The trail up the South Teton Canyon Shelf in the Jedediah Smith Wilderness

Top: From the mid-point of the trail up the Shelf. Small streams appear and then disappear into the porous limestone. Sinkholes and small caves abound. In a few days, I'd be standing atop the cliffs on the right, in the little gap, while on a trip up Darby Canyon. This is a spectacular piece of alpine terrain, and the weather that day was the perfect complement to the views. Occasionally when I've been on the trail, I've had days that I wished would never end. This was one of them.

A crystal clear stream, fed by snowmelt from the cliffs above, traces across the Shelf for a ways before vanishing into one of the numerous sinkholes that the trail passes. The distinctive, flat-topped profile of a small peak on the other side of Mount Meek Pass is visible on the horizon, marking the passage of the Teton Crest trail. To the left (north) of Mt. Meek Pass, still miles away, is the Alaska Basin. You can just make out the edge of the Sheep Steps, a cliff band that forms the southern rim of Alaska Basin. To give an idea of the scale, there is about two miles of trail between Mt. Meek Pass and the Sheep Steps.

Mt. Meek stands at the 'corner' of the upper rim of Darby Canyon, overlooking the Death Canyon Bench, and was named after a famous mountain man of the early 1800s.