Day 327
Jenny Lake
Spoiler alert, we survived the night! No bear attacks!
Joe, our camp host at Jenny Lake campground had filled us with confidence as long as we followed the guidelines, so much so that we slept like babies! The campsite was next to a store so we popped along there and got a coffee and some essential food supplies, chocolate! We had decided to hike around the lake. Joe assured us there was a decent track, he just hadn’t taken the amount of snow into consideration. At just over 7 miles we were both looking forward to being off the bikes and stretching our legs. I started to struggle straight away; my trainers were not really suited to hiking in deep snow. Fortunately, I soon found a broken branch that worked great as a hiking pole and it helped keep me on my feet, well almost all of the time!
Jenny Lake is named in honour of an Indian trapper who also acted as a guide to explorers in the area. The lake was simply stunning, still partly frozen over with the back drop of the Grand Tetons looming above it.
We headed off, and I soon realised we were climbing, Tom explained we were going to climb to the top of a waterfall and then visit Inspiration Point. To me this meant only one thing, we were going into the hills where the bears lived. I wasn’t happy and considered turning back but didn’t want to leave Tom on his own. Fortunately, within minutes we had met up with our neighbours from our campsite Leslie and Issa-Pierre, a young couple visiting the USA from France for a few days. They checked we were planning on walking around the lake and we formed a party of 4. As we climbed, we passed a young American guy, Noah, heading down, he soon turned round and asked to join us, the famous 5 were on an adventure!
We had no need to sing to make the bears aware we were coming, we laughed and chatted away, especially when I repeatedly fell over! I often chose to stay on my bum and slide down sections rather than struggle back onto my feet. The snow was so deep at times that it reached our knees. None of this mattered, the whole route was simply stunning, we couldn’t believe how lucky we were with the weather. The day flew by, all too soon we said our goodbyes to Noah and the 4 of us returned to the campsite ready to fall into our tents!
