Climbing Sleeping Indian !

My friends Craig and Carol (full time Jackson Hole residents) organized a hiking group for today.  Our mission was to hike to the summit of "Sleeping Indian".  The summit stands at an elevation of 11,239 feet and the town of Jackson is located at an elevation of 6200 feet.  Craig is a very good hiking guide who checks all the conditions before a hike begins.  Today the weather forecast called for possible thunder storms in the afternoon.  With this information in mind, Craig thought it was best that we start our hike early.  He predicted that our total time would be around 6 hours.  I had to wake up at 5:15am (all of you who know me well, please stop laughing) in order to meet the group at 6:30am.  The groups that Craig puts together are always interesting.  In today's group, one of the men noticed my Pingry
t-shirt and told me his dad graduated from Pingry in 1948.  Small world even on "Sleeping Indian."

The sunrise as I drove to our meeting location

At first, the early start time made me consider passing on this hike.  I decided to wake up super early to go on this hike because I can not imagine missing out on the unique experiences that the locals can show me.  I would never be able to climb "Sleeping Indian" on my own.  In fact, the first time that the Butcher family pointed "Sleeping Indian" out to me, I never in a million years would have imagined that I would some day hike to the top.  Now that I am home, freshly showered and relaxing, I am SO glad that I made the decision to hike to the summit.

The hike up to the summit was tough and took 3 hours and 10 minutes.  It was physically challenging and the flower fields and views were beautiful.

Hiking through the flower fields

Grand Teton views like this make waking up early very worth it !

The group making the climb

In order to reach the summit, we had to hike an elevation change of over 4000 feet.  After climbing about 2000 feet, we stopped for a 20 minute water and snack break.

View from break spot.  Elevation about 9000 feet

After our break, we continued to climb and heart rates were increasing fast as the air continued to get thinner.  At one point we reached a large open field that started to flatten out and I was thinking that we had made it to the top.  I was dead wrong!  I was in the middle of the hiking group and could see that those ahead of me were not stopping.  What was ahead of us looked to be a giant boulder that looked as if it was about to kick my ass in my effort to get to the top.

The top of "Sleeping Indian" that still had to be conquered.  Yes, I was going to keep climbing!

                              

The last part of the climb to the summit was crazy and straight up.  I gotta say that the oxygen up there was pretty damn thin!  Once on the summit, we took a break and ate some lunch as we enjoyed the view.

Lunch at the summit with the group

View from the summit at 11,239 feet

The dogs love the hiking

Gaucho at the summit

Resting at the summit with the group

The hike back down is always easier, but tough on the knees.  While hiking down, we did get caught in a bit of rain and this slowed us down just a tad.  It took us 2 hours and 45 minutes to get back down to the start of the hike.  The good news is that the total hike burned 2773 calories!

Heading back down

Craig's crazy hiking group