The Teton Crest Trail is regarded for many as a top ten backpacking trip, and many think it falls in the top three. Living in the area now for almost 4 years I have thought about doing it, but year after year it stays unticked from my bucket list of Teton trips.

Back in February I emailed a buddy from college to see if he would be interested in going on a 4 day, 3 night trek in September. We opted for September because if you do your research you will read about how bad the bugs can be from June through July. August is prime time to do this but I thought there would be a lot of people doing it and the permit process, 24 hour notice, would be tough to deal with.

The day came and my friend flew in for the trip and we nailed down the trip itinerary to taking the tram up from JHMR and hiking out through Paintbrush Canyon. In total it would take us 3 days and 2 nights, and roughly 40 miles of hiking.

We got incredibly lucky on timing. The week before the smoke was so bad that you could not see anything but a storm rolled through for a couple of days and dissipated all of that. The clincher, it was starting to go from Summer to Fall in the Tetons, a time of year that is short and not a lot of people get to experience.

Below is the photo story of the trip.

Day 1, the hike-in and camp at Death Canyon Shelf:



Day 2, hiking to North Fork of Cascade and the Cathedral Group











Day 3, hiking out through Paintbrush Canyon

What started with a casual conversation of "what are you doing this weekend?" turned into a 3-day Winter ascent trip of the highest peak in the Absaroka Range and the fourth highest peak in Wyoming at 13,153'. We headed out late after work on Thursday, camped at the trailhead in the car and headed out to Francs Peak.



My coworker had been planning this trip for about 4 years and had figured that not many or if any have stood on top of the peak in the Winter. After waking up in the parking lot we got our gear together and headed out to Kirwin, Wy an old mining town that was abandoned soon after being established, from 1894-1907, because of frequent avalanches taking out houses.

From Kirwin we headed up Brown Basin to where we camped just above treeline. Waking up the next morning we stashed all of our camping gear in a hole under a rock so we could go up to Francs with a light and fast approach.

The hike up to Francs isn't difficult but it is a slog. Reading Summer trip reports you will read this, "...looks a lot closer than it is." This was definitely the case as we got the summit at 5:30pm.