Thither & Yon

“Hello, we’d like to get a permit for a four-night backpacking trip starting tonight, please. We know it’s noon on a Friday in the July after COVID, so we understand that all the permits were probably gone by 8:03. We know we’re idiots, but we’re experienced, well-prepared, super-flexible idiots and we have a backup plan!”

The ranger on duty at Grand Tetons National Park’s permit desk was supposed to laugh at my charming self-awareness, but he just kind of raised his eyebrows at us and asked what where we wanted to hike.

We had missed the May deadline to make advanced reservations for our trip by just a few days. Fortunately, Grand Teton sets aside a portion of their backcountry campsites for same-day walk-ins. Most people wouldn’t have waited until noon to walk in, but that was just the way the road-trip cookie had crumbled.

“Er,” I said, having made my planned speech and then completely losing the thread of my plan. “Well, I’d thought we might go in by Death Canyon and go out by Cascade Canyon, but it looks like we can’t start in Death Canyon, so… uh…”

Though unimpressed by my level of preparedness or my attempts to be witty about it, the ranger was very helpful. Ten minutes later we had obtained a four-night permit that didn’t exactly match my best-case scenario, but was close enough to shake a stick at and, best of all, allowed us to have a short first day – important given the advancing hour. The hike might be as short as two miles or as long as seven, depending on which of the designated campsites in the five-mile stretch of our first assigned camping zone turned out to be available. The ranger cautioned us to be prepared for the whole seven.

“The sites at the starts of the zones tend to get scooped up first, and I’m sorry to say you’ve just reserved the last permit for this zone, so you’ll have to take whichever site is left.”

No problem. It was barely past 1pm.

And then…

Ninety minutes to juggle the luggage in our stuffed-to-the-gills car and pack our backpacks for four nights.

Half an hour to make our way to the general store in Dornans to buy ice in the desperate hope of keeping the chocolate in the cooler unmelted for five 95-degree days.

One hour to get to the Jenny Lake trailhead after we took a wrong turn out of Dornans and found ourselves on the wrong road. Scenic, but very wrong.

Half and hour sitting around the Jenny Lake parking lot trying to contact the shuttle service to take us to our starting trailhead. I tried my hand (not my thumb – too scary) at hitchhiking for the first time in my life. I was unsuccessful and daylight was burning, so:

Half an hour to drive ourselves to the Granite Canyon trailhead.

How did it get to be after 5:00?

We spent another 15 minutes seriously contemplating the possibility of giving up for the day, retreating to my godparents’ house in Driggs, and making the longer hike to our second assigned camping zone tomorrow with a much earlier start.

I am, alas, overly susceptible to the Sunken Cost Fallacy. I had just obtained a cool permit by the skin of my teeth, rearranged every single item in my car, planned pouch meals for five days, almost hitchhiked, and THE ICE WAS ALREADY PURCHASED. I could not stand let all these efforts be in vain, even after Dustin did the math on what time we’d arrive in camp.

(Nearly 9pm, for the record. And calculating a 30-minute mile for me under a backpack loaded with five days worth of food stuffed into a mandatory 2.5-pound bear cannister was very generous.)

By the time I set foot on the trail itself, my mood had taken a dark turn. We were lucky to have gotten the permit, but nothing else about the start to this trip felt particularly auspicious. I stomped crabbily up the trail, setting a pace that was far too fast for the incline and load on my back in an effort to punish the trail for my self-inflicted delays and also, maybe, to get to pitch my tent and cook some delicious freeze-dried lasagna before the sun set. Soon, I was huffing and puffing and getting a stitch in my side for my efforts.

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

Dustin and I both stopped in our tracks. We know that blood-chilling screech. We listen hopefully for it every time we hike in the mountains.

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

“There!” Dustin said after a moment. He pointed, but it took me a moment to pick out the pika perched on top of a granite boulder about twenty feet away.

Suddenly, everything was okay again. Pikas, more appropriately known (by me and Dustin only, really) as “wooly mountain mice” are my absolute favorite. They are so fluffy and cute and shy, but then they open their little mouths and produce the most ridiculous, angry noise. The contradiction is hilarious and adorable and I can’t stay grouchy when one of those little guys is yelling at me.

Two dozen photos later, I left my little friend behind and decided he could take all the portions of anger for the rest of the day. I tied a wet bandana around my head, considerably improving my temperature and temperament, and we began the third mile toward the start of our camping zone.

It wasn’t until I saw the first sign for a designated camp site that I realized that, in order to determine which site was still available, we would have to hike into every single one, potentially adding miles to our hike and probably annoying a dozen other campers.

“Gotta do it,” Dustin pointed out. I heaved a sigh, thought of pikas, and turned down the spur to the campsite.

There was no one there.

THERE WAS NO ONE THERE.

Was this a trick? Had we done something wrong? Should we go check the other campsites? NO. Obviously no. But – I SAID NO.

We plopped our bags down and staked our claim. The clock had just struck 6:26 and the sun hadn’t even considered starting to set yet. I wouldn’t have to set up my tent and cook pouch-food in the dark after all.

Granite Creek roared in cascades down the canyon bed mere yards away. Our tent nestled in between immense granite slabs that had been scoured into smooth domes by long-extinct glaciers. No pikas shrieked soothingly nearby, but a few birds twittered merrily overhead. Perhaps it could have gone more smoothly, but my Great Wilderness Adventure – three months in the planning – had finally, officially commenced and it couldn’t have been more beautiful.