Gros Ventre Campground

It’s fairly easy to say that our biggest disappointment of the trip was leaving the Lamar Valley three days earlier than we wanted to.  As I was working on the blog post I mentioned to Ann that we had spent only 3 nights there, as opposed to the 5 we’d originally planned and then 6 we thought we were going to do.  We had enjoyed our time there so much, and made so many great photographs that it seemed like longer.  But alas, we had our reasons for leaving and they were right.

It rained again our last night in the Lamar Valley.  Fortunately our adjustments from the previous night meant that our tent didn’t get any wetter and there wasn’t a pond on top of our picnic canopy.  Even better, the rain decided to let up a bit as we packed up our gear and headed out.  We knew we’d made the right decision because, unlike the day before, there were no photos to be made on the way out - no subtle light, no beautiful cloud formations, just a heavy blanket of clouds and darkness.  And it didn’t take long for the rains to start again, so we saw rain for much of our drive through Yellowstone on our way south.

By the time we arrived at Grand Teton National Park it was still heavily overcast, but we were only getting the occasional sprinkle.  We also found out that the campground we wanted to stay at, the Jenny Lake Campground, was full.  So we kept driving south to the Gros Ventre Campground, which our friend Russ (see Norris Campground post) recommended.  As you’ll see, that worked out fine for us.

Tetons-01-Campground

It was fairly late in the day when we arrived so after we set up, so we decided to simply relax, have a good meal and scout the next day.

The next day started well. We slept in and had a good breakfast. While Ann was cooking, the morning was bright and I started looking at the bark on the Cottonwood Trees and next thing I knew, I had my camera out photographing.

The clear skies didn’t last long.The clouds quickly rolled in and it got cold. Very cold.That was the day it snowed in Yellowstone and, well it got down to 18 degrees that night.But before we hit the sack we went scouting.

It’s a good thing we did because several of the locations I thought would have been great, weren’t.Take for example this spot made famous by Ansel Adams.They even have a presentation board with his image on it.Well, the trees have grown substantially since he took it and it’s just not as nice a view.

We found the same to be true at the Jackson Point overlook.Beautiful to see but not for photographs.Still, our scouting trip was worthwhile in that we identified a few places we wanted to return to.

We had rain and snow showers off-and-on and it was still extremely cloudy when we completed our scouting trip so we decided to head into Jackson for a couple of reasons.First off, Ann’s phone had failed to establish a connection so we went to a Starbucks while she called Verizon on my phone to try and troubleshoot things.After that, we went to eat lunch at the Snake River Brewery.Pretty darned good.

By the time we got out, the skies were clearing up a bit, though it was still cold.We headed off to Black Tail Ponds (no, that is not a typo - there was another Black Tail Ponds up in Yellowstone that we photographed) for a sunset shot that, well . . . petered out.While the image below looked promising . . .

the actual sunset was blah.By sunset all of the clouds had disappeared and the mountains did not come to life.Sometimes it just doesn’t go your way. Still, we did manage to see a mother black bear and her two cubs about 300 yards away in an open area.However, it was also an small introduction to what we were to experience later on a much worse scale - there aren’t so many “locations” in the Grand Teton National Park, so you’ll often spend key photo times (read: sunrise and sunset) with a bunch of other photographers at any given location.

And did I mention it was very, very cold that night.Well it was, so we had a late morning getting out of bed.That, however, worked in our favor because right next to our camp was a mother and baby moose that hung out for almost 2 hours.

At one point the moose walked right next to our tent and canopy to get away from folks trying to photograph them.  They eventually laid down about 30 feet from our campsite because (I claim) they knew we wouldn’t harass them.  That lasted about half an hour until a dump truck drove by.

We still got out at a reasonable time to photograph, not early enough for sunrise, but enough to get a nice quality of light and to catch the moon setting.

And we made our first detailed investigation of potential photo sites at Schwabacher Landing.

While it was cold out, Ann and I had brought layers and since we weren’t going on any super long hikes, we would warm up in the car in-between stops.  

To be honest, while some of the photos from these first days in the Tetons are nice, I think it took us a few days to really get a feel for the place.  Sure, it’s easy to photograph those beautiful mountains, but we were wanting more.

We did get more that night though.  We’d done our research, learned our lessons from our Three Fingered Jack trip and decided to brave a cold night to try some astro photography.  This time instead of a new moon (no moon), we’d timed it so that the rising moon would partially illuminate the mountains, but not so much as to overpower the effect of the stars.  While we still have a lot to learn about this type of photography, we really can’t complain about the results.

Unfortunately, the Milky Way isn’t as pronounced or as well located as we’d hoped, but it was impressive standing there at night seeing all the stars and the incredible mountains of what they call the cathedral group.

We really pushed ourselves that night because even though we stayed up late, we got up for our first sunrise shot returning to the Blacktail Ponds Overlook.

This morning we only had to share the location with one other photographer.  It was the last time that would happen for us at a sunrise.  One thing we learned was to stick around as the sun rises - things can change a lot.  And they did.

That day we headed out to Idaho Falls to try to get Ann’s phone repaired.  After several frustrating hours over several calls to Verizon support, they told her to wipe it.  She did and it wouldn’t make a connection to get rebooted.  The last resort was to go to a Verizon corporate store and get a new SIM card.  We had recognized a need to get a hotel for the night simply to power up our camera batteries (as well as take a shower and do laundry), so we decided to take the 90 minute drive to try and fix Ann’s phone.  While we were successful regarding power, a shower and clean clothes, Ann’s phone was pronounced dead.  Verizon would have to send her a replacement phone.  Still, Idaho Falls wasn’t too bad of a place, and we found a great coffee house!  

By fortunate circumstances we were able to meet up with a friend of Ann’s and her partner on the way back from Idaho Falls.  They’d been hiking on the west side of the Tetons and we met up in Driggs.  They told us bear stories, we told them moose stories and we all had fun.

So when we arrived back into camp the next day, guess what was hanging around the campground?

That guy’s antlers were huge!I guess you can’t complain if you can do a lot of wildlife photography a few feet away from your campsite!

The next day we set off on one of the hikes I’d planned.Unfortunately, Hidden Falls was pretty much a photographic dud and the route up to the near-by canyon hike I’d hoped for ran along some cliff faces that made us feel very uncomfortable, so we took a different hike downward and around Jenny Lake.We quickly realized that the problem with pretty much all of the canyon hikes in the Tetons is that, at some point, things get steep and run across open cliff faces.Not our idea of an engaging hike.We had to do a bit of reconsideration about where we would be photographing over the next few days.

So we decided to head out and explore some “different” areas.We drove east up the Gros Ventre road to see one of the largest landslides in US history (over a mile wide).It was a nice drive up a valley with changing aspens and horse ranches.On the way back we got a nice view of the Tetons from the valley.

We made another stop a bit further down to take a hike up a small hill.  Strange thing is that the nicer view wasn’t towards the majestic Tetons, it was in the opposite direction.

That afternoon and evening we discussed different places we could go and realized that there really is much more than the mountains to appreciate in and around the Grand Tetons.  It’s just that those mountains are so stunning, you want to try and include them in everything.  Still, we decided that while we’d keep our plans for trying to make sunrise shots, during the day we’d go looking around other areas and pretty much try not to focus on the mountains.

The next morning we were up at O-dark-thirty again for the long drive north to get to Oxbow Bend.  It’s here where we were in for the real shocker.  Imagine that you’re going to a really special place to photograph, you wake up around 4:30 so you can make coffee and get on the road to arrive at your destination well before sunrise.  You’re in great spirits because, despite the fact it took you a bit longer to get there than you’d thought, it’s still pitch dark out as you approach the final bend to where you’re going to park.  And you see about 10 cars there.  And as you’re sitting in your car waiting (because who wants to break a leg hiking down trails in the dark if you don’t have to), another 10 or so cars pull up and the photographers start piling out.  So you get out, pull out your headlamp and work your way down to the edge of the Snake River to stake your spot on the ground.  And it’s the off-season!

It was the first time that it happened on that scale with Ann and me, but we were taken a bit aback.  Fortunately, we got a decent spot and we were even respectful enough of two younger guys, a bit down river from us who had set up before we did, to ask them if we were in their field of view.  No we weren’t, they were taking closely framed shots of the mountains, so we could move down closer to the edge of the river.  However, as the morning wore on (by the time the sun was up the place was like Grand Central Station), photographers were setting up right in front of other photographers’ cameras.  As I said about Yellowstone, the trip left us with a bad taste concerning humans.

Anyway, the morning was beautiful.

My first photograph was looking back to where the two guys were standing (I have another image where you can see the profile of them and their tripods), in the direction of the sunrise.

Then I turned around to capture Mount Moran in the pre-dawn light.

As we learned from our photography trips to the national wildlife refuges and earlier this trip, the light changes dramatically during the early morning minutes and it’s worthwhile to stick around and enjoy (and photograph) the show.  Sometimes the light seems to be changing every few seconds, but other times you’re waiting for a few minutes and decide to re-frame and photograph something else.

As the reflected light from the clouds started to lighten things up, you could see this beautiful mist on the water.  Despite the growing crowd around us, it was a beautiful and serene place.

I have a couple hundred shots from that morning, each subtly different than the other as the light and cloud formations change.  It’s hard not to flood the blog post with them, but I think you get a feel for what it was like.

After a couple of hours the light became normal morning light and things were no longer rapidly changing.  The crowds were still coming (the early morning crowd now) and Ann and I decided to take off.  It was a shower day and we’d decided to eat breakfast at the famous Jackson Lake Lodge (with it’s floor-to-ceiling window view of the lake and the Tetons) and shower at Coulter Bay Village.  While eating breakfast our waiter told us of a road we might want to visit because it has a reputation for having a lot of wildlife along it this time of year (the wild huckleberries were just coming out).  So freshly showered we decided to take our time driving down to the Moose-Wilson Road to photograph.

Along the way we made a couple of stops to catch interesting views of the Tetons, and at one of them I noticed aspens off in the distance so I tromped across a field to make a few photographs.

We were fortunate enough to catch the first changing of colors in the Tetons.  At Yellowstone a few of the cottonwoods were starting to turn.  When we got to the Grand Tetons, the cottonwoods were on their way and the aspens were beginning to change.  The week we were there the masses of trees started turning  so that there was more yellow than green in most places.  I think it had something to do with that night it was 18 degrees.  Did I tell you that night was really, really cold in the tent?

We made it down to the Moose-Wilson Road (on the southern end of the park) and started our way northward.  And Ann was able to get her fill of aspen photographs as well.  There were a few trial heads and pull-outs where we could hike out around to get a decent vantage point for photographs.

It is very difficult to find just the right composition so that trees don’t look like a chaotic mass.

Tetons-20-Evergreen in Aspens

We worked our way up Moose-Wilson Road (passing a nice creek on a narrow portion of the road that, unfortunately, had no parking areas within a half-mile of it), stopping every so often to make a photograph or to just enjoy the view.  We never made it to the end though.  The road was closed.  It seemed that our waiter was more than right.  The fairly short stretch between the Death Canyon Trailhead turnoff and the Moose Entrance was closed due to “intense bear activity.”  It must be pretty intense if you can’t even drive a car though there.  Then again, the Park Service probably knows people well enough to know too many of us are stupid enough to try and get out of a car to photograph a bear.  As it was, Ann and I turned around and enjoyed the views along the return trip as well.  

For several reasons (not the least of which was that we wanted to be home on a day where Ann could get her replacement phone) we decided we were going to leave the park a day early.  So that evening we broke camp as much as we could and got ready for one last sunrise shot.  And what a sunrise it was.

If we thought the photography crowds at Oxbow Bend was bad, they had nothing on Schwabacher Landing.  I thought that Schwabacher was lesser known, but apparently among photography circles it isn’t.  And worse, it’s a much smaller area so you get more people along a much smaller shore.  And it seemed that people were much more rude there as well.  There is one view, that I’m sure many people wanted to get, with the shoreline as it curves towards the Tetons.  (You can scroll back to see my previous shot at Schwabacher to see what I’m talking about).  As you move down stream, you get more and more of that curve to exaggerate the effect.  Now there is a nice trail along the path that 1] elevates you a bit so your view can clear the low-lying grasses and 2] is set-back a bit so folks can include that nice curve in their images.  Well, some guy (read: idiot) decided to plop himself down right at the water’s edge, right on the bend; and he decided to stay there the entire time, thereby ruining everybody’s shot of that composition (which is why I didn’t even bother trying to make that one).  Well, enough of the griping.

It was again a beautiful morning and, despite the flood of people, an incredible place to be.

Tetons-21-Twilight Schwabacher Landing

Just as at Oxbow Bend, the view downstream at Schwabacher Landing had much to offer, especially since there were storms to the south of us.

Knowing it was our last morning there, we waited as the light made its transitions and tried to enjoy every moment of it.

Still, at some point you have to make your last photograph and say goodbye.

We headed back to camp, packed up and hit the road.  Drove a bit through some storms and then hit good weather.  We stopped off at the coffee shop in Idaho Falls, spent the night in Boise where we ate at an incredible Basque restaurant (Epi’s, if you are in Boise, make reservations and eat there, you won’t regret it!), and made it home the next day, thus ending Ann and Dan's Excellent Adventure!