Middle Teton

August 2007

I had dreamed about doing this peak since Jennifer and I visits Wyoming in 1995. Since we were planning a family vacation through this area, I thought I would give this a go. Our good friend Richard Woodward had successfully achieved this peak a few years earlier and so I got some good trail intel from him.

A friend and I had both our families traveling through this area together and we met up for this section of the trip. We began by driving to the trailhead before sunrise. As we were hiking in the dark, we could hear the elk bugling and it is an awesome sound to hear.

We proceeded upward and onward as the sun began to rise. The mountain views ahead of us were awesome. There were a few other hikers on the trail with us that morning and we leap frogged a bit up the trail as we all took rests at different times. After we left the tree line, we began to lose site of the trail since it was mostly rock scrambling and following the trail by cairns now.

Soon, we reached the final ridge before the class 4 ascent. Some folks had helmets on since there is a high risk of falling rock from the hiker ahead of you. We had no helmets on this hike. Since Alan and I were among the lead that morning, we just rock scrambled to the top and were fine. We enjoyed 30 minutes on top and could look across the way at the Grand Teton Peak. Pretty cool site.

As others joined us on the Middle Teton Peak, we decided to work our way down before to many others started showering rocks on our heads. Sure enough as we reached the ridge, we could hear the group of 8 hikers yelling to each other about rock debris being kicked down.

We proceeded to hike down into the tree line again where we rested and cooled our feet in a lovely mountain stream. Nearby was a backpackers camp area. We spotted a small brown bear that people were telling us about. It snuck away behind some rocks before I could take a picture.

We made it back to the car and drove back to meet up with our families. What a great hike. It was real cool to look at the whole mountain range from one of the national park lookout spots. Where were up there we could say with a feeling of achievement and gratitude.