After a short delay, I’ve finally started writing about the rest of my trip out west… for the full recap (by day), check out my Westward Adventures page.
Wednesday morning I headed back to the trailhead and got some great views of the mountains that were partially obstructed the afternoon before by the rain showers that came into camp.
After the meadow, I walked back past Leigh Lake, which had great reflections of the mountains in the early morning.
From there, I went back to the Jenny Lake trailhead to start my hikes for the day. First up was Hidden Falls. It was a steep hike and I was (again) glad that I had my hiking poles with me. Even though it was the middle of the week, it was very busy around Jenny Lake, but the hike was definitely worth it.
On my way up to Hidden Falls, I passed a trail that was under construction. Unfortunately for me, it was the trail that goes between Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. So instead of taking a short hike to my second stop, I backtracked down to the main trail around Jenny Lake and started from the bottom of the Inspiration Point trail.
It was a long and hard hike to the top of Inspiration Point – 7,200′ – but again, very worth it. You could see out across the trees and Jenny Lake and even watch the ferry boat bringing more people across the lake.
After spending some time hanging out on the top of the mountain, I headed back down to the main trail again and instead of going the whole way around Jenny Lake which would have been at least a 15 mile hike (in addition to the 2 miles I had to go to get to my campsite for the night), I just went back the way I came.
As I started my trek around the lake again, I could see the clouds starting to form and could hear some thunder rumbling in the background. At that point, I was glad I made the decision not to go the whole way around the lake so that I could head straight to my campsite for the night.
As I got to the Leigh Lake trailhead it started to rain a little bit, so I quickly re-packed my overnight bag and as I finished, it started to rain a lot harder and the thunder got a lot closer and I started to see some lightning. So, instead of risking hiking through that weather, I hopped back in the car and tried to wait out the storm. The bad part was that the cell reception in the parking lot was really bad, so after about 45 minutes I drove up the road a little bit until I found better reception, took a look at the radar and it looked like there was going to be a break in the storm around 6:00, so I headed back to the trailhead and waited some more. Around 6:15, I decided the weather didn’t look like it was going to get better anytime soon, so I headed back to the Colter Bay campground to stay for the night instead.
I stopped by the ranger station to let them know I wasn’t staying at Leigh Lake that night and see if there was any way to change my reservation to Leigh Lake for Thursday night. Unfortunately, someone had already booked the last campsite there, so I stuck with my original reservation at Trapper Lake. The bad weather never did hit up at Colter Bay, so I think I made the right decision to head up that way, especially since I was going to end up there Thursday morning anyway.