We had an amazing weekend. Skidog’s high school friend Jim has guided with a Jackson river outfitter for 8 years now, and invited us up for a weekend. There's no way I was turning that opportunity down. Tele Jon, Skidog and I ventured north to Jackson for some adventure.
Jim is an all-around great guy. He’s funny, witty and a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with, and a talented musician to boot. More than once I darned near fell out of the raft, I was laughing so hard. Case in point: we spot a beaver swimming along the river bank. Jim, with a deadpan voice and absolutely straight face, addresses all of us.
Priceless.
Our campsite was 10 miles up a dead-end dirt road along Granite Creek south of Jackson. This place was stunning – one of the prettiest valleys that I’ve ever seen.
I normally avoid campgrounds like the plague, but this National Forest Service campground was perfect. It was wonderfully quiet – there are 52 sites but we could barely see our neighbors. The campground was about a mile below a hot springs swimming pool that we never had time to use, and about a half mile from Granite Falls, a spectacular ~40-foot waterfall.
It was chilly in the upper 30s (even though it’s only around 7,000 feet) when we awoke on Saturday morning – hard to believe when it’s been so hot here, only a few hours away.
We then drove to Jackson to the Mad River boathouse to meet Jim and pick up the gear. Jim took the day off, so we weren’t technically rafting with the company, we were just using their gear so we were free to do whatever we wanted.
We wanted whitewater first, so we strapped the raft to the roof of the truck to head to the Snake River Canyon from West Table down to Sheep Gulch, between Hoback Jct. and Alpine Jct.
With the higher center of gravity cornering was, uh..."sporting" and things got really lively over 65 mph. :lol:
The whitewater was a blast!
Not being on a commercial trip was wonderful. We pulled over when we wanted. We took time to surf eddies. We gawked at bald eagles sitting in the trees along the riverbank. We were on no one else's schedule.
The biggest rapid is called Lunch Counter, where some guys were actually surfing the waves in place. Who would’ve thought that you could surf in Wyoming?
I photographed some other very similar boats going through Lunch Counter as I didn’t have the cajones to keep the camera out as there was a real chance of capsizing as we ran it. And we nearly did.
Afterward, we went back through Jackson to head up to Grand Teton National Park.
There we took a lazy evening float down the Snake River through the park, exploring side channels as the river forked over and over again across its flood plain. We didn’t get out of the river until 9 pm.
We then headed back to camp, cooking a late night dinner of elk ribeye steaks before sleeping through the night and heading back to Salt Lake today.
Good times.
Jim is an all-around great guy. He’s funny, witty and a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with, and a talented musician to boot. More than once I darned near fell out of the raft, I was laughing so hard. Case in point: we spot a beaver swimming along the river bank. Jim, with a deadpan voice and absolutely straight face, addresses all of us.
Priceless.
Our campsite was 10 miles up a dead-end dirt road along Granite Creek south of Jackson. This place was stunning – one of the prettiest valleys that I’ve ever seen.
I normally avoid campgrounds like the plague, but this National Forest Service campground was perfect. It was wonderfully quiet – there are 52 sites but we could barely see our neighbors. The campground was about a mile below a hot springs swimming pool that we never had time to use, and about a half mile from Granite Falls, a spectacular ~40-foot waterfall.
It was chilly in the upper 30s (even though it’s only around 7,000 feet) when we awoke on Saturday morning – hard to believe when it’s been so hot here, only a few hours away.
We then drove to Jackson to the Mad River boathouse to meet Jim and pick up the gear. Jim took the day off, so we weren’t technically rafting with the company, we were just using their gear so we were free to do whatever we wanted.
We wanted whitewater first, so we strapped the raft to the roof of the truck to head to the Snake River Canyon from West Table down to Sheep Gulch, between Hoback Jct. and Alpine Jct.
With the higher center of gravity cornering was, uh..."sporting" and things got really lively over 65 mph. :lol:
The whitewater was a blast!
Not being on a commercial trip was wonderful. We pulled over when we wanted. We took time to surf eddies. We gawked at bald eagles sitting in the trees along the riverbank. We were on no one else's schedule.
The biggest rapid is called Lunch Counter, where some guys were actually surfing the waves in place. Who would’ve thought that you could surf in Wyoming?
I photographed some other very similar boats going through Lunch Counter as I didn’t have the cajones to keep the camera out as there was a real chance of capsizing as we ran it. And we nearly did.
Afterward, we went back through Jackson to head up to Grand Teton National Park.
There we took a lazy evening float down the Snake River through the park, exploring side channels as the river forked over and over again across its flood plain. We didn’t get out of the river until 9 pm.
We then headed back to camp, cooking a late night dinner of elk ribeye steaks before sleeping through the night and heading back to Salt Lake today.
Good times.
