Getting bored of hiking on the Teton alternate

Day 43, Teton NP to Jackson

I am done with hiking. I’m bored by it. Fuck it. I’ll take the cut off. Yeah, this park is beautiful but I just don’t wanna hike anymore. Anything, I wanna do anything else besides hike.

Sunrise over death shelf is just a 3/10. While I make my way to rendezvous mountain, I pass a dozen weekend warrior campsites and backpackers. Big heavy packs, the artificial smell of sunscreen, that reminds me of my childhood. I can’t wait to get out and get to Jackson.

But when I step out of the post office in Jackson, bouncing in a fresh pair of trail runners. I realize I don’t wanna be here either.

At whole foods I fill a brown cardboard container with broccoli, sweet potato and chicken masala. Cinnamon ice cream. An almond croissant.

“Where are you travelling from?”, the middle aged cashier asks.

“I’m hiking from Canada to Mexico”

“Oh that’s awesome, by yourself?”

I nod and smile.

“Not even a pet?”

I smile wider. She didn’t say without a boyfriend, but WITHOUT A PET.

After fuelling my body with both calories and nutrients, I still feel empty. “Oh” I think, “am I feeling sad? What is this mood?”. Given the past days of splendid mountain beauty in the Tetons, I shouldn’t be?

My battery pack is charging under the table, not even half full. My clothes are desperate for laundry. But I don’t care, I gotta get out of here. Again. 2 salad kits, cream cheese, cottage cheese, dill pickle chips, tortillas, Nutella, trail mix, protein bars and oatmeal end up in my backpack before I leave Jackson behind.

Day 44, Granite Creek

After Jackson the Teton alternate passes through the Gros Ventre wilderness. The promise of solitude and quite a few miles off trail scrambling should fix my foul mood. 

The canyon is empty. The trail is soft and flowy, constantly close to water. In the afternoon I pick my first raspberries and thimble berries. It’s quiet, I can feel that no one is around here.

Until the afternoon, close to granite falls. Two hunters appear on trail, one calls me sweetheart while we make small talk. As soon as the words rolls of his tongue, my polite smile is washed away. 

The hot springs of granite creek look shabby and I quickly decide to skip. The campground nearby is overflowing with car campers and I skip that too. Pushing a little further today in return for a shorter day tomorrow. But once I leave the trail head, I’m in a bad burn scar.

Dang. Again, this was live forest on the satellite pictures. 1 mile, 2, 3, … it’s getting late, I’m getting tired but there isn’t even a tiny clearing between the widow makers to camp. After almost 4 miles of burn area, I find a bumpy spot to camp. 

Day 45, unnamed lake

I can see it from far away. The rock wall where the class 5 part waits for me.

The rock wall is straight ahead, maybe half a mile away. It stretches in shades of grey and red along the vast plain until it drops off to the valley. Down there the smoke is so thick all I can see is vague blue shadows. Far in the distance, I see the reflection of houses.

Down there, I picture people doing whatever people do on a Thursday afternoon. People with jobs and families and places to be. Places to be. While I could spend another day up here and no one would notice that I did. Freedom, what an indulgent luxury.

For a brief moment, my life didn’t feel like a random collection of events and decisions. Everything that ever happened, the good, the bad, led to me being right here. In front of this rock wall.

Sitting on a flat boulder, surrounded by nothing but rocks, I oddly wish I could stay up here. I mean technically I could. Who had this idea anyways? My mind wanders to the person who was here first. The guy who created this route. It’s not a trail, there’s no spur, no cairns, no markers. Just a gpx track.

I wonder what made him come up here, look at this rock wall and think: “let’s find a spot to cross this”. I wonder how many tries it took him to find the right one. I wonder if he then told his friends to come try it and then eventually put it on the internet. I wonder if he thinks about the hundreds of people who came out here in the middle of nowhere to climb over this rock wall because they downloaded a gpx track somewhere from a Reddit forum. His gpx track.

The world is a peculiarly wonderful place, if you know where to look.

Class 5 climb

”What was I thinking?” Probably not much. That’s usually how it goes. 

A rock breaks loose under my left foot and falls down, making a dramatic sound. Every grib, every step needs to be double checked. The rocks on this wall aren’t very stable. For a fraction of a section, less than the blink of an eye, panic fills me. “No. N-O”, I tell myself. “You can’t panic.”

Instead of staring down where the rock had just tumbled into the nothingness, I look up. “That’s where I am going”. I turn my mind off. Strategically my hands find spots to hold on to, pull myself up, place my feet. And then – 

I’m on top. Just like that it feels like I’m standing on top of the world. I smile, then I giggle, then I laugh out loud into the mountains. From up here there’s a view on more mountains, a beautiful lake. I check my maps, unnamed. This is truly wild and untouched. Who comes out here? Is this a well guarded secret? I did it.

But it was far from over. What follows are long long miles off trail, over lose rocks and talus. I was getting tired, I seemed to make no progress at all. I was supposed to hike 30 miles total today but when the section of loose rocks, that constantly move beneath my feet, is finally over and I spot another unnamed, beautiful lake, I surrender. 

A little above the lake is a beautiful spot to camp, the sun is shining but not longer hot. No mosquitos. I set up my little tent and stretch out on the grassy shore with my book. A book about hiking, from Italy to Norway. I’ll be low on food tomorrow but I’ll be in town the day after. 

For now I’ll just soak in the spot where no trail leads to, where the lake is unnamed, where no one will find me.

Oh wait, let me send a check-in with my Garmin for my mum.