Sonntag, 14. September 2008

Day 3 - Teton Crest Trail (1)

This is Day 1 of our 6 days backcountry hike in the Grand Tetons.

In the morning we drove to Granite Canyon Trailhead, which is the exit trailhead of our hike. The day before we organized a shuttle to pick us up at Granite Canyon and to bring us to String Lake, the entry trailhead of our hike.

Matthias and Regina with our backpacks




















On the way to String Lake we saw numerous cars parking next to the street and we immediately knew that there must be a moose somewhere.












The very first part of our hike went along the shores of String Lake.














After a while we entered Paintbrush Canyon and the hiking got more streneous. As we had rather heavy backpacks (containing food for 6 days, camping gear and clothes) and the sun was shining quite intensely we made many short drinking stops. The first kilometers of our hike were rather boring as we could not yet see much of the mountains. However, this changed after we had gained enough elevation.




























At about 2400 m we made a short lunch break and could spot a moose in some distance.




















































After lunch hiking got more streneous as Regina and I were already tired (as we were not really used to the heavy backpacks). At around 3:30 we arrived at Holly Lake and got a wonderful campsite. Holly Lake is at almost 2900 m and you can still see trees and a lot of wildflowers. What really suprised as that there were also numerous mosquitos at this high elevation :-(.

































































At dawn we could spot a mule deer very close to our campsite eating. He stayed for quite a while and did not get disturbed by our presence at all.


















At about 6:30 we started to cook dinner (the sun is already going doing at about 8). When the sun went down the mountains shimmerd red and the moon came out just shortly after.

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