The day I summited Rondezvous

So I figured since I'm leaving the Tetons in four days now would be the time to give you all a photo tour of the park. Also, I finally figured out how to get photos off of my phone....

The picture to the left is the view from the back deck of the Lodge. The tallest peak that you see is the Grand Teton. It sits right around 13,700 ft above sea level. The lodge itself is at 6,860. For the first few days that you get here you can definitely feel the effects of the altitude. Some of us more than others. These pictures were taken when I first arrived here in May, and as you can see we still had a lot of snow. That white patch in front of the mountains is Jackson Lake. It was frozen solid until June.

These mountains may look familiar to you, Grand Teton National Park is used in all kinds of places from truck ads to the recent episode of Modern Family. In the park there are a few hotels. I work for Grand Teton Lodge Company. We are the largest concessioner in the park. We operate Jackson Lake Lodge, Jenny Lake Lodge, Colter Bay Village, Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis and starting next summer Flagg Ranch.

One thing that I think is super interesting is that the other sides of these mountains are not nearly this jagged. The Idaho side looks a lot more like Virginia with rolling foothills and rounded peaks.

Grand Teton National Park is located to the south of Yellowstone National Park. It is just about an hour drive to get to Old Faithful in Yellowstone. This picture is from late May. When we drove up to Yellowstone there was still 10+ feet of snow on the sides of the road, and we really couldn't see anything. Once you get up by the geysers the ground is a lot warmer dues to all of the volcanic activity. Because of this there was not really any snow at all around the geysers. Old Faithful is very touristy, with lots of people and families around, but its still a pretty incredible sight. I'm definitely glad I got to see it. I made three trips up to Yellowstone this summer and each time I got to see something crazy. There is tons of wildlife as well as incredible natural scenery. If you ever end up over here check out the lower falls. Its called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and it is breathtaking.

This is me from the top of Signal Mountain, a pretty small mountain to the south of Jackson Lake Lodge. As you can see fall had begun in the Tetons. It is still pretty warm during the day (in the 70s, and even in the heat of the summer it never got much above 85). You can see that it is pretty smokey in the background. During the summer it is super dry, and so every year we get a lot of forest fires. In the park they really don't try to stop fires unless they are man made or threatening a building (which there aren't a lot of.) In fact some of the trees out here were made specifically for fires. The pine tree's pine cones don't open unless heated to a super-high temperature, which can only be reached in a long-burning forest fire. Fires clear out all of the dead growth and allow new trees to grow.

My internet doesn't like that I put all of these pictures in here, so I'm going to have to split this post in half.