry our tents, sleeping bags, clothes for all different types of weather, and all of the food that we would need for the trip. We also had to bring a water filter so that we could drink water from mountain streams when we ran out. The first day we ended up waling close to 18 miles because we decided to take a trail that would take us to the Teton Crest Trail instead of taking a lift to the beginning of the trail. The lift would have brought us closer, but it also would have cost us money. By the time we ended the first day we were exhausted and the sun was going done so we had to put the tent up quickly and make our food as quickly as we could. We saw a lot of great scenery the first day but my favorite day was the second day of hiking. The second day of hiking was the day that we got up close to the Tetons and saw amazing scenery the entire hike. There was some good scenery on the final day of the hike but we ended up taking a shorter way back to the end of the trail because we were so tired and we were told that we did not have the proper equipment to go on the longer path. If I go back again, I would take another day to do the trip and go along the longer path because we were told that the scenery was beautiful. The longer path would have taken us through Paintbrush Canyon but it would have added a few more hours onto our hike.

We have not taken another trip since then, but at some point I would love to take some more trips back to the Rocky Mountains.