Delta Lake Trail

This one… hold on to your hats. Definitely the most challenging hike but also the most rewarding, and a worthy ending to my trekking adventures in the Tetons.

Having been used to beating the crowded parking space by waking up early at this point, this one (Lupine Meadows Trailhead) was already half full when I got there by 7:15 in the morning. Although, it appeared smaller than the previous ones, so maybe it’s all logical.

I knew this trail was going to be the toughest one as it has a more or less a constant elevation gain, especially in the end (but we’ll get to that). It’s also said to be the most dangerous which I found out about afterwards…

It starts off quite easy with a moderate uphill walk through the forrest. You’re almost immediately confronted with a watch-out-for-bear-sign. These can be seen everywhere in the park and work as a constant reminder of you trespassing on their territory. Scary, sure, but also super exciting. As long as you bring your bear spray you should be fine.

As the trail goes on, the steeper it gets. Just before I made my way out of the forrest, I froze as i heard rusntling in the bushes just in from of me. My mind instantly went to BEAR! and I reached for my bear spray. Moments later I saw four White-tailed deers coming up on my right, just a two meters away. Two adults and two fawns, calmly eating through the foliage. I calmed myself as they acknowledged my presence. They didn’t seem to care that much and went on with their eating. Beautiful.

Finally making my way out of the forrest and now the zig-zag-part of the trail begins. This is where you notice you’ve reached a bit of an altitude, and the lanscape opens up beneath you offering a fantastic view. This also where I felt my stamina starting to fail on me and I was wondering how far up is that lake.

In the midst of Zig-zaging up the mountain, my second deer encounter took place. These tracks aren’t wide, they’re downright narrow. And you always have this steep drop on one side. Not being so good with heights myself, this was quite unconfortable at times. So, trying to focus on the track ahead of me to not get dizzy from the heights, this deer buck suddenly blocks my way. Or, almost. See picture below. My initial instinct was that you should never mess with creatures with horns, especially when they face their butt towards you. Luckily, a few more people had caught up with me at this point and we began pondering if we could just walk pass him or not. Again, we had no idea what expect when approaching deer bucks. Soon realizing we couldn’t stand there all day waiting for the deer to finish his breakfast, we quickly, as a group, snuck pass him. He got a little startled and moved down a bit. All fine and well. When everyone had walked by, I quickly turned around and got a nice shot of the landscape with the deer in the bottom right corner.

Continuing up the mountain, not much happened until I rounded a curve and saw a person standing a bit further up the trail, looking at me. It seemed like she was waiting for me, and I soon found out why. As I walked towards her, she shouted that there was a bear in the bushes just to the right of the trail, a few meters ahead. There was no other way around so I had to pass it eventually. Feeling a bit pumped up, I kept moving, with my left hand on the bear spray. She called out, telling me to make noise, so I started stomping on the ground and shouting random words as I passed by. I was just a meter away from the bear at the most and I could easily have reached it with my hand if I had lacked common sense. Thankfully, it seemed more interested in its berries than in me, and I made it past without any issues.

Now, the thing with this trail is that if you want to reach Delta Lake (which you obviously want), you have to go off-trail as the official trail comes to an end at one point. There is a sign that even says “Are you prepared for this?”, implying that the reminder of the way up to the lake is quite challenging.

You immediately notice that this part of the trail isn’t maintained by the park, and after a while, it’s not very clear where to go. Fortunately, I had some people ahead of me that I could watch where they were going. When I reached a large field of boulders, I would have been sure I was lost if not for them. You actually have to climb over this field of large rocks scattered along the side of the mountain. I was a bit nervous that they might start shifting and cause an avalanche, so I took it slow. Besides the risk of injury from climbing the rocks, this part was pretty exhausting. The trail is uphill from the very beginning, and at this point, it gets extremely steep.