Again, I have to give a special thanks to Randy for suggesting this hike and getting there early to avoid the crowds. Jenny Lake is about 226 acres, located at toward the southern portions of Grand Tetons National Park. It's just north of Moose Junction. There are a couple of hiking options that cater to the two really special sights, Hidden Falls, and Inspiration Point.
There is a boat service that will take you across the lake and so you only have to hike about 1.5 miles round trip to see Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. A lot of folks take that option. Other will hike around the southern end of the lake, to the falls and up to Inspiration Point and then take the boat back or vise-versa. Then there are people like me.
I headed north from the visitors center and hiked around the lake. Over the first 3 miles, I only saw about 5 people. They were all folks that parked at a look-out and wandered down the trail a little bit. The trail was relatively smooth and nicely shaded. There really wasn't much climbing and tons of good places for photos. At the northern portion of the lake, the trail follows a river that comes down from String Lake. This is where you cross over and begin traveling down the western side of the lake.
As I headed down the western edge of the lake, I hiked through a lot of re-growth from a fire some time ago. While this meant I lost my shade, there were some wonderful wildflowers growing an great views looking south across the lake. Then I hit the shade again. Two things changed here. 1. I started to see other hikers. There were a lot of folks loaded for back country trips following this trail north. 2. There were tons of small and medium-sized streams pouring down from the snowmelt above to the lake below.
The "Christmas season shopping" crowds began as soon as I reached the boat dock. Hundreds of us started the rocky climb to hidden falls. It's only about a half mile to the falls and the climb isn't too bad. The bad part was all the people. These folks didn't demonstrate a lot of manners on the trail. They would just cut you off, walk 3 or 4 wide up or down the trail and not let others pass, etc. Then I got the falls and it was worth all the people (although, it would have been great to have 90% fewer of them). There really weren't a lot of photo opportunities if you didn't have 5 or so people with you to block everyone else from standing in the "right spot." But I did manage to take a couple of photos and not kill anyone.
Then it was time to decide if I wanted to keep climbing or just continue hiking back. Of course, I kept climbing to Inspiration Point. Granted the crowds were smaller, but there were still lot of people. The "path" to Inspiration Point is a lot more rugged and rocky. It's not overly steep, thanks to a number of switchbacks. But it's narrow and you need to look where you're stepping. I was out to take a pretty lengthy hike. I had hiking boots, a Camelbak with lots of water, hiking poles, etc. Many of the folks I saw had flip-flops, and a nearly empty 20 oz. bottle of water. So, either I'm a complete wimp (no comment from the peanut gallery) or these people are just nuts. They had
little kids climbing up here in flip-flops and crocs. I saw one family in dress clothes! Needless to say, I got to the top, and went a bit further to get away from the crowds (Gosh, I sound like such a curmudgeon, I've been hanging around Bruce and Chris too much). In any case, the view was spectacular and it was all worth it. The bottom two photos in the picture at the top of this post show the trail to Inspiration Point.
After a short break to eat a banana and a mini clif bar, I headed down to finish up my hike. The last 2.5 miles were much more rock than what I had traveled on. I'm glad I did the hike in the direction I did. All in all, this hike was amazing. I was plenty tired when I got to the visitors center again. I'm sure the folks I past during that last portion were wondering about me. I was tired and grubby. What they didn't realize was I started hours before and had covered a lot more ground than they were planning. In total, I hiked around 9 miles total. Other than adding some mole-skin to a sore toe, I was fine. Just tired. The one real disappointment was I saw no wildlife. I had high hopes for a Moose and saw nothing but Moose poop! I got back to the hotel, showered, downloaded my photos, got a nice salad and calzone and crashed!
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Please excuse the typos.
