Teton Crest Continued...

 Our camp early the next morning... It was pretty chilly that night! 

 So when you are outside of the park, but still in bear country, you don't need to use bear vaults (which are extremely hard plastic canisters that you put all your smelly things in)  you can bear bag.  So every night, or anytime we didn't want to pack our packs around with us, we would put all of our "smellables" in our bear bag and then put it over a rock or cliff so it is out of reach of bears, and away from camp.  It has to be 10 feet off the ground and 3 feet down from where it is hanging, and 3 feet out from the trunk (if you are using a tree)   Justin was taking us on the route he used to take troops on 8 or so years ago, so he already had our campsites scoped out for us, and knew exactly where he would bear bag.  He's so great to have around! 

 The warm oatmeal and hot chocolate was a welcome thing in the morning!!

 Justin and I "Making warm, chocolatey memories"

 Thor came along for the ride and was Sadee's other half for the journey. 

Marmots!

That is "spearhead" on the left in the background.  It was really smoky this morning, so a lot wasn't visible, but it was still gorgeous. 

Hiking along the "Death Shelf."

Our whole group looking into Death Canyon.  I wish it was more visible, but it was kinda mystical with all the smoke...

The second day we only hiked about 6 miles to our campsite.  It was a grassy field in Alaska Basin.  It was awesome!  We set up camp, ate lunch and lounged around, napping in the sun.  It was sweet. 

                                                                                                                                                                        Then we hiked less than half a mile to this beautiful basin lake and swam for a bit.  After pumping more water...

Do we really want to get in this freezing water??

Heck Yes we do!!!

Then back to camp for some dinner.  Asian noodles and chicken with mandarin oranges for dessert.  Yum!!!  After Dinner some of us went exploring.  It started out just Andrew, Emily and I.  Ben and Justin joined us later.  (thanks Ian and Sadee for staying at camp with the smellables we hadn't bear bagged yet!)

It was beautiful and we got some great shots right as the sun was going down...

Andrew kept talking about how he hadn't seen a bear this summer, and how it seemed like everyone else had...  Little did he know (little did he know... :)  that he would later spot a black bear checking out the exact spot we were swimming in earlier that day.  Can you see him in this picture??  We were pretty far away at first, and the sun had already gone past the horizon at this point. 

We hiked closer, the boys got Much closer than the girls (it was so much bigger as we got closer to it!)  Andrew was feeling good! I think we were all excited about what we had safely seen.  We decided that we needed to head back.  The sun was going down, and the bear wasn't really visible anymore anyway, so the five of us started back to camp.  We were probably about 1/4 mile from camp when we came up over a ridge and I looked up, and saw another black bear!   I was in shock, because we weren't being quiet and it was only 20 yards away from us.  I said in a loud voice "a Bear!"  I didn't shout, but it definitely wasn't quiet either.  The bear startled and looked right at me when I said it and I almost peed my pants!  Then I noticed movement in the tree next to it, and saw a cub up in the tree!  Wow, we started backing away fast.  Luckily Justin snapped some pictures.  I was so freaked out, every thing looked like a bear on the way back to camp!

Here's the best shot we got, and then I zoomed in a little bit and changed the contrast so you can see it a little better.  What a great shot!  I'm just glad we lived past that night.  Don't worry, I searched through everything we had making sure we wouldn't smell delicious to those bears  :)