Turquoise Lake was where we had our only encounter with other backpackers in the Gros Ventre. We saw their tent as soon as we arrived but didn't meet them until later, after we'd made our camp. John and Diane (didn't get their last name) were a couple about my age or maybe a little older. We met Diane first, as we were hanging our food. We told her about ourselves, including that this was a first real backpacking trip. She and John were from Washington State and were avid backpackers. This was their first day in the Gros Ventre and they had come straight to Turquoise Lake.
Diane shared a few backpacking tips from the "Leave No Trace" movement which, as the name implies, advocates methods that minimize impact on the land. I had read a little about this movement and thought I was generally following its methods. Later I wondered if Diane had been tactfully pointing out ways we were out of compliance, but if so she was so friendly and subtle about it I couldn't be offended. She also invited us to go see how John hung their food. He had an unusual method that he'd perfected over the years. Later, we ran into both of them as we strolled around the lake. It turned out John was a retired geologist turned professional photographer. Their visit to the Grow Ventre was apparently a mixture of business and pleasure. We went and saw his food-hanging method. It certainly looked bear-proof, but too clever for me.
In addition to the clarity of the lake, Natalie was also taken by its stillness and reflectivity, which gave it a mirror-like quality. She took this picture of a mountain reflected on the surface as the sun was setting. The mirror image of the mountain is almost as clear as the mountain itself.
We had a tiny stream not far from our tent, so instead of cooking with the drinking water we'd purified with our SteriPen, I just filled our pot directly from the stream. Our camp next to Turquoise Lake was my favorite. After watching the shadows climb up to the top of the mountain on the other side of the lake, we zipped ourselves in our tent and played a few hands of cards, and Natalie made her journal entry for the day. She didn't have any trouble reading or writing in the dim light of our little battery-operated camp lantern. I had tried writing the night before, but found it almost impossible.
The next morning, after coffee, hot chocolate, and oatmeal, we consulted our map and decided on our route for the day. This being our third day out, we didn't want to venture too much farther from Jackson, but we didn't need to start heading back either. In the end we decided to hike northeast down Granite Creek until about noon, then double back, but not all the way to Turquoise Lake. The map showed a trail that would take us back to the ridge we'd crossed on the way to Turquoise Lake by a shorter route, without going all the way back to the lake.
After a false start down a trail that just went around the lake, we found the right trail and started to climb up out of the basin the lake was in. Just like the trail we'd taken on the way in, this trail led through forests with big outcroppings of rock and was covered in places with patches of snow we either had to tramp through or skirt around. Sometimes it was hard to find the trail again on the other side of a snow patch, but luckily our new friends the rangers had recently been through and their horses' tracks usually showed us the way. After about half an hour of picking our way carefully through the trees, snow and rocks, we emerged into a more open landscape of rolling hills and meadows.
Although Natalie and I are both in pretty good shape and didn't get the kind of soreness that comes from exercising unused muscles, we were both developing some sore spots, and we took inventory as we hiked along Granite Creek. We were both getting blisters on our feet and various tender spots from our backpacks. Natalie's left hip hurt - not when she put weight on her leg, but when she lifted it. A nagging pain in the ball of my foot that I'd been nursing and thought I was almost over had flared up. But none of these things really slowed us down significantly, and on the positive side we'd had three days to acclimate to the altitude, so climbing seemed easier, if anything. This section of the trail was well defined and easy to follow. It ran along the left or northwest side of Granite Creek and was surrounded on either side by a broad expanse of meadows full of flowers and littered with boulders.
On this section of the trail, the scenery was generally better to our left, away from Granite Creek, but our full attention was drawn to the creek on two occasions when its babble changed to a roar as it dropped into deep gorges. Natalie stood on the edge to take the pictures below while I held onto one of the straps of her backpack.
To be continued...
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