Our road trip-within a road trip was rather spontaneous, a decision made less than 10 hours earlier, when we sat around the campfire under the cool Wyoming night and talked about tomorrow. “Tomorrow” was a big day, by any standard: Logan’s 30th birthday, a day he wanted to go skydiving, or eat a tender steak at a fancy restaurant, or drink private stock rum and forget about age. But we couldn’t find a close-enough skydiving facility, and wandering around crowded Yellowstone National Park didn’t sound as *celebratory* now that we’d been there a few days (I know, we had a thousand miles of trails to explore, but forgive us), so we decided to one-up it. A park employee we met on the summit of Avalanche Peak raved about Grand Teton National Park, so I researched hikes as the boys sipped beer.
Before Logan and I crawled into our double-wide sleeping bag, we had a destination: Jenny Lake Trail, the most popular path in the park, one that promised unparalleled beauty.
The drive from our campsite in Cody, Wyoming to the Grand Tetons was four and a half hours (compared to the 1.5 to Yellowstone), but what was two and a half additional hours in the car, compared to the 24 we drove from Tennessee to Wyoming? The logic was compelling, but admittedly dangerous--why stop there, when the rest of the West waited?
I woke effortlessly before dawn, energized for the adventure that lay ahead. Despite consistently getting less than eight hours of sleep, I was more awake that week than I’d been all year.
As the sun rose, Logan navigated the now-familiar windy roads from our campsite until we reached the South gate of Yellowstone National Park. Earlier that week, we had seen the tops of the Grand Tetons from our 360-view on stunning Avalanche Peak, and now we approached the base of the mountains just after noon. The sky was a cobalt blue with white clouds that blended into the snow-capped peaks. We parked the truck to snap some panoramas and then wound our way to Jenny Lake.
A couple miles into the hike, right after the boys bounced between slippery boulders in whitewater as I crawled on all fours, we hopped back on dry land and rounded a bend. Ahead of us, a BROWN BEAR strolled toward us like a casual fellow hiker.
This was it. The bear had seen us. That heavy, heavy, hairy mass of muscle and bones, an incredible creature, staring right at us, but not seeming to mind.
As we backed up, we noticed two baby BLACK bears crunching in the woods to the right. We later learned that black bears can be deceptively brown, so we were pretty sure that the brown bear we saw was actually a black bear. We hoped so, anyway, because by all statistics, Mama Brown Bear is way more aggressive and confrontational than Mama Black Bear.
Logan and Mike hollered "bear!" as loudly as they could to some approaching hikers from the other direction, as Mike scrambled for the bear spray, always-calm Josh yelled for us to just turn around and head back, and Logan realized he didn’t have his phone and—it was probably myfault that he didn’t. He’d handed it to me at the truck, he insisted, and had asked me to zip it in his backpack, didn’t I remember? I couldn’t, and what did it matter now, anyway? Turns out we left something a little more important at the truck: the bear spray!
Mama Bear kept walking toward us and then veered off the path as we continued to back up. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, but we were far enough from her that I felt oddly protected, not because she’d mangle the boys first, but rather because she’d have to have a reallygood reason to charge at us from so far away… right?
Suddenly the two cubs hopped on the path and jogged toward us--and Mama Bear followed. I remember cursing, and maybe even skipping a bit backward, which is a terrible thing to do. But the bears ran off the trail again and disappeared, and we all stood there for a while, contemplating our next move.
We hadn’t disturbed or taunted her cubs, we couldn’t spot any of them anymore, and the hikers from the other side were headed our way, so we decided to move forward. After the coast was clear, Logan called the park ranger’s office to report the bear, always a good practice to help protect both the bears and fellow hikers. And now, here’s a few more good practices, borrowed from various smart websites:
Be loud! Alert any potential bears of your presence. You never want to see a bear that hasn’t seen you first. That said, if you’re face-to-face with a bear, speak calmly and firmly, but do not shout or scream.
Bears are the most aggressive/dangerous when they’re protecting a carcass or their young. Never get between a mama and her cubs.
Avoid direct eye contact with the bear.
DO NOT RUN.
There are two types of bear charges: bluff charges and aggressive charges. NPS says during bluff charges, the bear will puff itself up to look bigger, bound toward you in big leaps and then stop short or veer off to one side. YIKES. And during all this, you’re supposed to hold your ground, stay calm, and slowly retreat. And then there’s the aggressive charge, when a bear pounds their paws on the ground and huffs with a lowered head (as opposed to raised, during a bluff charge)—prepare yourself! Here’s the greatest thing I learned: FIGHT BACK if it’s a black bear, but PLAY DEAD if it’s a brown bear. That is, of course, until you realize the brown bear isn’t retreating.
This black bear was my first real-world encounter, since I’m not counting the time I saw a small black bear on the side of the road at Cades Cove Loop in the Great Smoky Mountains (I’m a firm believer that you have to be swallowed by the woods, not bumper-to-bumper traffic, to have an authentic wildlife experience).
The rest of Jenny Lake Loop was a relaxed adventure flanking mountain streams and gorgeous, crystal-clear Jenny Lake. The lake-level part of the trail was crowded, at times, but the groups trickled off as we approached the steeper side shortly after the general store. Mike bought Logan some birthday-cake ice-cream at the store and I smiled, because I hadn’t thought of that.
The entire trail is 7.3 miles, but the years-long Jenny Lake Renewal Project led us on a detour that, along with our curiosities about Moose Pond and Hidden Falls Horse Trail (which runs parallel to Jenny Lake Loop for a bit), added an additional three to four miles to our hike. The Moose Pond offshoot was a wonderland of violet and yellow wildlfowers, the largest blowflowers I’ve ever seen, and yes, even a wiggly-eared moose that lay flat in the meadow. Its brown, flappy face remains the coolest thing I’ve seen in my scope.
We heard Hidden Falls before we saw it, and we sat at the base for a long while as Josh and Mike split off to explore.
We should have made some sort of plan, because Logan and I spent some time retracing our steps to find both boys. We only found Josh and then walked the rest of the trail, stopping passers-by to ask if they’d seen Mike. When they said no, we figured Mike took the Jenny Lake shuttle boat as a shortcut to the parking lot, and we stopped worrying.
At the truck, we unloaded our daypacks and I collapsed in the seat after finding the bear spray and Logan’s phone (on the passenger’s seat). But there was no Mike. Twenty minutes later, we saw him exit the path and labor toward us, greeting us with expletives and passive aggression that would last for months.
On our drive out, we saw a double rainbow stretch across the sky, from end to end, and the day faded to dusk well after 8 pm as hail fell and the temperature dropped to 42 degrees. It was nearly 10 pm when we pulled into the sleepy Cody town and grabbed a few hot pizzas we had called in on the road from the Pizza Hut that was just about to close. Rain fell soundly on the tent as we drifted to sleep, stuffed with cheese and meat and the kind of happiness unrivaled by even the juiciest steak.
