A Short Hike on the Lupine Trail, Grand Teton National Park

The weather was supposed to turn cold, so we decided to head to Grand Teton National Park. Our goal was to look for bears and take a hike along the Moose Pond Trail. Unfortunately, the Moose Wilson road was closed due to Grizzly bear activity, (its been closed for the past week). Several weeks ago, we had seen a grizzly bear and a black bear. That day,upon telling the volunteer park interpreters, one of them told us there were no grizzly bears in the south section of the park). Hmm, I guess we did see a grizzly.

Changing our plans we decided to take a hike on the Lupine Meadows trail. Arriving at the parking lot, we found a space even though the lot was pretty full.  The trail head offers quite a few treks, but we were only interested in hiking to the Bradley Lake Junction. It’s about a 3.7-mile hike, round trip, and we thought that would be a good warm up for the Taggert Lake trail, (we plan on hiking it next week).

The first part of the trail was pretty level, but it then begin to climb. As we hiked, we enjoyed the scenery as Black tail Butte,

Sleeping Indian Mountain, and the Gros Ventre Slide all peeked at us as we climbed above the trees.

At one point a viscous chip monk threatened to attack but it backed away as it must have seen we were armed with bear spray. A haze filled the valley from distant fires, but it wasn’t bad enough where it affected our breathing. We stopped often to check our heart rates and after Renita tested her blood sugar level we stopped for a snack.

We were high enough in elevation that we could see Jenny Lake through the trees. The Grand Teton rose above us in all its splendor and it looked like we could see a climber on the south ridge. Looking further south gave a us a great view of another of the Teton Mountains and the solid rock beckoned us to climb higher.

We knew our limits and our goal for the day so after taking pictures we headed back down to an open spot for lunch. Quite a few hikers passed us as we sat and when we started back down the trail, we met a lady who told us she had seen a flock of ptarmigan. Stopping for a bit a nervous ruffed grouse flushed and flew by us, but I was unable to get an image of it in flight.

We never did see any ptarmigan, (the bird book says they are not there), but we have seen them in Alaska, so we had them on our bird list. Its amazing how easy it is to hike down the trail but it’s the most dangerous part of the hike and Renita’s knee gave her a warning twinge. We had forgotten our hiking poles.

My feet hurt from the quick down-hill pace, but it wasn’t much further till we would reach the car. Driving back to the Moose Wilson road we saw that it was still closed and so we decided to call it a day and head back home. It was a good day and we survived the near attack of the chip monk. Clear skies