I just got back from a road trip in which I got to ride in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming — a national park that accommodates bicyclists well, especially Chicagoans.
The lovely (and high-end) Jackson, Wyoming, serves as a good base for a ride through the national park. The city and county tout bike routes (PDF), including the “Grand Loop,” that use bike paths and roads. The Grand Loop takes you as far north as the popular Jenny Lake and goes back south to the town of Wilson before heading east back to Jackson.
And the best part for us Chicagoans is that the loop is flat. The ride runs through the wide open landscape — the “Jackson Hole” — alongside the mountains; you never actually ride up into them. (Do watch out on the windy days, though.)
One catch of going in the early spring as I did is that the path, which starts out along the National Elk Refuge, is closed through April 30 or whenever gates across various points of the path are closed — which they were during my trip. A sign says riding on the trail while the elk are in the refuge can alarm them and maybe make them approach the traffic on the main road through the park, Route 191. That just forced me onto the road, which I’d think might still disturb the elk along with all the autos, but so be it.
Another catch is that there’s still snow around, including on much of the trail. As you ride north, the elevation increases very gradually but enough to feel more of a chill; that colder air also keeps the snow from melting. The trail actually is open once you get past the elk refuge; you’d just have to be comfortable maybe riding through the snow.
The benefit of riding Grand Teton in the early spring is that it’s less busy and also not hot like it might be in the summer, as I understand it. You might have to ride on the roads including fairly busy Route 191, but there’s plenty of shoulder, maybe with a little debris.
Then when you get to Teton Park Road to see the mountains up close, it eventually is closed to autos — but not to bicyclists. An amazing exclusive experience awaits.
Here’s a kind of video summary of my ride.
You can see that the road is cleared of snow while 2 to 4 feet of it remains on the open land. No other road is plowed, including the one that takes you to Jenny Lake. But you can keep riding Teton Park Road past the large and scenic Jackson Lake all the way up to Signal Mountain, then pick up Route 191 again to head back south. (It appears this larger loop also is called by some the Grand Loop, though it’s meant more for drivers.) You could also just ride back down Teton Park Road and see the mountains from a different angle.
I didn’t ride in this northern half of the park, but I know from driving that you’d ride through pine forest, and it gets a little hillier.
If you want to avoid riding on or along Route 191, another base is back down on Teton Park Road before it closes to autos, near Taggart Lake. It was there I found vehicles parked along the road for about a mile — on a Thursday in early April — and people preparing to bike, skate or hike on the closed portion of the road. The national park welcomes them.
Riding the closed Teton Park Road was glorious. Without auto noise, it was remarkably quiet, as not even birds were out while I was there. I saw other riders, skaters and walkers, or people just sitting on the road picnicking or admiring the mountain views.
While the whole national park is suitable for serious cyclists, the roads are OK for casual bicyclists (Route 191 might get a little uncomfortable), while the path and closed road are great for families. Alas, Teton Park Road does reopen fully to vehicles in May; that may make families more cautious.
Here’s a rider who got to Grand Teton this year after it had just opened to bicyclists. Some of the roads he was on — it appears up north in the forested half — were just paved only partially.
You can see the smile on this rider’s face. The ride through the park is indeed an incredible experience. And with the terrain alongside the mountains largely flat, we Chicagoans don’t have to figure out mountain training ahead of time.
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