grand teton national park pictures

[twoeleven]

remember our doomed tetons trip last year? there are pictures from it, as promised long ago.



the resort we stayed in had a good view of the mountains; this is a view from lunch tree hill, just to the right of it:



it's a huge panoramic shot, about 11k pixels wide at full size.

the hill had some pretty flowers, many of which i'd never seen before:






the doomed trip into the frozen wastes above string lake started out so well:








the raft trip on the snake river went better, despite cloudiness and wind:







this is just messing around with a very long lens, which is why i carry the silly thing:




the next morning, i dragged myself out of bed before dawn to take pictures of oxbow bend, one of the iconic spots in the park. these photos are simply much of a muchness.



it's possible to find literally thousands of similar photos online. i generally avoid views that have been done to death, but i couldn't resist this one.



this one, at least, is a different view across the bend then most people photograph. it's looking more southwest than west.

oxbow bend is supposed to have a lot of wildlife in the warmer months of the year, but we didn't get our choice of schedule.


one thing about the park that's different from every other national park we've been to is that it's possible to see the star attraction from practically everywhere. the amazing view starts to become routine. (which is why i wanted to go hiking up into the view.)



trying to assemble this panorama with color correction turned on killed my workstation a few times, so i stopped trying to get it to look perfect. that's likely because the full size image is about 27k pixels wide. it's a lovely thing, if you can look through it.








we did go hiking into part of the scenery, a smaller rise called whitetail butte. there's a cliff where people practice rock climbing with stairs up to the base. they reminded me of a similar staircase in a well-known fantasy movie:




what really redeemed the trip was our last excursion. we went to a mountaintop just south of the park to see the view. it was well worth it despite temperatures well below freezing and winds gusting over 60kts.







there are ski trails leading down from the mountaintop, at least for those with a death wish:



thanks, but no thanks. when i want that kind of rush, i'll take an aerobatic plane out for a spin or two.

Comments

[randomdreams]

I feel like any route down that mountain would be more than double black diamond.
And for a doomed trip, you got some amazing pictures. The Tetons are spectacular. I think the Sawtooths in Idaho are the only other mountains in the US that are quite that amazing. The stuff along the Sunshine Coast in Canada is comparable, though.

[twoeleven]

there were some routes down that had been blocked off because they were simply too lethal. one was worse than a sheer cliff: it was a slight undercut, so it was possible for people's skis to come off the cliff face, with suitably bad results.

[randomdreams]

I once read an inspirational article in Outside Magazine, about people whose job it was to ski down avalanche chutes in the Alps before the ski area opened and trigger any avalanches that were going to happen, then outrun them...