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Restoring Jenny Lake: Stewardship And Partnership At Grand Teton National Park

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An ambitious, $17 million project, Inspiring Journeys, will rehabilitate front-and backcountry areas of Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park/Grand Teton National Park Foundation

Climbing gently through the piney woods, the rock staircase curves gracefully, flowing with the landscape. Unlike its predecessor, which made the climb in 23 huge steps, this gentle pathway takes 47 steps.

But these steps are of a bite-sized variety, and without uneven joints that can trip up the unwary.

"It looks like it was supposed to be there, and always has been," Kim Mills, director of communications, corporate relations, and estate planning for the Grand Teton National Park Foundation, tells me as we enjoy a sunny fall day on the trails above Jenny Lake. 

Built on a mountainside in the afternoon shadow of a clutch of iconic peaks that includes America's Matterhorn, the dry-set rockwork was created by a master stonemason who interspersed smooth, well-engineered channels of rock as water bars between some of the steps. The path entices you deeper into the woods of spruce and fir, along a path that parallels Cascade Creek and wends mercifully past a spiderweb of social trails known as "Confusion Junction" that is in the early months of being erased by nature.

The steps are a small part of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar Grand Teton National Park Foundation stewardship project designed to temper the impact of countless visitors who have come to enjoy the Tetons and Jenny Lake. The work involves rebuilding trails the Civilian Conservation Corps laid down without the trailbed needed to endure millions of feet and decades of Rocky Mountain winters, realigning paths away from sensitive areas, reclaiming overrun and worn-out areas, adding accessible areas, and providing interpretive information and improved front-country services intended to educate and orient visitors to the landscape before them. An additional, not-to-be-overstated benefit, to Grand Teton National Park is an area expected to require less maintenance.

It's a substantive, $17 million project that won't be done until 2018, but which should better protect the Jenny Lake area as it welcomes millions more visitors in the second century of the National Park Service.

An Area Rich In History

Jenny Lake is the magnet for Grand Teton Visitors; 70 percent of park visitors flock there, Mark Berry, the Foundation's vice president, tells me. Each summer roughly 2 million visitors flock to the area's trails for a sensual taste of Rocky Mountain high, from the actual elevation (the lake stands at 6,781 feet above sea level, and the sky literally is the limit at 13,770 feet atop the Grand Teton itself), to the sprawling vistas of the Jackson Hole Valley below Inspiration Point.

Not only is the area the most-visited spot in the park, but its history ties into the country's westward expansion and into the national parks movement.

The lake carries the name of a Shoshone Indian woman who married an Englishman, Richard "Beaver Dick" Leigh. The two had provided assistance to Ferdinand Hayden's 1872 expedition into Yellowstone just off to the north, and in return Jenny and Leigh lakes were named after them. It was in June of that year that two men from the main expedition, James Stevenson and Nathanial Langford (who later would become superintendent of Yellowstone), supposedly climbed to the summit of the Grand Teton (their claim was controversial, but that's another story).

In the mid-1920s, Horace Albright, then Yellowstone's superintendent, brought John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his wife down to the Tetons and Jenny Lake, specifically, to show them how commercialization -- saloons, dance halls, and gas stations -- was tarnishing the landscape. Albright hoped he could convince Rockefeller to use his resources to protect the land for a park. Which, of course, he did.

Down through the years Jenny Lake proved a popular starting spot for climbers anxious to reach the roof of the park, and that continues today as would-be climbers learn the requisite skills on the granite cliffs above Jenny Lake before heading towards the summit.

But as the park's allure to the American public continued to grow, the landscape around the lake suffered. While the CCC during the 1930s constructed many of the trails leading from the lake into the Tetons, their work wasn't geared to the pounding the ensuing decades would bring in terms of foot falls, horse hooves, rains and snows.

If you walk the trails -- those that wrap the southern shore of the small lake once called Mirror or which wind from the boat dock on the western shore up the gorge cut by long-ago glaciers and now filled by Cascade Creek -- you'll see that the area needs some restorative healing. There are places where tangles of tree roots thicker than your thighs crisscross and rumple the paths, areas of poor drainage, and high-stepping rock staircases that can be a challenge for those with knees made sore by age and use or those left too short by youth.

Then there is "Confusion Junction," a maze of four social trails that dart off from the main routes and which can quickly separate parents from youngsters who bound ahead. There are spots where CCC stone work looks loose and precarious. And there are places where the rambling sprawl of hikers has beaten away vegetation.

Today the rehabilitation is under way, thanks to the Grand Teton National Park Foundation that in 2013 launched its Inspiring Journeys campaign to see the areas surrounding Jenny Lake -- both front country and backcountry -- restored, a birthday gift to the National Park Service on its centennial.

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Years of feet and hooves have worn some sections of trail deep into the landscape above Jenny Lake. The white bags hold granite rocks that will go into the trailbed/Kurt Repanshek

The area's degradation hasn't been overlooked by the park staff: "We'™ve known this for a very long time," says Chris Finlay, the park's chief of facility management. "The trails have been somewhat dangerous, a lot of opportunities to twist ankles, and to trip. So you end up not having a good visitor experience because the resources are so deteriorated. We'™ve known this for a very long time.'

But the National Park Service's overall long list of maintenance needs, and its peculiar funding system that can see a worthy project creep towards the top of the heap before being dropped back down, have hindered Grand Teton's efforts to obtain the funding needed to address the problems.

'œIt would probably take some time, within the existing infrastructure and resources that we have internally, to get what the Foundation can provide in a relatively short period of time," Grand Teton Superintendent David Vela tells me. "And frankly the need is now. We have resources that are being degraded, both in the front and in the backcountry.'

'œThis project, we really wouldn'™t have gotten to," adds Chief Finlay. "We would have nibbled around the edges, we would have replaced the bridges that failed from winter snowload, or occasionally we would have made minor repairs to the dock, or minor segments of the trail that get washed out from seasonal flooding or dead and downed trees. We would have kept these trails open and made minor improvements, but we never would have given them a complete overhaul like we have the opportunity to do here."

Maintenance Work, Or Margin Of Excellence?

The ambitious project is a centennial gift to the park and the National Park Service, as well as a model example of what a friends group and park staff can accomplish. Though it might also be seen as a project that the Park Service should have shouldered, the president of the Grand Teton National Park Foundation sees it as both an expression of gratitude for the landscape and a justifiable endeavor for her organization to tackle.

'œI don'™t know if there is a typical friends group project. I think every friends group is different in terms of what they do," says Leslie Mattson. "This was a vision. This is I think a typical project for how this organizaton works with our park. Compared to others, I can'™t speak to that. I don'™t spend enough time with those other folks. But the level of complexities, and the trust we have with our partner, and them in us, and the idea of dreaming big and doing something special, totally collaborative from the beginning with our partner in terms of putting out a request for proposal or to firms across the country who came and applied for the opportunity to do the master plan for the area. All of that, we'™ve done that together, from the beginning, which makes it really fun, and we'™re lockstep on this."

The repair work is applying 21st century trail-building technology to early 20th century trails. In some cases the paths are being dug up so a better drainage system of gravels can be installed before a layer of dirt is returned. In others, such as "23 steps," entire stairways are being removed and relaid by experts. Steps are to be 8 inches tall, vs. the 12+-inch rise that can be found in some areas. 

"The majority of this entire project is using existing trail, just remaking it," Ms. Mills says.

The work also is erasing a bit more than 4 miles of unofficial, "social" or "user-created" trails.

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A section of the "47 steps" as it neared completion in September/Kurt Repanshek

Though none of the work is easy -- digging up trails, leveraging hundred-pound rocks to the side, breaking up rocks for gravel trailbeds -- some aspects of the rehab work are much more difficult than others. Yet to come is a solution for a narrow rock ledge that is the final pitch to Inspiration Point, a goal for many who come to test their legs in the Tetons and enjoy the expansive view of Jenny Lake and the Jackson Hole Valley below.

As we walked up it that mid-September day, other hikers descended, some tightly hugging the cliff wall while casting a nervous eye over the edge of the trail.

'œThat'™s been a very challenging issue, and we'™ve had several conversations about that," says Chief Finlay, who doesn't want to see the trail widened too much, or smoothed out too nicely, as that might encourage trail runners and faster hikers to try to blast by slower-paced hikers.

"There is some exposure to falling. We were afraid that if people were able to move too quickly on that trail that they may be more prone to accidents or possibly getting too close to that edge and falling off," the chief says. 'œThere is a point of diminishing returns. If you make that trail too quick and easy to get up, you'™ll allow people to walk at a faster pace and be exposed actually to more risk. So there'™s a fine balance there that we'™re going to try to achieve, certainly by getting rid of some of the worst areas, but to leave some of that trail rough and natural and there'™s that sense of adventure and sense  of accomplishment."

Taken as a whole, the Foundation's ability to pull together the project, and fund the majority of it, reflect the support a friends group should provide, says Chief Finlay.

"I think our interpretive staff would continue to do the best they could in this wonderful little historic (Harrison Crandall) visitor center that they function out of, but the idea of being able to provide exhibits and information and an understanding and a context for our visitors of where are they and what'™s it about and why is this place so special and 'What are the opportunities for me to do here with my family,' we never would have been able to really achieve that," he says, using the list of front-country improvements as an example. "And that'™s really the margin of excellence, and that'™s what I believe this project is all about. Taking day-to-day operations and maintenance and serving visitors in the park and stepping it up to make it an excellent version of those activities.'

Challenges Yet To Be Conquered

At one point on that fall day spent traipsing about Jenny Lake, I had passed the small, Hidden Falls overlook. It was crowded with visitors admiring the falls while cautiously watching their footwork in the mash of tree roots and rocks that will eventually be filled in. I also crossed Cascade Creek on a footbridge that will be relocated a bit downstream from its current location to better connect with the trail system, though the exact relocation has yet to be settled upon. Down around the lake itself, "hardened" overlooks will be installed at points along the eastern shore of Jenny Lake where boots from endless visitors, anxious to catch views of Teewinot, Cascade Canyon, Symmetry Spire, and Mount Saint John, have chewed into the bank. The west boat dock also will be enlarged a bit to better and more safely handle visitors.

Also to be made over is the area surrounding the visitor center that inhabits the log cabin that served Harrison Crandall, a valley homesteader and the first official photographer for the park, so well for his photo studio from 1925-1958. Interpretive placards to be placed about the small plaza will educate visitors on the mountains, the lakes, and the history of the area.

'œIt'™s a teeny little building. It's wonderful, it has such charm," Ms. Mattson says of the visitor center. "But between 3,000 and 4,000 people a day during the height of the summer go in there. And that'™s equal to the same number that go into the visitor center in Moose. So clearly, it'™s too small. We'™re not going to enlarge that. So what we'™re going to do is allow for people to get educated outside where there will be interpretation in that courtyard area. We'™ll take advantage of that spot."

The project in its entirety is ambitious and, to borrow a word from the Foundation's campaign, inspiring. It comes at a time when the National Park Service has more demands than it can afford. 

From her viewpoint, Ms. Mattson says the Foundation constantly examines whether its work is providing a margin of excellence, and not simply filling in for routine maintenance.

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Improving the last stretch of trail to Inspiration Point will make it safer, but not a hiker's highway/Kurt Repanshek

'œWe talk about that question here all the time. I think in regards to this project, specifically, because it's really hard to talk generally about projects and where they land, in the case of Jenny Lake there was never a master-plan for the area," explains Ms. Mattson. "The trails were used, people came on horse back, the CCC put a lot of trails in there, some beautiful old stonework is still there. So what we were able to do was with our partners look at what the vision for the area was. I do see that as the margin of excellence, looking at it and making a plan for how it can be the best that it can be.

'œThen, through private philanthropy, allowing us to move in that direction so that the improvements there are at a higher level than just we'™re going to fix this one little spot. There'™s major work being done out there. It'™s a lot more than just maintenance, so to speak," she continues. "And then in the end the reconfiguration of the trail will cost the Park Service less money to maintain because now they'™re going to be built in the places that aren'™t going to be eroded by snowmelt and that sort of stuff. They'™ll really withstand the test of time." 

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