Catching up

Tuesday we decided to check out Grand Teton National Park and then ride a gravel road in the park along the Snake river near sunset. Well we got through the park one way and were eating a couple sandwiches at a marina with the Tetons as its backgdrop and decided to be lazy and just make a couple stops on the way back to get some pictures. But the best lighting for the tetons from the national park side is in the morning since they basically face east. So we hatched a plan for a return trip at sunrise then to do a hike on the far side of Jenny Lake on Thursday. Wednesday we had some work to do in the morning and it was crazy windy. Neither of us seemed very motivated and end up not going anywhere or doing any riding. I did mangage to get one of the trailer tires fixed that had a slow leak due to picking up a drywall screw somewhere. So that brings us to today. We got up early and made it to the snake river overlook towards the Tetons at sunrise.

Then on to the Jenny Lake North View Point

Then on to the Jenny Lake South area where we where going to catch a boat across the lake to the trail. Well we didn't find out the whole story till later but there was a search and rescue operation going on for a missing hiker from yesterday but two area/trails that we wanted to check out were closed due to the search. So we decided to come back another day and go for a ride today. Back to the trailer for something to eat then out Gros Ventre river valley. The ride was on the Adventure Map but not in any of the guide books, raising a small red flag. But the rides on the Map are usually pretty good. The map showed it as all single track, about 16 miles, so that sounded good. The route started out as a red dirt jeep trail, so much for all single track. I then started think this would be a really nice ride with a jeep right up next to slate creek. About the time I finished that thought, the road up ahead had long ago fallen into the creek bed leaving a very faint track that was difficult to hike across let alone try to ride. This led down to the creek and was then ridable for a bit until it climbed outta the bed and turned into a nice single track for the next two miles, climbing up above the creek in the widening valley. The trail ran into a double track that we continued to follow up the valley. It started as an old jeep trail with another track running off to our right. I figured it might be what we returned on but the mileage didn't quite add up. We continued up the double track as it turned into an ATV trail, really just two single tracks right next to each other back into the hinterlands. The valley was not quite as wide now, but basically we were riding along a flat with the occational steep up including a few crossings of the creek. We reached a split in the valley where we took the right, starting our clockwise return to the singletrack. We were on the edge of the valley and the forest and after one of the short steep ups we had a nice view of alot of beavers' work


We continued along the edgle of the meadow/forest dipping into the forest a few times. We started running into some trails heading off to our left, we stayed to the right on our trip around. I did manage to leave the GPS on the trailer table so we had to rely on our sense of direction. The mileages were not quite adding up so we had to kind of feel our way around the loop. After about 10 miles we hit the longest of our climbs. Here's a couple pictures of coming up to it and heading down the other side.




By the way, it was still double track, mostly in good shape, but definitely rutted out in areas, especially on the climbs. Down we went running into a few unmarked, unmapped intersections staying right for the most part keeping the range that we had behind us as we started, in front of us now. The mileage was starting to pile up and if we were gonna finish in the aloted amount, we would need to hit that intersection pretty quickly. We both felt pretty confident with our collective route finding but were both pretty relieved when we saw the big truck with all the hay bails on it that we first saw at the intersection of the single track and the atv trail. The last two miles were alot of fun back to the truck.
Critter count - I flushed some sort of gray heron looking bird from along the creek and we saw a herd of prong horn antelope on the drive back from the trail head
Beer recommendation - Grand Teton Brewing Company Bitch Creek ESB - a really good taste without quite all the hoppiness of the IPA's ive had recently. And yes there really is a bitch creek in the area