(Click to see larger images in the gallery above)
Even on this cold, rainy morning, I could have sat on the shore and gazed at Jenny Lake for hours … even though the overcast day had tinted the water silver instead of its trademark emerald … even though I’d left my new Icelandic waterproof raincoat at home … and even though the bulk of the Tetons was shrouded in thick clouds.
In the end, we didn’t have to just peer at the water from the shore. We lucked into two open tickets on the 10:00 a.m. scenic cruise, and despite the drizzle, we sat with about twenty-five other people (who all seemed to be from Alabama, oddly enough) to see and learn more.
Jenny Lake is named for the Shoshone wife of — I kid you not — Richard “Beaver Dick” Leigh, the first man of European descent to settle in the area. The lake, carved out by a glacier, runs more than 300 feet deep, dropping to a depth of 80 feet just a few yards offshore. The northern edge lies in the shadow of the Tetons, an “adolescent” mountain range no more than 10 million years old. Each earthquake in the area pushes the peaks of the Tetons two to three feet up and drops the valley floor four to six feet down.
You can see the geologic activity at work today, where the fault line runs down the face of the mountain. In the photo above, what looks like a wound in the woods is actually a spot where tectonic forces are pulling the mountain apart.
We didn’t see a lot of wildlife this morning, but we did see a lone osprey surveying his kingdom.
Rumors of bright yellow birds in the area are false; that’s just me and Clyde, pulling on thin plastic rain ponchos in an effort to keep our coats from being saturated with rain and mist!
