I heard a rustle next to my head, and turned my headlamp on. I was tired, and ready to sleep, so I closed my eyes and was just starting to doze off when John yelled right in my ear, causing me to jump and yell as well. I was quite excited – making seen my first porcupine, a pika, several marmots and earlier in the day while I was working a fox had ran past me. ![]() It took an annoyed look at me, and it mades a few murmuring noises before shuffling off. It was much bigger than I had expected, and like all national park animals, not very afraid of us. I jumped out of the tent and ran over to where he was since after all these years, I had never actually seen a porcupine. “I almost tripped over a porcupine!” He shouted. John left the tent to go pee one last time when I heard him yell: “Whoooooa my god!!!!”įor a split second I thought he had seen a grizzly bear. We continued up the canyon into the camping zone that out permit allowed us to camp in, and found a spot to call home.Īfter we set up the tent and ate dinner while swatting at mosquitos, we moved our bear canister with all our food in it far away from us, and crawled into the tent. This particular pika allowed me to get quite close to it and I snapped a few pictures. Climate change is threatening this species and pushing them further and further up into very limited habitat ranges. It lives only in high elevation areas because it likes cooler temperatures. It’s in the rabbit family, but it looks more like a large and very rotund mouse with very round ears. Then, from a hole in a rock right on the trail in front of us, the most adorable animal of all animals living in Grand Teton emerged, peered at us, and scuttled back into its hole, only to reemerge to take another look at us. We saw several marmots scurrying around, some of which looked quite a bit smaller than the ones I was used to from the Sierras. We parked at Granite Canyon trail head, and hiked past Phelps Lake and up into Death Canyon. This is when the animals start becoming active. Since we didn’t start hiking until late afternoon, we got to hike through the evening, which is our favorite time to be out. We got our permit and the next day after work we headed up Death Canyon. The safest option, she told us, was Death Canyon. So, we asked her what the safest route would be given that we didn’t have our ice axes (we were told snow was abundant above 9,500ft). We had a loop in mind that would go through Owl canyon and Webb Canyon, but the ranger convinced us that this route would be unsafe due to high stream crossings that could sweep us away. ![]() John and I went to the wilderness permitting office in order to get a backpacking permit. So, there’s a chance I’ll go back and blog about some of those hikes (we wound up covering about 150 miles of trail in Yosemite while we were there), but in the meantime I’m going to blog about our most recent hike in the Tetons. I’ve been very bad about blogging about my hikes this past month in Yosemite – mostly for lack of time and lack of sleep (you all know how much I love my sleep).
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