On a day hike up Cascade Canyon four years ago, we
started thinking in the late afternoon about how it would be to not have to
turn around and go back--to stay and camp in Cascade’s North Fork. The good
luck of not too much smoke, a sunny forecast, and snagging a last-minute Park
Service camping permit for exactly that North Fork camping zone lured us into
the backcountry.
We should have trained for carrying 35-pound packs up 7 ½
miles and 1,500 feet of elevation, but, really, though hard, it was beautiful--a sandy flat place with a view to stake out the tent, a
distant flash of a black bear in the still-green willows across the creek, a
dusky gold glow on the old granite of Mount Owen and the Grand, and the Milky
Way flowing above the canyon ridge-to-ridge at night.
And it was also beautiful
to return to Gros Ventre Campgound afterward. A few days without them make
tables, benches, sinks, water that doesn’t need to be filtered, and toilets
seem more lovely than they were before, but, then, a few days feeling the
camaraderie of the trail--almost everyone smiles--makes the unsmiling distance
between people in Jackson stand out, and Jackson was still very crowded in the
week after Labor Day. Another thing we found: we can still do this--barely. |
| Moose near the Gros Ventre Campground |
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