Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Grand Teton is the range of granite peaks above Jackson Hole in Wyoming, ten miles south of Yellowstone, and it is sold from the town of Jackson in wildlife safaris, scenic tours and float trips. The wildlife safaris are the speciality: dawn and dusk drives in a van with a naturalist and spotting scopes along the Moose-Wilson road, Antelope Flats and the Snake river bottoms for moose, elk, bison, pronghorn, bears and wolves, with the sunrise trips the most productive and the winter versions in a heated van for the elk on the refuge and the bighorn sheep on the buttes.

The half- and full-day scenic tours drive the loop road to Jenny Lake, Signal Mountain and the Mormon Row barns with a guide and a picnic, the full-day ones adding the Jenny Lake boat and a short hike to Hidden Falls. The scenic float trips on the Snake river drift below the peaks for two or three hours, calm water with eagles and moose on the banks, and the whitewater is downstream outside the park. The multi-day tours combine the Tetons with Yellowstone over two to six days from Jackson, Salt Lake City or further. The park entrance fee is per vehicle for seven days and covers Yellowstone too when bought as the two-park pass; the tour companies include it. Independent visitors need a car, and the Jenny Lake shuttle boat and the campgrounds book out in summer.

Visiting Grand Teton National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1929 for the peaks and enlarged in 1950 with the Jackson Hole valley that John D. Rockefeller Jr. had bought up and given to the nation, and it covers about 1,255 square kilometres of the Teton range and the valley floor, forty miles of mountains rising without foothills from the sagebrush flats to the Grand Teton at 4,199 metres, the most abrupt mountain front in the Rockies. The Tetons are young, still rising on a fault along their eastern base, and the glaciers that carved their canyons left a string of lakes at their foot: Jackson Lake, the largest, with the Signal Mountain road above it, and the smaller Jenny, Leigh, String and Phelps lakes, where the trails begin. Jenny Lake is the centre, with the boat across to the trail to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point and the path up Cascade Canyon between the peaks;

the Taggart and Bradley lakes loop, the Death Canyon trail and the climb to Amphitheatre Lake under the Grand are the day hikes, and the Teton Crest trail crosses the range in three or four days. The Snake river winds along the valley below the mountains, and the Snake River Overlook is where Ansel Adams took his photograph. Mormon Row, a line of abandoned homestead barns from the 1890s against the peaks, and the Chapel of the Transfiguration with its window framing the range are the human landmarks. Moose feed in the willows along the Moose-Wilson road, bison and pronghorn graze Antelope Flats, elk migrate to the National Elk Refuge below the town in winter, and the park's grizzlies, famous through the bear known as 399 who raised her cubs beside the road for two decades, have made it one of the best places in the lower forty-eight to see them.

Grand Teton National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open all year; the Teton Park road between Taggart Lake and Signal Mountain is closed to cars from November to April and used by skiers and cyclists, and the Jenny Lake boat runs from May to September. July and August are warm, clear and busy, with the wildflowers in the canyons; June still has snow on the high trails and the best baby animals;

September and early October bring the elk rut, the aspens turning gold and the quietest good weather. Winter from December to March is deep snow, with the elk refuge sleigh rides and the wildlife tours. Go out at dawn for the animals and the light on the peaks. Allow two days, more with Yellowstone. Jackson is the town at the gate, and Yellowstone's south entrance is an hour north.