The Dream

I don’t recall where I first heard about the Teton Crest Trail, but I have wanted to hike this route for a few years. The route is 35-45 miles, depending on where one decides to start and finish. It passes through the Jedediah Wilderness Area, Bridger Teton and Caribou-Targhee National Forests, and Grand Teton National Park mostly above 8,000 feet.

I envisioned hiking at high altitude through mountain scenery, capturing glimpses of wildlife, while walking through flower filled, mountain meadows, seeing mountain lakes, glaciers, and waterfalls. As usual, I also ached for solitude, to get away from the hustle of ‘normal’ life and the press of people everywhere.

Facts:

Permits

Back country permits are required for any overnight stays in Grand Teton National Park. The National Park Service makes up to 1/3 of the total season permits available the first Wednesday in January at 8:00 AM Mountain Time, through May 15th via the Recreation.gov website. The remaining 2/3 are available on a first come, first served basis one day before the planned trip. These are available at the Ranger station near the Jenny Lake Visitor Center in the Park. Back country permits allow the permittee to camp in a specific camping ‘zone’. Each zone is clearly marked at the beginning and the end. Permittees are allowed to camp anywhere within the zone, but requested to camp in marked camp sites or in areas that show use of previous camping. Permittees must camp out of site of trails and other campers and at least 200 ft from lakes or streams.

If reserving online, make sure to be on the website when they start taking reservations as permits are grabbed up quickly, especially the ‘prime’ locations such as Marion Lake, and Holly Lake. Each trip reservation comes with a $45 non-refundable fee.

My Reservation Experience

Before the COVID pandemic, I had attempted to reserve permits via the website, but due to work requirements, I was unable to seek permits until about 2 hours after the site began taking reservations. All of the reserved back country permits were already gone. Fast forward to January 2022: I was ready on January 5th at 8:00 AM MT (10:00 AM EST, my time zone) with the back country camping map from the NPS and a credit card. I had a basic idea of where I wanted to camp, but in hind sight, I was a bit unprepared in case the areas I wanted were unavailable for the dates I had in mind. I began selecting locations and dates and would be prompted stating if the date/site was available (this all occurs in real time on the reservation site). Over and over I was presented with a notice that the date/site was not available. Since I was not well prepared for alternative dates and sites, I frantically grabbed whatever was available that was even remotely close to my preferences. Somehow, my result was multiple reservations at $45 each and was frankly, quite a mess. I later contacted the Ranger station in GTNP and they cleared everything up, got all the reservations on one, and reduced my fees to a single $45 back country reservation fee. The lady I talked to was patient, extremely helpful, and stated that they fix this stuff all the time, which usually results from the hectic reservation process.

Takeaways

Logistics

With permits taken care of it was time to plan flights and lodging. I quickly found that options flying from Maine to Jackson Hole Airport were not ideal. From either Bangor or Portland, the flights had at least 2 layovers and were 12+ hours each way. The best option ended up being a non-stop flight from Boston to Salt Lake City, then a 4 1/2 + hour drive to Jackson, WY.

Lodging in Jackson, WY is expensive, so we rented an Airbnb in Victor, ID, which is about 30 minutes away.