Ulysses, how was your trip to the Tetons? And did weather conditions allow you to traverse the Beartooth Highway?
Well..a big storm dropped about 10 inches of heavy snow on the mountains the night before we got to Jackson Hole, but it had started warming up pretty well by the time we got to Colter Bay Saturday afternoon.
Sunday was absolutely beautiful, we got in Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, and then the String and Leigh lake hike and the Moose visitor center, but my son hurt his ankle scrambling up some rocks, and my daughter in-laws rheumatoid arthritis decided to buy her full blast that night....Soooo.
My whole Phelps lake hike plan (one of those bucket list things that I didn't get to do last trip in 2011 because the weather turned bad)for Monday got threw out the window, the weather was nice, but it started clouding up and getting a little cooler as the day went on. We went to Oxbow Bend at sunrise and got some great pictures, and then to Mormon row and Antelope flats (zero animals seen) and drove out to Slide lake while we were out there, then we went to Kelly and got a sandwich, then as we were driving by the Gros Ventre campground we saw some moose in the distance so went drove over into the campground and saw four cows and a huge Bull just hanging out...that was cool. Then we drove over to the Menors ferry district and walked around and saw everything there, and then we drove down Moose-wilson to Teton Village and rode the Jackson Hole tram up to Rendevous peak. After that we drove back up M-W road and along the way we saw three black bear and three more Moose. It was dark by the time we got back to the cabin.
That night it rained really hard all night, then turned to snow during the night. It cleared off a little Tuesday but not enough to really do anything till later in the morning. We drove up M-W again and the kids wanted to do some shopping in Jackson before we had to leave to drive to the Henry's lake cabin. I saw where the weather was about to go really bad, so we needed to leave by 3:30 to make sure we got up there before dark. We got just a little past Ashton Idaho and drove through a thunder snow that dropped 3-4 inches of really heavy wet snow on us in about 15 minutes. It was amazing, but a little hair raising. After we got north of that band of thunderstorm cells, it got better. We got to the check in about 7:00.
The weather went to total crap that night, and stayed horrible the next three days, all the roads in Yellowstone besides the section of the Grand loop from Norris to Old Faithful were closed every morning till they were able to get the roads clear. It was of course still amazing, but the whole plan was wrecked by the snow, it made negotiating the boardwalks extremely tough and slow going. I couldn't go to Cody because they could only get the east entrance road open a few hours each day. The last day (Friday) my son really wanted to go to Mammoth so we drove over to Canyon and waited till they got Dunraven Pass cleared, it was about 2:30 when they opened it..that was awesome. There was about two feet of fresh snow up there. By the time we got around to Mammoth and walked around it was getting close to dark, and the rangers told us that they were going to have to close the pass again soon because another heavy snow cell was hitting the pass, so instead of risking getting stuck we drove up to Bozeman and then back down to Henry's lake.
All in all it was a beautiful experience, but there were soooo many things I have always wanted to do, that I still didn't get to do because of the dang freak weather system including the Beartooth, I don't think I will ever be able to go back there again unless something changes in my financial and health situations...so in that sense I was really disappointed, but I am blessed that I got to go at all, there are many that never do. It was soooo beautiful of course, it always is. 😎
