JACKSON HOLE
Jackson Hole, which adjoins the park on the southeast, is one of the most sequestered valleys in the Rockies, encompassed on all sides as it is by mountain barriers. It is 48 miles long, for the most part 6 to 8 miles wide, and embraces an area of more than 400 square miles. The floor of the valley slopes from an altitude of 7,000 feet at the north end to 6,000 at the south. Jackson Hole lies a few miles west of the Continental Divide, and occupies the central portion of the headwaters area of the Snake River. Mountain streams converge radially toward it from the surrounding highlands, and the Snake River receives these as it flows through the valley.
Jackson Hole has largely been excavated by the Snake River and its tributaries from the shale formations which once extended over the region to a depth of several thousand feet. Rocks surrounding the region, being more resistant, were reduced less rapidly and therefore have been left standing in relief as highlands.
THE WORK OF GLACIERS
Here, as in several other national parks, the glaciers of the Ice Age, known to the geologist as the Pleistocene period, played a leading role in developing the extraordinary scenic features. Just as the streams now converge toward Jackson Hole, so in ages past glaciers moved down toward, and in many instances into, the basin from the highlands to the east, north, and west. Detailed study has shown that the Ice Age was not a single, simple episode, but is divisible into "stages"—glacial stages, during which extensive ice fields formed, and interglacial stages, during which these were largely or wholly withdrawn. The duration of each is to be thought of in terms of tens of thousands of years. In Jackson Hole, three glacial and two interglacial stages have been recognized. Only the most recent glacial stage need concern us here, the other two having occurred so long ago that their records are much obscured.
This stage ended but yesterday, geologically speaking, and to it is due much of the grandeur of the region. In the Teton Range every canyon from Phillips northward contained a glacier, and many of these reached eastward to the base of the range where they spread widely upon the floor of Jackson Hole. Where Jackson Lake now is there lay a great, sluggish field of ice resulting from the confluence of adjacent alpine glaciers.
Moraines, outwash plains, and lakes are easily recognizable features that originated during the latest glacial stages, and most of the peaks and canyons were greatly modified.
Moraines are deposits of debris, piled up by the ice itself. Such are the heavily wooded, hummocky embankments which rest along the base of the mountains from Granite Canyon northward, rising in some cases 200 or 300 feet above the floor of Jackson Hole and heaped with enormous boulders quarried by the ice far back in the range.
With two exceptions each of the large moraines incloses a lake. In this way Phelps, Taggart, Bradley, Jenny, Leigh, and Jackson Lakes originated; all ranged along the western border of Jackson Hole. No lakes were formed along the eastern border, inasmuch as on this side no glaciers extended beyond their canyons. String Lake is dammed in part by a gravel fill.
Outwash plains are the deposits formed by streams which, during the Ice Age, issued from the glaciers. Of this origin are the broad, cobble-strewn flats, usually overgrown with sage, which cover the floor of Jackson Hole. They are diversified by bars, abandoned stream channels, terraces and "pitted plains", features of exceptional interest to one who examines them in detail. Several isolated buttes—Signal, Blacktail, and the Gros Ventre Buttes—rise like islands a thousand feet or more above these flats.
PROFILE OF THE YELLOWSTONE-GRAND TETON REGION
Each canyon gives evidence of the vigor with which the glacier it once contained gouged out its channel. In many places the rock of the broad floors and steep sides is still remarkably polished. Every canyon leads up to one or more amphitheaters, or cirques, with sheer bare walls hundreds of feet high. Tracing these ice-gouged canyons headward one will discover many rock-rimmed lakelets, some hung on precipitous mountain sides where one might be pardoned for asserting that no lake could possibly exist.
A CREVASSE IN TETON GLACIER
Crandall photo.
WINTER SCENE IN THE TETONS
Copyright, Crandall.
TRAILS
An unbroken wilderness a few years ago, the Grand Teton National Park is now penetrated by some of the finest trails in the national-park system. These trails, suitable alike for travel afoot or on saddle horses, are 3 to 4 feet wide, free of boulders, and of grade so moderate they may be followed by old or young with full safety and a minimum of physical exertion. While the trails are traversable during the greater part of the summer, some of them may be blocked by snow early in the season. Those visitors expecting to climb the high trails should inquire at park headquarters or the office at the museum at Jenny Lake for information regarding the condition of the high trails.
The Lakes Trail runs parallel to the mountains, following closely the base of the range and skirting the shore of each large body of water from Leigh Lake at the north to Phelps Lake at the south. It makes accessible the most important lakes, canyons, and peaks of the park, and is naturally the one from which all expeditions into the range begin. One can encircle by trail either Jenny Lake or String Lake, the hike around the former being one of the most popular in the park.
The Canyon Trails described below are spur trails extending westward from the Lakes Trail, back into the most rugged areas in the Teton Range. Intervening canyons have been left in their splendid wildness.
The Teton Glacier Trail extends up the east slope of the Grand Teton to two alpine lakes, Surprise and Amphitheater, at altitudes close to 10,000 feet. By means of the 17 switchbacks on this trail the hiker or horseman climbs to a point on the face of the Grand Teton, 3,000 feet above the floor of the valley, throughout this ascent enjoying matchless panoramas of the entire Jackson Hole country, and witnesses a view extending eastward 80 miles to the Wind River Mountains, whose peaks and glaciers are sharply outlined against the horizon. Amphitheater Lake, at the end of the trail, occupies a protected glacial cirque and is the starting point for Teton Glacier, the most accessible of the ice fields, three-fourths of a mile northwest from the end of the trail. Though seasoned hikers make the climb from Jenny Lake to the glacier by way of this trail, one can, if he chooses, take horses as far as Amphitheater Lake, and continue on foot with a guide over to the glacier.
The Indian Paintbrush Trail starts near the outlet of Leigh Lake and follows up the bottom of Indian Paintbrush Canyon to connect with the Cascade Canyon Trail by way of Lake Solitude, a lakelet of rarest beauty at timber line near the head of the north fork of Cascade Canyon. The wealth of wild flowers along this trail gives name to the canyon, and early or late in the day one may see big game, especially moose, near the lakes and swamps. This trail affords superb views of Jackson and Leigh Lakes eastward beyond the mouth of the canyon, and westward along the Divide glimpses of snowclad ridges and peaks.
The Cascade Canyon Trail passes through a chasm whose walls rise sheer on either side for thousands of feet. By this trail one penetrates into the deepest recesses of the Tetons. It skirts the base of several of the noblest peaks, Teewinot, Mount Owen, Table Mountain, and the Three Tetons, and it enables one to see these titans not only at close range but from new and impressive angles. Lake Solitude may be reached by means of this trail, by taking the Cascade Canyon-Indian Paintbrush loop trail leading up the north fork of Cascade Canyon.
The Death Canyon Trail traverses the full length of a canyon which in its lower portion is of profound depth and grandeur, as awesome as its name, but which above opens into broad, sunny meadows. No canyon better illustrates the difference between the rugged, alpine landscapes developed in the crystalline rock of the Teton east border and the softer contours formed in the sedimentary strata to the west, near the Divide.
ALONG THE TRAIL AT THE HEAD OF CASCADE CANYON
Grant photo.
The Skyline Trail is that portion of the trail system which connects the Indian Paintbrush, Cascade Canyon, and Death Canyon Trails. Following down the north fork, then up the south fork of Cascade Canyon, it crosses the head of Avalanche Canyon to Alaska Basin, in the western watershed of the Tetons, thence over a high saddle on Buck Mountain and down a series of switchbacks to join the Death Canyon Trail. This trail takes the hiker, or rider, through alpine meadows to rugged cliffs and ledges above timber line from which can be viewed to the westward the valleys and mountains of Idaho, as well as the Wyoming country to the east as far as the Wind River Range. In traversing this loop one completely encircles the three Tetons and adjacent high peaks, viewing them from all sides, and learns to know them with an intimacy impossible to the visitor who contents himself with distant views.
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
Among American climbers no range enjoys higher rank than the Tetons, and its growing fame abroad is evidenced by increasingly large numbers of foreign mountaineers who come here to climb. Leading mountaineers unhesitatingly rank many of the Teton climbs with the best in the Alps and other world-famous climbing centers. Though the majority of climbs must be considered difficult even for mountaineers of skill and wide experience, there are several peaks, notably the Middle Teton, South Teton, and Mount Woodring, which have relatively easy routes that may be safely followed by anyone of average strength.
Although the conquest of the Tetons has largely been accomplished within the decade just closed, the beginnings of mountaineering go back nearly a century. Naturally the Grand Teton was first to be challenged and the Wyoming historian, Coutant, records that in 1843 a French explorer, Michaud, with a well-organized party, attempted its ascent but was stopped short of the summit by unscalable cliffs. It is possible that even earlier white men—trappers and explorers—matched their strength and strategy against this peak or others in the Tetons, but if so their efforts have gone unrecorded. From the period of the Hayden surveys in the seventies, accounts of several attempts have come down to us, and one party, consisting of N. P. Langford and James Stevenson, purported to have reached the summit on July 29, 1872. This claim to first ascent has been generally discredited because of the serious discrepancies between Langford's published account and the actual conditions on the peak as now known. In 1891 and again in 1897 William O. Owen, pioneer Wyoming surveyor, headed attempts to reach the summit which likewise failed. Finally in 1898 a party sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Club, of Colorado, and comprising Owen, Bishop Franklin S. Spalding, John Shive, and Frank Petersen, on August 11 discovered the traverse which, 700 feet beneath the summit, leads around the northwest face and so opens up a clear route to the top.
THE ICY WATERS OF CASCADE CANYON
Copyright, Crandall.
The conquest of the Grand Teton achieved, public interest waned and a quarter century elapsed before the peak was again scaled. In 1923 two parties retraced the route of 1898, and each year thereafter numerous ascents have been made. In recent years as many as 30 to 40 parties have climbed the peak each summer.
Repeated efforts were made to achieve the summit of the Grand Teton by routes other than the traditional one, and in 1929 one of these resulted in a successful ascent of the east ridge by Kenneth A. Henderson and Robert L. M. Underhill. In 1931 no less than three additional routes were discovered: the southwest ridge was climbed by Glenn Exum; the southeast ridge by Underhill, Phil Smith, and Frank Truslow; and the north face by Underhill and Fritiof Fryxell. In 1936 a second route up the extremely hazardous north face was established by Paul and Eldon Petzoldt and Jack Durrance. Thus, six wholly distinct routes have been employed on this mountain, though only the traditional route and possibly the southwest ridge can be recommended to any except most expert alpinists.
Within the last decade other peaks in the range have come in for more and more attention. This they richly deserve, since from both a scenic and mountaineering standpoint many of them are worthy peers of the Grand Teton itself. Mount Moran, Mount Owen, Teewinot, Nez Perce, and the Middle Teton comprise a mountain assemblage which, for nobility of form and grandeur, would be difficult to equal anywhere.
So far as known, Buck Mountain, most southerly of the "Matterhorn peaks", was the first major peak in the range to be scaled, the ascent being made early in 1898 by the topographical party of T. M. Bannon. Thereafter no important ascents were made until 1919, when LeRoy Jeffers scaled the lower summit of Mount Moran. The main summit of this peak was first climbed in 1922 by L. H. Hardy, Ben C. Rich, and Bennet McNulty. In 1923 A. R. Ellingwood climbed both the Middle and South Tetons on the same day, on the South Teton being accompanied by Eleanor Davis. In 1928 Mount Wister was climbed by Phil Smith and Oliver Zierlein; in 1929 Teewinot and Mount St. John by Fryxell and Smith; in 1930 Nez Perce by Fryxell and Smith; and Mount Owen by Underhill, Henderson, Fryxell, and Smith. With the ascent of Mount Owen the conquest of the major peaks, begun so many years before, was at length completed.
In the meantime the minor peaks were by no means neglected, the first ascents being made principally since 1929 by the climbers whose names have already been mentioned. As in the case of the Grand Teton, a variety of routes have been worked out on almost all of the major and minor peaks. Between 1929 and 1931 the important summits of the range were equipped with standard Government register tubes and register books, in which climbers may enter records of their ascents. The story of the conquest of the Tetons is told in a book entitled "The Teton Peaks and Their Ascents." (See Bibliography.)
TEEWINOT AND THE GRAND TETON FROM A HIGH MOUNTAIN SLOPE