Hike Around Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons

On June 15, we were back in the Tetons, and decided to explore the park's second most famous lake, Jenny Lake.  Our outing was about 9 miles.  We hiked around the lake and up to Hidden Falls, then had lunch at Inspiration Point.  Afterward, we completed the circuit of the lake, across the outlet of String Lake, and back to the Jenny Lake Visitor Center.

We are staying in this area during the height of the tourist season, so the traffic during the day is "terrific."  In addition, Grand Teton National Park was conducting major road reconstruction throughout the length of the main north-south road in the park, so there were continual delays in addition to the congestion of traffic.  So we got an early start, leaving camp around 8 am.  We were well rewarded, as we got a spectacular morning view of the Tetons as we approached Jenny Lake:

Arriving lakeside, we got a beautiful morning view of Mount Teewinot to the south of the lake.

Continuing around the south shore, we stumbled on a doe who was more startled to see us than we were her.  Luckily, our camera operated more quickly than her reflexes, and we caught her startled expression:

On the western shore of Jenny Lake, we started climbing up the slopes of the Tetons.  As we climbed, we got a great view of another of the mountains to the south, along with one of the Moose Ponds:

Here's the sort of view we had of the lake as we climbed:

A stranger was kind enough to offer to snap our photo in front of Hidden Falls:

We climbed from Hidden Falls to Inspiration Point, where we enjoyed lunch and a beautiful view of Jenny Lake and the mountains to the east:

We were joined by a curious little rockchuck, who scampered about trying to avoid the humans as he conducted his business.  Part of his business was a cute little cinnamon colored rockchuck (presumably female), who may have been his mate.  They actually hung out in front of their den together conducting some sort of transaction.

That wasn't our only furry encounter of the day.  We had a break and a snack at the falls of a stream draining String Lake into Jenny Lake.  As we sat on the rocks near a couple who had been kayaking, a little brown pine marten stuck its face curiously over the rock to see what we were up to:

Luckily, while we are armed with bear spray for the black bears and grizzly bears that frequent the area, and even had a knife for defense against an unlikely mountain lion, we hadn't really prepared ourselves for all these benign little encounters!

We completed our hike around the Lake, feeling that we had really started to get to know Grand Teton this day.