Teton Traverse

Five days in the Tetons in late June: two backpacking legs strung along the crest, with a few valley mornings on either end. We rode the tram up Rendezvous Mountain and dropped into Granite Canyon, traversed the high country past Marion Lake, then relocated north to climb Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude — which was still ringed with ice. The maps below are built straight from the watch tracks; the distances, climbs, and nights out are computed from those.

Whole trip

Distance: 38.1 mi
Ascent: 5,079 ft
High point: 10,479 ft
Moving time: 23h 33m
Nights out: 3

Day	Leg	Miles	Gain (ft)	Time
Jun 21	Tram → Middle Fork camp ●	5.0	446	3h 59m
Jun 22	Marion Lake → down-canyon camp ●	9.6	1,102	6h 35m
Jun 23	Out Granite Canyon Trailhead	2.8	0	1h 47m
Jun 23	Jenny Lake → North Fork camp ●	9.3	2,421	4h 43m
Jun 24	Lake Solitude → back out	11.4	1,109	6h 29m

One row per recorded day — a GPX segment each — using the same smoothing as the movement totals below, so the rows sum to them. ● marks a camp night.

Approach — Colter Bay¶

We based the first night at Colter Bay and walked the Lakeshore Trail out to Heron Pond to shake off the travel.

Heron Pond from the Colter Bay Lakeshore Trail — our first day hike, basecamped at the Colter Bay Campground. 24 mm · ƒ1.8 · 1/2703 · ISO 80

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Granite Canyon¶

The traverse proper starts at the top of the tram — 10,450 ft ¹The tram buys you roughly 4,100 ft of vertical over Teton Village before the first step — the trip’s high point, reached sitting down. — and works west and down into Granite Canyon before turning up toward Marion Lake. ²First camp sat where the Teton Crest Trail meets the Middle Fork of Granite Creek, bear-proof food locker on site. A mule deer bedded down in the meadow at dusk and stayed a long while before drifting off into the pines. Late-season snow made the upper sections slow; route-finding off Rendezvous took the better part of two hours for the first mile. ³A ranger on the South Fork cutoff wasn’t thrilled with our route; without poles and spikes I doubt he’d have let us continue.

Figure 1. The single red line is the route; ● marks camps, open dots are where photographs were made.

Granite Canyon

Distance: 17.4 mi
Ascent: 1,549 ft
Descent: 5,643 ft
High point: 10,479 ft
Moving time: 12h 21m
Nights out: 2

Figure 2. Granite Canyon: the tram drop off Rendezvous, then the long run down-canyon with the climb back toward Marion Lake. Two nights out at the segment breaks; the shaded band marks the snow travel off Rendezvous.

Rendezvous Mountain trailhead, 10,450 ft, after riding the tram up from Teton Village — the start of the traverse toward Marion Lake and Granite Canyon. 48 mm · ƒ1.8 · 1/11364 · ISO 64

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Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude¶

After dropping out of the southern leg we shuttled north to Jenny Lake and started up the North Fork of Cascade Canyon. ⁴Camp in the North Fork stayed bright well into nine at night — long evenings are one of the quiet perks of a late-June trip. The payoff was Lake Solitude in early morning, to ourselves, still half-frozen with slabs of ice drifting on water you could read a coin through. We’d hoped to clear the pass toward Paintbrush, but it was far too snowed-in to cross without picks. ⁵It hadn’t quite frozen overnight, so even early the snow along the trail was slush rather than crust — fine for the lake, not for the pass.

Figure 3. The single red line is the route; ● marks camps, open dots are where photographs were made — wildlife sightings in blue.

Cascade Canyon → Lake Solitude

Distance: 20.7 mi
Ascent: 3,530 ft
Descent: 3,593 ft
High point: 9,094 ft
Moving time: 11h 12m
Nights out: 1

Figure 4. Cascade Canyon: the climb from Jenny Lake up the North Fork to Lake Solitude, then the descent back to the valley. Open dots mark photos — tap one to view it; wildlife sightings in blue — and ● marks camp.

The Tetons from Jenny Lake. 120 mm · ƒ2.8 · 1/2024 · ISO 50

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After — valley mornings¶

With the crest behind us, the last day was for the easy, famous viewpoints: Oxbow Bend dead-still at sunset, Schwabacher Landing before dawn ⁶We rolled in just before five and it was already busy. A kid from a 4-H group talked us through layers, reflections, and horizon; I tried to put her advice to work. , and a wet jog up to Grand View Point as storms rolled in.

Sunset at Oxbow Bend. 14 mm · ƒ2.2 · 1/126 · ISO 50

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