Hiking Jackson

It was a slow beginning to a chilly day and the two hour drive out to the Enclosure climbing gym in Jackson, WY, made for good talking time with Jenna about things I won’t quite mention yet, while Daniel and Charly talked about…guy stuff? Let me explain this gym for you, because I just know you are dying to understand why we would pay good money and time to go to a gym when we own one ourselves. You see, ours is a quint bouldering gym. Theirs is a humongous sport gym with a gaping arch that you can lead from one side to the other. With new routes needing to be set at ours, and me being too lazy to set them, we took the easy way out, and man was it a delightful way. I even got to onsite an 11d/12a. One that was scattered with little cute finger tip crimpers. My favorite.

After that we put up the twenty five dollars for just three and a half hours in the Grand Teton National Park. The ashen clouds hung at the mountain tops and I jumped at all the picture taking opportunities that they presented as we made the short hike out to Taggart Lake (the lake in the pictures below.) There was the juvenile talk of bears getting their last meal before hibernation, but what we didn’t expect was to be that group of hikers that left all but one of their headlamps in the car and hiked back in the dark after eating some poor boy sandwiches (one of which Maycee managed to steal from my hands and swallow whole.)

Alas, we made it to Taggart Lake, then Bradley, ate, and began to make our way back when, suddenly, we were fifteen feet away from a bull moose. Alls good though, you know, Maycee bays at it and it trots away. So we’re good, right? Right. So we keep walking and a few minutes later we’re twenty feet away from a mama moose and a teenager moose. Now, my Florida heritage may present a weak knowledge of the mountains, but I’m smart enough to know that the mama animals are the scariest. Just imagine a human mother when her baby is endanger, only this time she weighs 1,800 pounds and has four thick hoofs perfect for trampling with. A tad bit unnerving. Immediately we begin to call out for our beagle with little man’s syndrome, but to no avail. All of a sudden we watch as the mama moose charges Maycee and manages to trample her left leg.

Just kidding. Just thought I had too much of a lead up to nothing.

In short, we went off the beaten path for a little while after getting a hold of the dog. Jenna and I were behind and so I politely asked Daniel if I could step in front of him. Upon him saying yes Jenna cut in front of me and before I more then three steps. So I wasn’t the only one with the terrifying thought of being trampled by a moose.