Cascade Canyon

WE DID IT!!!!!! Oh my goodness, that was by far the BEST backpacking trip that I have ever been on and I am so happy to put pictures of it on my blog that I TOOK and not ones that other people took! This place was so much more than I expected! So here is how our trip went:

We arrived to Jenny Lake, Wyoming at about 5:30 pm Friday night and we went and got our back country camping permit from the ranger. The ranger thought that we were somewhat crazy for starting the hike so late in the day but we were so pumped that we didn't even care! They made us take this big plastic bear container to put our food in and told us that it was mandatory because there have been so many bears out this year! COOL!!! So we flew over to the parking lot, threw our packs on, and without any further adieu we were off hiking at about 6:15pm! What an amazing hike it was. It started off with a hike around the lake to the trail head and that was gorgeous in itself. Once we started up the canyon, I realized that the stuff that we thought was beautiful before was nothing compared to what was in the canyon.

The first amazing thing that we passed about 1 mile up the canyon was a 120 foot waterfall called Hidden Falls. Man was that amazing! Then it just got better from there. We came out to this point called Inspiration Point and it overlooked the lake and the valley and it was amazing. Then once we started getting deeper into the canyon, it was beautiful rapids, waterfalls down both sides of the canyon walls all over the place, luscious green forests, moose, porky pines, marmots, and other cool little animals. We were surrounded by the Tetons on both sides of us which made the most awesome scenery. Once we got to our destination 6.6 miles up the canyon, we made camp. We were up at the snow level and it was about a foot deep in some places but we found an awesome little spot on dry ground and we busted out our little stoves and made our Top Ramen. Its amazing how good that tastes when you are really hungry!! The night was cold. I didn't bring a pad so it was my sleeping bag on the frozen ground. Yeah, not too comfortable!!! But we did hear the roar of the waterfall that we camped next to all night and that was quite soothing!

We woke up at about 7:30, got some water from from the stream and made some hot chocolate and oatmeal. Our plan was to hike 2.4 more miles up the north fork of the canyon but the trail was covered with 4 feet of snow which made it too difficult with a heavy pack and no snow shoes. So that idea went out the window! But thats ok. I am 110% satisfied with where we went and what we saw. It was by far the most beautiful place that I have ever been to and I am so going back in a few months after the snow melts to get up to Lake Solitude. The trip was awesome, nothing went wrong, and it was a BLAST!!!! I wish that you all could have been up there with us. I for sure have my Dad's Wyoming blood in me! I could live there forever!


Here are a few of the 114 pictures that I took:

This is what the walls of the canyon looked like.

This is the first little bridge that we went over on the trail on our way to Hidden Falls

About 3 miles up into the canyon. Luckily it doesn't get dark until about 9:30 so we had plenty of light.

This is the waterfall right next to our campsite. It was so beautiful!

That is me washing my face with the water running off the hill side.

Yeah...it was really cold!

This was part of our hike around Jenny Lake

We were about 1 mile or less into the canyon

Just some water! There was so much of it up there!

This was pretty early on in the hike. Notice the little marmot in the background on the rock. I didn't even realize it was there!

Hidden Falls. Man did that thing roar! It felt so nice to stand there in the mist.

This was the ascent up to Inspiration Point. We felt so inspired. Ha ha!


We had about 2 miles left to go at this point.


I took this from inside the canyon.


Our little campsite



Just another cool picture I took from Jenny Lake



Filtering some water



Another picture of the waterfall next to where we camped. It looks identical to the one someone else took in my last post, but its not! Mine has snow in it!


A cool little bird I saw by the car. I took that with an SLR...thats why it turned out so cool!



This peak is called Coyote Peak (or something like that) because it looks like a howling coyote.



Another scenery picture! Sorry if you are getting sick of these!

Part of the trail was the stream


Um...self explanatory. The river in the canyon.

WE ARE ALMOST READY!!!!

So everything is falling perfectly into place for our trip this weekend. Just in case anyone forgot, this weekend is our big Cascade Canyon backpacking trip. Man are we excited! Our packs are packed and we are making the last minute preparations so that we don't encounter any problems along the way. Unfortunately, some people aren't going to be able to go so it is just me and my two roommates. I don't care if nobody else went, would still go! I have been so excited ever since I heard about this place over a month ago. It actually worked out nice that we waited to go because up until two weeks ago, it was snowing in the Tetons. I called up to the Ranger Station today and the place where we were planning on camping still is covered in snow and the lake is frozen. So what we are going to do is go as far as we can until we hit the snow and we will camp there. Saturday morning, depending on the snow level, we will try to make it up to Lake Solitude which is where we were going to camp. Either way, it is going to be an amazing trip and I am counting the hours and minutes until we go! I will post new pictures probably on Sunday or Monday after the trip! Wish us luck!

AIR SHOW

And who says that cool things don't happen in Rexburg?! Last Saturday Rexburg held its annual air show and I must say that I was a little skeptical as to whether or not it would be worth going to or not. Let me tell you, it was well worth it! They had a ton of WWII fighter planes, bombers, and other stunt planes that were just incredible! All of them were in flying condition and all of them at one time or another were putting on a show in the air. There was one guy who was absolutely nuts as he purposely made his plane start falling apart in the air as part of a stunt. He had us all fooled. First, part of his right wing fell off while he was way up in the air and he came spiraling down to the ground and we all thought that we were going to see some insane crash but that was all part of the act. He pulled right out of it right before hitting the ground and went up and made another piece of his plane fall off. This guy was insane! But these things that he was doing while not even having all of his plane intact was way impressive! Probably one of the coolest things was watching the fighter jet fly at about 600 mph 5 feet above the ground about 40 feet away from you. Those things move!!! Anyway, it was an awesome day and man did I get fried! I now look like a red tomato and was in pain for the first couple of days. It's all good now! Might I say that those old planes are so stinking loud! They literally shake the ground! Oh man, it was so awesome!

Kite Flying with 50mph + winds...FUN STUFF!!

Ok....so I know that kite-flying might be a bit childish, but man this was fun! My roommate has these two awesome stunt kites that he takes to the beach so we decided that with these 50mph winds that it might be fun to fly them....or have them fly us! Man!!! Once those things got in the air, they dragged us all over the place! On the big one, you hold onto a water ski rope handle and control it with that. That thing had some amazing power! When it was at about a 45 degree angle, the force of it would pull you so hard that it sent you running just to try and hold onto it. It was so much fun!!! Check out the videos so you can see just how crazy this was! Sadly, we learned the hard way that these kites probably aren't supposed to be in these kinds of winds since the strings on both kites busted from the force. It was fun while it lasted!