We all met up in the morning at the check-in point and made our final preparations for the trip. We started our day by taking a short boat ride across Jenny Lake. Once we reached the other side we had a pretty nice walk along the String Lake Trail heading north before we turned west to make our way along the Paintbrush trail. This was a gradual incline trail that was very enjoyable. You can see in some of the pictures below the little bit of snow that was on the mountain, but you can also see most of us in t-shirts. It was perfect weather for the start of our trip.

Below is a picture of our Day 1 and Day 2 hike. 13 miles covered in Day 1 alone!

Additional pictures from Jenny Lake, the String Lake Trail, and the Paintbrush trail:

After a little bit of sketchy climbing that I didn’t take pictures of 🙂 we finally made it to the top of Paintbrush Divide! Elevation of 10,700 ft!

Below are additional pictures from the top of Paintbrush Divide:

Once we were done taking in the views and catching our breath, the only way to go was down the other side! The big lake in the middle of the picture is Lake Solitude and if you look on the left-hand side slightly above the middle of the picture you can see Mica Lake. This was a long climb down that was a bit rough, not because of the steepness, but because a lot of the path was made of small rocks that slid on each other and that really tore into your feet as we would try and maintain our balance on them.

Once we got to the bottom we kept walking quite a bit looking for place to setup camp. Eventually we found a spot and began to rest. It wasn’t an easy Day 1, especially the last bit of climb up and over Paintbrush Divide, but the weather was perfect and it made for a great first day. Click here to go to Day 2 of our trip in the Grand Tetons.