The Other Side of the Mountain

This past July, some friends and I hiked the back of the Teton Mountains.  It was a four day trip that involved steep climbs, traversing across glaciers, lots of stream-crossing, and wow!  incredible views: fields of wildflowers, lightning storms at dusk, oases (waterfalls, swimming holes), snow fields, rock fields, wildlife,
and well...  the Tetons.
We ate dinner here the second night - nice view, eh? At this point we were at about 11,000 ft. elevation.

Amber and I fixing a delicious dinner of coconut curry in tortilla shells. Amber and I - exhausted, wet, and freezing, but ecstatic nonetheless because we had just finished the last steep uphill portion of the climb.

Company for Breakfast

Make no mistake - he wasn't invited, nor was he welcome.  As we were packing up on the last morning, a distant man yelled "You by the tent - there's a bear headed straight for you!" 

We immediately deserted our camp, but took our ice-picks with us to bang against rocks and potentially ward off attacks. Okay, that's being a little dramatic, but we did bang on the rocks.  After 45 minutes, we found the man who had warned us - he told us that the bear had changed direction, so we went back to camp, only to see the beautiful black bear helping himself to some hot chocolate packets, our oatmeal, my sleeping back, and (whaaa) the hot water with which we had intended to wash our faces.

The girls were pretty excited that ice-picks were required for our trip because none of us had ever used one.  After the initial excitement wore off, we realized that required ice-picks generally meant that we might need them.  We did have to cross a couple glaciers, and some us of didn't come out entirely unscathed.  Amber took the worst fall (slide), but thanks to her crafty ice ax, was able to slow herself down enough that when she reached the pile of sharp rocks at the bottom of the glacier, she had only some nasty bruises, rather than some nasty bones protruding from her skin.