Delta Lake Hike
in the Grand Tetons
Road Trip ‘21: Part 2
Day 3
The Grand Tetons
We woke up bright and early, ready for the hike Darshan picked out for us. After a quick breakfast at a nearby cafe, we headed back towards the Tetons.
The Lupine Meadows Trailhead
Around 9 o’clock, we arrived at the trailhead for the Delta Lake hike. It’s a 7.4 mile hike with 2,299 ft of elevation gain, rated as “hard” and supposedly takes an average of 4 hours and 30 minutes to complete… Maybe for an avid hiker. Within 30 minutes I was already winded.
Maybe an hour and a half into the hike, we reached the switchbacks. It was my first time hearing that word so I didn’t even know what it meant until after we went through two of them lol. The sun was blazing down on us so breaks were plenty, and I definitely took my time guzzling down water and feasting on Darshan’s gels. We probably should have brought more snacks.
The funny thing is that I thought this was going to be the hardest part of the trek until Darshan mentioned that we’d be veering off the actual trail to go towards Delta Lake. The entrance to the Delta Lake trail was really just a beaten path; no actual signage directing you to the craziness to come. And it’s not maintained by the park – any trees that come down, stay down.
And here it is… the boulder scramble. Also my first time encountering one of these. We literally just climbed up for what seemed like forever. And if we reached an area that didn’t have rocks, the dirt was so dry and the hills were super steep. I was practically crawling up those.
At this point, I was sure we were so close to the top that I just wanted to keep going. It was incredibly scary how one wrong move and you could just be rolling down the neverending hill of rocks. No pressure.
Delta Lake (Finally!)
After one last push up a slippery dirt slope, we reached Delta Lake. The photos really can’t do the color of the water any justice. To get to the right side of the lake, you have to traverse some wet rocks and I actually had fallen into the water at some point. It was ICE COLD glacier water. Nevertheless, some brave souls were swimming in there.
Darshan cooked our nice little meals in a bag with his stove once we were done with our initial oohs and ahs. I normally don’t finish my food but this I devoured. I’m so happy I didn’t plan to share mine lol
Also, remember when All Trails said that this hike took an average of 4.5 hours? It literally took us 4 hours just to get up to the lake. Now that we were finally here, we took our time to enjoy the scenery, eat our lunch, and (at least for me) gain enough resolve to start the trek down those boulder clusters.
Around 3pm, we started to make our way back down. Funnily enough, this was when we were supposed to have left for a 5 hour drive to Yellowstone. On our way down, Vatsal took nasty fall and rolled down a dirt hill, only stopped by a fell tree trunk. Thankfully we were helped by some wonderful avid hikers who had the biggest first aid kit and soon enough we started to slowly make our way back down again.
It took another 4 hours for us to get back to our car, reaching the lot at 7PM dirty and hungry. None of the nearby clinics were open so we went to a hotel whose gift shop carried first aid kids. They graciously let us peruse their store 5 minutes before closing.
Since we were supposed to be close to Yellowstone by now, we had to decide between driving straight there, losing sunlight on the way, or making a new reservation back at Jackson Hole. Ultimately, Darshan and Josh took turns driving us five hours to Cooke City, navigating through the winding roads and random bison in complete darkness. Not to mention, one of the major roads in Yellowstone was under construction so we had to take a detour that added another couple hours to our drive.
We didn’t reach our hotel in Cooke City until 1:30 AM. I’ve never been so happy to see a bed in my life!