![]() The park accepts reservations from January 8th to May 15th, and it’s extremely important to make your reservation on the 8th if you want an advanced permit. You can either make a reservation online or pick up a first-come-first-serve permit at the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitors Center in Moose and the Jenny Lake Visitor Center. The park requires all overnight visitors to carry backcountry permits. When planning your route, the park recommends assuming you’ll hike 2 miles per hour and that you’ll only be able to get over one mountain pass per day.Īfter you pick your route, the next step is to make your backcountry permit reservation. ![]() The smallest loop is Cascade to Paintbrush Canyon, which is 20 miles and would take 2 to 3 days. The whole trip is 60 miles and would probably take 6 to 7 days because there’s so much elevation gain. The largest possible loop you can make would start at Granite Canyon and extend all the way to Paintbrush Canyon. The Grand Teton and its neighboring Teton friends sit a little north of the grid center. Six different “canyon” trails run east-to-west connecting the Valley Trail with the Teton Crest Trail. There are two trails going north-to-south: the low-elevation Valley Trail on the eastern side and the high-elevation Teton Crest Trail on the western side. You can think of the trail system in the southern Teton area of the park as a grid. Additionally, if you want to avoid icy conditions at the top of passes, you can plan your trip to avoid the taller passes like Paintbrush Divide and Buck Mountain. This is super convenient because the flexibility of the routes makes getting a permit a bit less difficult (even though it’s still pretty tough). With how the trails are built in the Tetons, there’s at least 15 loops that take you into the mountains and back out. ![]() Other than that, you can consult the NOAA page for their Grand Tetons stations (specifically, the Jackson airport station).įirst, you’ll have to decide which route you want to take. You’re in luck with this one! The rangers keep a detailed blog of current backcountry conditions at the Jenny Lake Climbing Rangers BlogSpot. The rain even cleared up as soon as we got to camp so we didn’t have to set up our tent in the rain. It was also nice to see the mountains in all kinds of weather. It rained almost the entire second day, but it was so mild that we didn’t mind. The weather was also pretty much perfect. The only time it got frustratingly busy was in Cascade Canyon as we were descending back to the valley- I’ve never seen that many day hikers so far into the backcountry. Because of the strict permit and quota system, we only saw about six groups our entire trip. We took our trip on a busy mid-summer weekend in late July and the backcountry crowds were surprisingly not too bad. In terms of crowds, the Tetons are always going to have a ton of fans. All in all, it wasn’t too treacherous, although I did get nervous a couple times. Luckily, we were able to improvise a route through the dry areas by connecting some of the larger dry patches. ![]() The descent from the pass is pretty steep so we didn’t want to walk directly on the slippery snow. The only area where snow was an issue was on the east side of Hurricane Pass, where some sections of the trail were still covered by an icy layer of snow. We took our trip in late July and didn’t have any real problems with snow or ice on the trail. If there’s still snow on your route and you don’t want to deal with it, you can always change your backcountry permit to a less high-maintenance route while you’re picking up the permit. When you pick up your permit, the park rangers will go over which passes still have ice on them and whether you’ll need ice gear. You may even need an ice ax and crampons (and knowledge of how to use them), for some of the taller passes and divides. In low-lying sections of the trail, the snow is usually melted and gone by mid-June however, at higher elevations, snow can stick around well into summer. Not to mention how terrifying some of those extremely steep passes would be if they were covered in snow and ice. For me, the road situation pretty much crosses out winter as a potential option. You might be able to access the Granite Canyon trailhead from Teton Village (the ski resort) but otherwise, the whole place is snowed in. Firstly, the roads to most of the Teton Crest trailheads are closed in the winter from November to May.
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