Looking Over Hurricane Pass

We thought we ought to walk awhile

So we left that town in a single file

Up and up and up

mile after mile after mile.




We reached the tree line and I dropped my pack

Sat down on my haunches

and I looked back down

Over the mountain

Helpless and speechless and breathless.

These lyrics from the James Taylor’s song, Gaia, describe precisely the forced march through the Tetons undertaken by many of the Walker clan way back in August 1982. It was truly the most epic adventure I had experienced up to that point in my life. Many suffered on the trek and after but my 17-year-old body felt little gravity. What I would give to have those legs now. Youth is truly wasted on the young. Anyway.

Lorin Walker, Merle Egbert, Mike Walker (get a haircut), Doc Miller, and Randy Drake somewhere near Alaska Basin. This picture, like some pie, may be part of a different hike. I'll verify.

We rode the Jackson Hole tram up in order to gain some altitude; thankfully, because from there it seemed that for every time the trail dipped down, it would veer straight up twice as many times. We climbed hard for more than eight miles, sweating in the summer sun, grateful for every shady switchback and verdant alpine meadow. We camped near Fox Creek and woke up sore. We hit the dusty path again. I had no idea of the greater reward waiting for us just up the next incline.

As the trail disappeared, suddenly replaced by sky and thin white clouds, we leveled off into an area called Hurricane Pass (10,372 ft.). It is still the most beautiful natural panorama filed in my memory: looking over a glacier and the eon-sculpted valleys at the three massive peaks of the Tetons (the Grand Teton at 13,770', the Middle Teton at 12,804', and the South Teton at 12,514'). Cool air streamed up and over the glacier near the pass where we stood, adding to the neck tingling initiated by the beauty of the scene. Pausing, reveling, before the blue sky, mountains, and water, you could feel your soul expanding to fit into all of that space—helpless and speechless and breathless.

Not my photo but it’s the closest to what I remember . . . thanks Matt on Picasa.