The Tutus Thrill the Tetons

Rejuvenated after our blissful day of rest, we awoke at 5am to a still-starry sky and proceeded to rally for our 19-mile hike.  Heather busted her amazing driving skills and Bernadette once again did her best impression of an ATV as we headed down from Shadow mountain to the trail head by String Lake.  We packed like rockstars, choosing to bring just enough food and gear to stay the night survival style should we need to, but still maintain a super light happy day hike load, which was totally sweet.  I've been recovering from a back injury and so I'm a big fan of being nice to my back and carrying lighter loads.  We were also able to purify water as we went, so we were able to drink all we wanted and we never carried more than two liters at one time even though our hoofing-it hike led us to drink over six liters throughout the day. 

Once our tutus were packed, we were ready to go.  The epic walk began as the sun was coming up, back-lighting the magical mist off of String Lake as the mountains were perfectly reflected in the still  morning water.  (cue angels once again).  Our plan was to head up Paintbrush Canyon, past Holly Lake, up and over Paintbrush divide, say what's up to Lake Solitude and then head on out Cascade, the best route to drink in astonishing views of the Tetons and surrounding peaks from all angles.

We stopped periodically to practice our ninja moves, and munch on wild berries.

The scenery was jaw-droppingly beautiful, and every time we said "Wow!" we stopped to take a picture. A few of the best from the ascent up to Holly Lake:

I had my first lesson with map and compass, and we kept getting our bearings throughout the day!  What an empowering experience, thanks Heather!

Scrumptiousness break at Holly Lake, well worth packing in the messy messy pesto...

Cresting a switchback on the ascent up paintbrush divide, we were delighted to meet some friendly snow.

We played in it for a while, and made this picture for our favorite snow loving kayaking fools.  Ben and Melinda, wish you were here!

Hiking in tutus proved to be great fun...there is no end to the entertaining aspect of swishing tulle to offset the huffing-puffing challenge of hiking up scree and talus.  The tutus powered us all the way to the summit!

Exhilarated, and happy to be standing pretty darn near the top of this continent, plenty of frolicking ensued...

After thoroughly romping on the top of the world, we began to make our descent.  Suddenly, the universe conspired to assemble the most magical event in the history of tutu backpacking.  First, a fellow hiking up the trail stopped to marvel at and photograph our costumed passage.  Next, the two girls hiking behind us caught up to our photo shoot and promptly became our new best friends.  They were hiking with an Ipod-rigged scare-the-bears-boombox, and we all agreed that this moment called for a dance party.  Alicia, our new BFF, cued up Thriller and they mentioned that they needed to learn the dance to perform for a birthday party the following week.  Luckily, I know the entire thing.  (knowing Thriller is fast proving to be an essential life skill)  Stoked hiker dude agreed to video, and we had a quick rehearsal on the trail:

After our run-through, Michael Jackson moonwalked down from his cloud over the Grand Teton and gave us a couple pointers.  Our zombie style now perfected, we were ready to rock.  Ladies and Gentlemen, hold on to your hats, as the Tetons have never seen the likes of this before:

The ridiculous perfection of this happening fueled enough giggles to make the rest of the hike a breeze, well at least a lot of it.  We still had ten miles to go, and a disproportionate amount of daylight left.  The one sacrifice made for the art of "Tutus Thrill the Tetons" was our camera's battery, so these were the last pictures we managed before the camera pooped out completely.

Yeah, hiking! Heather here for a verbal-only telling of the last half of the day
We realized that our current pace would get us back to the car about 11:00 pm and started booking it back to the car. For the last six miles, we speed-walked and sang nonstop to keep bears at bay. What a beautiful hike out! The sun was setting behind us as we walked beside a stream bed. We were done with the scree and steep slopes, but the mountains still towered above us.
Mountains in Oregon are miles and miles across, their slopes covered (when not snowy) in bushes, then trees, then dirt, possibly breaking out into craggy rock spires at the very top. The Tetons soar up from the ground. You can see the layers of limestone and granite (wild stab at pretending to know what the rocks are....total guess), mountains stripped to the core. You have to crane your head back to be able to see their tops, seemingly directly above you. I was doing this, checking out the alpenglow (again, imagine angel chorus sounds...) and my thought process was something like this:

[Singing Flake by Jack Johnson loudly with Mieka]
Wow. Check out how glowy and awesome the tops of all these mountains are. Ahhhh.
[Noise of something many, many times larger than me smashing bushes directly in front of me]
[Sight of something very big and brown less than 10 feet away]
Oh, that's not good. Is that a bear?
"HEY!"

It was not a bear (Whew!), instead, it was a cow moose with her adolescent calf. After hearing me yell, they begrudgingly walked off the path a few feet. We watched them, amazed, for a long time before they moved on. Like the bison, they were totally unconcerned by us, which felt weird, and were so mezmerizing.
We later saw two more moose, including a bull, all munching on bushes and all with the attitude of "Yo, you're in my living room". The knowledge that very, very large animals were in the bushes around us drove us to up the decibel level on the singing.
At one point, we were on a narrow horse trail through tall bushes, and we both had the feeling that a hungry bear or angry moose or tardy dinosaur could leap out at any time. We belted every Disney song we could think of (and every other song) until getting back to the more open and populated area near the trailhead. There, we checked out the stars.

Recommendation: Check out the stars tonight. Even if you're in a city, spend a couple of minutes checking out that dazzle. Pick one of the group of stars and learn a constellation. Having acquaintances in an inspiring sky is a good feeling.

We finally got back to the car at about 9:30, and Mieka drove back. 19.2 miles with about 2000 feet of elev gain in combination with early wake-up turned us into real zombies....but stoked, contented, inspired zombies.

I'm sure the dance would have been even better then.