Adventurers We Are

Today was our last day in the majestic Tetons, and as of yet we had not done much exploring and today was our last chance. After the usual wake up and eat and such, we went to check out hikes for the day at the visitor center. After talking with one of the rangers we scrapped our original hike and decided on one that wasn't supposed to take 12 hours. After eating lunch and preparing our equipment we set out to reach Inspiration Point, which only few had been able to reach recently because of snow. Inspiration Point was about 2.5 miles from our camp on the other side of the lake and was supposed to be a awesome view with a some what difficult trail.

Now let me tell you what the weather has been like: between 30-45 degrees, sleet, snow, and rain pretty much every hour. So starting off wasn't to bad. The path had some snow, but not much. The further and further we got, the more snow fell, but it was still decently easy to distinguish the trail.
We stopped about half way up to see Hidden Falls, a beautiful waterfall coming down the side of the mountain. Here is where we left nice trails behind. As we kept going up the mountain the trail disappeared and become more of just footprints in the snow and orange tags on trees to follow. After close to half a hour we got where the trail up to Inspiration Point split off, well where it was supposed to split off. So this is where the trail pretty much just started to fade, we were trekking through 2-4 foot deep snow after a while and laughing as people sank in. Not quite sure if what we were following was an actual trail or just a path up the mountain, but it was awesome!

Our feet were thoroughly soaked, we were getting a little winded, and the supposed trail was slowly disappearing but we soldiered on. David, our lead man, stopped at a pretty majestic view and because well the footprints just uh, stopped. In the middle of the side of a mountain they just stopped, no sign, no specific view, just snow. We were feeling quite adventurous and I had seen a hill that I wanted to get to because it looked like a killer view. So forging our way through the 3 foot snow we kept trekking, made our way over to a stream and found a fallen tree to climb across to get to the other side of the stream.

Seeing my destination at hand, I continued on by myself as everyone else didn't see the need to go any further. After climbing a steep hill and plunging through deep, deep snow I made my way to the top of the hill and was meet with… well a ridiculous view. Needless to say I called to the others and they came on up and we all just stood there taking in the sights. It was beautiful and amazing, and totally worth making a new path and climbing a mountain. We then realized that we were not actually at Inspiration Point (our intended destination) for it was about 400 yards to the left as the crow flies. So we had found a new and untouched (or at least rarely been to) place, and so we needed to name it (obviously). After some discussion, many names that were offered up, such as Sacrifice Point, Wolfpack Point, Innovation Point and Howling Point. We decided on Howling Point. So back down we walked, slid, fell, and climbed. About a half an hour down we came across… a MOOSE!!! it looked like a baby moose and he was thoroughly underwhelmed by our presence. We were about 10 feet away from him at some point and he didn't really care or even seem to really notice us.





After getting back to camp we made dinner (soup yummmm) and had peach cobbler for desert which was amazing. Once again the night was getting cold and wet(ish) and we all retreated to our respective sleeping bags and popped out books. This was the end of our last night in a National Park on this trip and it had been a epic day. Thank you again for reading and pray for our safe trip home :)

"O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the Earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens."
-Psalm 8:1












Thoroughly happy, fed, and awed,
Keegan