SEPTEMBER 9, 2002

KOA Campground, Wilson, WY and Grand Teton National Park

Of course a little bit of a bustle getting up, having breakfast and getting on the road for fire and water quality presentations at Grand Teton National Park. Dave Smaldone (Grand Teton NP), Lori Iverson (Grand Teton NP), Pat Durland (Fire Management Specialist for the BLM), and Mack McFarland (Grand Teton NP) gave great presentations on fire management for long fire return interval forests at the Murie Center where the group had the opportunity to see crews working on tree spacing, limbing up (removal of low, dead tree branches), and ground fuel reduction.

Following a picnic lunch we met Aida Farag, Research Fishery Biologist, USGS who has been working with the Grand Teton National Park to, “establish baseline conditions of park backcountry surface waters to be used as a tool for measuring future changes, and evaluate the effects that backcountry users may be having on the water quality of selected backcountry streams.” (Backcountry Water Quality in Grand Teton, Park Science. By lake boat we traveled across Jenny Lake and walked up the first half mile of Cascade Canyon to take water samples and to view Cascade Creek.

We have now been on the road for 42 days traveling by ATV, horse and foot. We’ve done some pretty challenging cross-country bushwhacking by horseback and foot. Throughout all this no one has been sick or sustained serious injury. Soooo, what does dumb dana do but while performing a sample water testing I slip on a rock and rather than catch my balance with my hand, just let myself slip (as I’m wearing sterile gloves for the water sampling and don’t want to contaminate the gloves - yeah, like that’s really important since this is just to see how it’s done.) The end result is a very sore, bruised and swollen foot. Rats, just what I need the day before a three-day backpack.

But aside from my stupidity and clumsiness it is a most excellent day. The
Grand Tetons are moment-to-moment cloaked or exposed in morning mist followed by a parade of great puffy white clouds in a clear blue-blue sky throughout the day. The high peaks have patches of snow from the weekend storm. And Jenny Lake is a blue plate with an almost landscaped shoreline of gravel, wonderful boulders and pines. The Cascade Creek trail and viewpoints, despite tens of thousands of trail visitors annually during their 3-month season, is well designed to sustain the traffic and still remain picturesque. The hard-packed dirt trail is lined and twists between boulders as it climbs parallel to Cascade Creek. Viewpoints offer boulder, log or carved log resting spots. The creek itself is glistening roar of water through walls of rock and over a boulder bed. We saw visitors obviously from other countries, families with young children, young adults equipped for rock climbing in the designated training areas, elderly seniors slowly but persistently making their way up the trail, visitors in hiking gear, others in standard vacation garb and some women even in low heels - an interesting cross-section of visitors thoroughly enjoying a magnificent day.

Back at camp Michelle, our medic, and Trish, Dave Mensing’s wife, administered to my foot but my ability to continue in the morning was a major question. In the evening we were treated to a fantastic Mexican dinner at Vista Grande by Paul Slavik. It should have been a perfect closing for a relaxing interesting day but a wakeful night dragged on forever worrying over my stupid foot. From the Journey, dana