Snowshoe Trek

As our time in Jackson Hole is beginning to wind down the excursions just get better and better. While I’m glad we did the snowmobiling, the dog sledding and all the rest, today’s walk in the woods tops everything on our list. First our guide Kate put us in snowshoes, then we started walking toward Grand Teton. Glenda was frightened after a mishap in a dog sled yesterday and was thinking that she might sit out this activity. Yet Kate turned out to be a remarkable guide. As a teen from Jackson Hole she very nearly became the U. S. Snowboarding champion. Oh, yes, by the way, she then became a marine biologist working for the U.S. Army in Hawaii, then in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. Now she is 37, has overcome a rare type of cancer and returned home to Jackson Hole. Here she spends her time teaching a healing form of yoga and leading people like us through silent snow covered forests in the shadow of the Tetons. Perhaps it was her familiarity with yoga that enabled her to put Glenda’s mind at rest. She encouraged Glenda to think of falling in the snow as part of the fun. When she actually did step into an unexpected deep patch of soft powder, Glenda was almost smiling as we pulled her back up onto her snowshoes. Always under the watchful eye of the mountain, we traversed groomed trails, virgin powder where ours were the first footprints. We wondered at the ruins of an early settler’s primitive ranch. The sun and clouds repeatedly came and went. In the changing light the mountain went from gleaming white to a pearlescent gold. Moments later Grand Teton and its apron below really did attain fifty shades of gray. Finally the sky turned a powerful blue. Ever watchful, Kate knew when it was time for us to catch our breath and she would explain animal tracks we passed or the means by which an aspen tree survives the winter. (Its cell walls are elastic.) She also explained that although they are geographically contiguous with the Rocky Mountains, the Teton Range is geologically not part of the Rockies. Only 10 million years old, the Tetons are the youngest mountain range in the world. Their newness explains their extreme verticality and their dramatic appearance. They were formed long after the Rockies. The Tetons were created from a very recent up-thrust occurring when one tectonic plate slid under another, pushing its neighbor higher and forming a new mountain range inside the previously formed Rockies. After about two and a half hours of lovely hiking and fascinating commentary we were back at the van, pleasantly tired, but greatly enriched by our snowshoe walk in the woods.Read more