I did it. I was so upset with myself for NOT having hiked up Snow King Mountain in Jackson, Wyoming, on Thursday that yesterday I walked up the main trail and then on to the summit. The elevation change was about 1700 feet, about the same as the hikes I've done to each of the Three Peaks in the Yorkshire Dales. Here is what the hill looks like from below (actually I took this photo on my way back from having come down on a different trail).
The chairlift goes up the main clearing, but the trail goes off and up through the trees quite a bit.
It's a well-used trail, especially on weekends. I wasn't the slowest person on the trail, but mighty close. I stopped often to take photos and to drink water from my 3L camel pack water bag. I was so slow that some of the people who passed me going up, passed me again as they were coming down while I was still on my way up. Here are a couple of the too-many photos I took:
I was not very far up in the above photo. Here is probably the best photo I took of the Grand Tetons. It had rained earlier in the morning, and the clouds had not yet covered the mountains (as they did later in my hike).
Here is look back down the trail from about halfway up. That's Snow King Resort at the bottom of the hill.
Once I got up to near where the chairlift had taken me on Thursday, I saw this. Why didn't I remember my kite for this trip???
But instead of going in the direction of the chairlift, I wanted to ascend to the summit. I still faced this:
The old weather-worn sign says, "Road Closed. Alternate Route" with an arrow pointing to the right. I could look up and see the road was very steep and looked almost washed out, but I could also see that if I wanted to reach the summit then I still had a ways to go.
I'll cover that in the next posting. But first, (of course)