Grand Teton National Park has some of the most impressive mountains in the lower forty-eight. It also has some pretty good wildlife viewing opportunities. I had made arrangements to take a private guided tour with another person I met in Kenya in 2019, again through connections with my nephew. His name is Trevor Bloom and during the day he works for The Nature Conservancy. He resides in Jackson near the park. In his spare time he runs a guide company called Guides of Jackson Hole. Scott and I have kept in touch with Trevor and since the national park is just a scenic 87 mile trip up the road from Scott’s apartment, it seemed the perfect thing to do. Kiara and Scott drove up in his vehicle and my wife and I drove up in my van. We met Trevor at the agreed upon spot and hopped in his vehicle for the evening event. Kiara, who is from South Africa, was eager to meet some of North America’s native ungulates. This is the group of hoofed grazing animals that in the Tetons includes Bison, Elk, Pronghorn Antelope, Mule Deer, and Moose. Kiara is considering doing her work on the ecology of this important group of mammals. She, like Scott, hopes to eventually wind up with a PhD. She currently is working at Princeton with plans to apply to programs in the fall. I was hoping to see all of the above animals, but I have gotten good photos of them in the past. High on my list are the predators of the Tetons, including Grizzly and Black Bears, Wolves, and Mountain Lions. For this trip, Trevor was targeting a particularly famous Grizzly, a bear known as 399. This year the 24-year-old sow has four cubs, an extreme rarity for any bear. She is considered an outstanding mother and is believed to have successfully reared more offspring than any other sow on record. After seeing some of the ungulates, we went to the Oxbow lakes area of the park where Trevor’s network of guides said she was likely to be found. It turned out that the information was correct. The only problem was that he was not the only person to have the information. We saw the mother and cubs, but they were deep in the serviceberry bushes. Kiara got a short video, but the rangers were too good at keeping the traffic moving and I was not able to get anything but blurry images of the bushes. I did however get a good photo of the “bear jam.” For some photos of what we saw, click here.. We had a great time catching up with Trevor and he made arrangements to get us set up to camp in another Forest Service dispersed camping site. I hope to post photos from there soon.
a gentle imperative with a simple goal
