This one time...I ate an entire pizza

Looking at some old pictures reminded me about how many times I ate whole pizzas while living in Jackson Hole. My dear friend Cassie and I did a couple major hikes one weekend...and if I may share the truth about our adventure here on this blog, maybe you will appreciate how and why I ate an entire pizza. Let me first tell you that Cassie does not like asking for directions, and I love her dearly.

It was a warm July morning and we headed out to hike Avalanche Canyon which is kind of a secret, unmaintained canyon in Grand Teton National Park. We decided since it was a trail that we heard about from friends and read about in books, and NOT marked with mile markers from the park service, we should probably just bushwhack to get there.

Sorry for the photo overload that are probably outside the margins of my blog but aren't they AMAZING!!! This is what you get to see if you actually make it up to Avalanche Canyon and it doesn't stop there, there's another lake over the next talus slope that I have yet to see and photograph and yes, these are MY photos, not ones from the world wide web.


Our original plan did not include bushwhacking but as luck would have it, Taggert Lake is much bigger than it looks. We went around the lake in the wrong direction and soon we were WAY off course. Rather than turning around or consulting an actual map, we forged ahead over thick masses of trees and and forrest materials. We were skirting the outside of the lake and a couple hours into our journey we were only  on the other side of the lake and no where near Avalanche Canyon. I know now just how far from Avalanche Canyon we were because I actually reached Avalanche Canyon with another dear friend in 2009.

We figured once we got around the lake the trail would present itself to us and we would reach Lake Taminah and Snowdrift Lake in a matter of hours. Let me also mention we both have a deep fear of cougars and bears.

We started to get discouraged and decided to enter the waters of Taggert Lake. She was in chacos and I was in approach shoes with sticky bottoms but alpine lakes are not easy to just walk through. We figured it was easier to just walk in the water than over fallen trees and brush. It seemed to be working until all of a sudden we saw a large dark creature appear out of the trees and make a big splash into the water, not more than 20 feet from us. We freaked out and got to a little peninsula as fast as we could even though the water was muddy and like sloshing through quicksand. We thought it was a bear but then realized it was a baby moose.

Baby moose is worse than a bear because mama moose is certainly near by. I would rather run into a bear (which I have several times in the backcountry) than run into a moose. People underestimate those creatures! We were shaking with fear and huddled down between two trees. The moose got onto our little peninsula and we knew we were dead. The moose kept getting closer and closer and we could hear it breathing and I even think we could feel its body heat. We were hiding the best we could among the little aspens but we knew if we wanted to survive we had to bail from the peninsula.

This might sound more dramatic than it was but in that moment, we seriously thought our lives were in danger. Luckily mama moose never appeared and we inched our way back into the muddy lake bottom and started slowly walking through the lake water to the bank about 25 yards away.

We sang hymns, said prayers, and did our best to remain calm. Cassie was struggling to keep her balance in the water so we did what any 2 twenty-something females would do, we decided to make a raft.

What is so funny about this now is realizing all the signs of civilization were right around us and we didn't even see it.

Back to raft making. We went to the banks of the lake and started rolling down huge logs into the lake. We found a huge, perfectly cut log on the bank and thought we found the jackpot. We rolled it into the lake because obviously perfectly cut down logs are everywhere in the forrest, and civilization couldn't be close by, and we still had to walk another couple miles in the water to reach the other side of the lake.

We mounted Cassie on the log and I somehow attached the log to myself and I pushed her along for about an hour when off in the distance we saw a man walking through the trees.

I almost started screaming for help, like somehow the random man could save us from our stupidity.

We decided to see if there was a trail nearby and low and behold, there was a trail about 15 feet from the shore. Who knows how long we were actually a feet away from an actual TRAIL but our 6 hour adventure dodging bears (well, moose) and surviving on a homemade raft will always be one of my most cherished memories.

We never reached Avalanche Canyon that day. Instead, we got back on the trail and walked back to our car, sort of defeated, but full of relief that we survived.

I've had many adventures in the Taggert Lake trail system but this one tops the list. I love you Cassie! Our next adventure in the Tetons involve getting chased by a badger but that will have to be saved for another time.

After our adventure we went to Dornan's for pizza (because that's just what you do. You go to Dornan's and eat pizza out on the deck and look at the Tetons)

We each ate half our pizzas and thought we were stuffed but 30 minutes later, we reached our campsite and were starving again. We ate the other half of our pizza like we had never eaten in our lives. Man, the human body is an incredible thing isn't it?

I have no real inspiration for writing about this story other than to dedicate this to Cassie, but I was thinking about how there was a time in my life when my body worked properly and I could burn thousands of calories hiking, and seriously metabolize half a pizza in 30 minutes and now my body would probably spend a week metabolizing a slice of pizza, even if I spent hours hiking. Ok, that might not be 100% true but you get the point!

I miss those days. I miss that energy. I miss weighing 150 pounds. I'll get there, or at least I'll get close. I'm feeling very motivated and excited about my upcoming party. In honor of Cassie, I think everyone who reads this should now order a pizza and eat it all within 1 hour and if you complete the challenge, I will give you something awesome.