The Big Trip 9.7.20 - 9.23.20, Part 9 of 9: The Finale

I was the first car at the upper parking area of Schwabacher’s Landing at about 5:45AM on the day of our departure from the Tetons. Standing in the middle of the lot, the Big Dipper rose to the north standing straight up on the end of the handle. Orion dominated the southern sky. Millions of stars and the bright Milky Way were straight overhead. Turning to the west was quite a sight. A blanket of stars filled the upper portion of the sky until they just stopped along a jagged edge, like the bottom of a magazine page had been torn out. This of course was caused by the black silhouette of the Tetons blocking any light from behind on a crystal clear pre-dawn morning. I could tell that it was going to be quite a day.

After a long time by myself and having seen every other car (though far fewer than the previous day) head to the lower parking lot, a car finally came down and parked in my lot. This is where I went into the same kind of mode as being the first one through the doors at a general admission concert. If you want front row, you gotta be aggressive. So before the second car had even applied his parking brake, I moved to action and leapt out of my car like I’d just gotten there. I threw on my down puffy over my polar fleece, pulled my hood over my stocking cap with the built in head lamp (thank you Carol!), threw on my day pack, put both cameras around my neck, one over each shoulder, strapped another zoom lens to my belt, grabbed my tripod, shut and locked the car doors, took a deep breath and began down the trail that dropped down to the beaver ponds.

I made it about four steps down from the parking lot and stopped. Hiking alone in the dark in an area known for grizzlies and moose is not a pastime for everyone and in my haste I had to stop and collect my thoughts. I was pretty nervous about being the only one down there in the dark. Ahh, but I did bring my bear spray. I reached around to grab it from the bottle pouch of my day pack but I couldn’t quite reach it. So I had to take off both cameras, find a place to set them down, then struggle mightily to get my pack off as the straps were a bit tight and bunched up on my down jacket. A bit of wrestling and body contortion and I finally managed to extricate myself from my pack, got the bear spray and then proceeded to do all those things in reverse. When finished I was ready to go. I had one hand on the bear canister and the other with my finger on the trigger. It was cold and I had on a pair of rag wool gloves but I realized this could be a fatal mistake. The gloves impeded my ability to be fast and accurate with the bear spray so I took off the gloves, zipped each one into a jacket pocket and now I was truly ready to descend into the darkness. If this had been the general admission concert scenario, I would be standing at the back of the floor which is a bad place to be when you’re only five foot four.

Remarkably, the second guy had not passed by me, probably having a bit more sense than I. Boldly I dropped down the path through a few bushes and made it to the bank. There was a certain spot on a bend in the channel that provided a wider stretch of water and dropping off the bank to a bare spot on the water’s edge gave me a great angle for reflections. Rather than move around to get a variety of angles, I just guarded my spot to get the most I could out of the sunrise. In the darkness everything was still and I could hear bull elk calling all up and down the valley. It was an incredible sunrise.

My time was limited since we had to leave so I left Schwabachers and drove up north a ways. I was heading for some split log fences along the highway between Snake River Overlook and Moran Junction.

Along the way the morning mist clung to the ground hugging the base of the Tetons. By the time I realized I needed that shot I was in the mist itself so I kept driving until I found a hill that elevated me above the cloud bank.

Once I was done there I needed to start working my way back so I headed back towards camp on the highway. I stopped at Snake River Overlook since it had been so smoky the day we arrived. This was the spot of the famous Ansel Adams photograph.

I also stopped at Teton Point Overlook and used my iPhone for a pano of the Tetons.

By now I knew that the sun would have lit up the trees and bushes in the valley so I drove back down the dirt road to Schwabacher’s Landing and took some more shots of the glorious morning scenery.

I was elated as I drove back to our campground. It’s not like I didn’t have an incredible time with or without getting to see a good Teton sunrise, but especially after so many days in a row of adverse photo conditions, I was completely content after this morning, Leaving the Tetons, we drove south towards Alpine. The color of the hillsides along this stretch were breathtaking and it was an extremely beautiful drive.

All along our plan once leaving the Tetons was to take scenic backroads to get back home. We had no more reservations assuming that any national forest campground that was open would probably have availability at this time of year. So instead of heading straight for I-90 we headed up near Dillon, crossing back into Montana following a short drive through a corner of Idaho and then turned west into the middle of nowhere to drive up the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway. Many thanks to Ron for lots of info that helped us on this trip including suggesting this route.

Mesas on the way to the Pioneer Mountains

It was late in the afternoon when we got to the turnoff and the sunlight accented the beautiful drive along Grasshopper Creek, topping out with views of eleven thousand foot peaks of the Pioneer Mountains before dropping into the headwaters of the Wise River as it makes its way to the Big Hole River. There were lots of campgrounds and we camped at Boulder Creek where it joins the Wise River. There was only one other site taken in the whole campground and it was in a really nice bit of forest. It was also in prime grizzly country (again) and Dana was probably happy I put the bear spray on the picnic table during dinner. The empty campground and isolated location made for a really great way to start winding down at the end of a trip that was an assault on the senses. We had a nice little fire and watched the stars come out.

In the morning we continued up to the town of Wise River, hooked up to Montana Route 1 and drove through Anaconda and Phillipsburg to get back up to I-90. At this point between areas that we weren’t sure of the fire situation and a declining weather pattern, we opted to just make a beeline for home. We stopped at a nice camp in Alberton, Montana for the night on the banks of the Clark Fork River. Then in one last drive, we headed west to Spokane and took Highway 2 all the way home. This gave us a chance to drive right through the area we had been turned back on due to one of the fires. Much of the landscape on the high mesas were charred black and especially devastating was the bottom of Frenchman’s Coulee between Coulee City and Orondo.

This turned out to be just an incredibly wonderful trip. The rigs ran great, the pacing was good, the itinerary worked out well for everyone and we saw more world class scenery and wildlife than you can shake a stick at. This planet has unfathomable beauty and we need to make sure to protect it for the generations to come. Go out there. See it for yourself. It’s so worth our care.

The Big Trip 9.7.20 - 9.23.20, Part 9 of 9: The Finale

The Big Trip 9.7.20 - 9.23.20, Part 8 of 9: The Tetons

Waterfall Extravaganza! Lewis River, 8.30.20 - 9.2.20