Thank you for your kind remarks, and I hope you enjoy your vacation in August. If you do stay in the Hoback campground, take an afternoon and cross the river to explore the other side. The campground used to be on both sides of the river, but an ice flow tore out the bridge years ago. The forest service chose not to replace it (as they were closing campgrounds left and right at the time anyway) and the campsites, including the old ampitheater were left to be reclaimed by the pines, grass, and willows. The road is still over there, and beyond it is a spring fed pond full of crystal clear water that was once home to a school of huge brook trout. Near fishing rock, where the springs lets out into the river, is the old trailhead for a nature walk that used to be maintained up the mountainside. Their were signs all along it marking various rocks and fauna, and it led up and over the wash along the river bend giving an amazing view. When she was a child, my Mom was once chased down that trail by a protective mother blackbear when she unwhittingly got a little too close to her cub. All the way on top of the mountain, forgotten and lost among the pines, is an ancient picnic table that only the most stalwart explorer would ever hope to find. Back down at the campground, Mable, a beautiful cow moose, would bring here new babies to the camps every night exploring for leftover food. Some years she would bring single young ones, other years she would bring twins. She may have been a different moose every year for all I know, but she was always Mable. And she always licked the pots clean and ate the bar soap if you forgot and left it out by the wash basin.

It is these little treasures that are sadly lost to the over commercialization of this beautiful place. It has brought a smile to my face as I write this and many of these memories come flooding back. I have never been so close to God as I have been while I was curled up in a sleeping bag, nestled in my tent, listening as thunder rolled down the valley like waves breaking across seaside cliffs.

I hope you find the time to find your own treasures in this most sacred of places.

Please THANK your Grandfather…I hope he is still around…for the work he did in building such beautiful campgrounds!

I’ve camped along the Alpine Junction as a student from BYU with many of my friends over the years! I hope we have always been respectful. We tried to be.

Two years ago, taking my rather “new” family up to raft the Snake for the first time, we couldn’t find a campsite along Alpine, which was all I knew. Someone said something about a campsite just past Hoback. We went looking. We found Hoback campsite! All those times camping, so close yet so far from the most beautiful, peaceful site I’d ever seen! Right on the little river, under the canopy of the trees!

My family wanted to go again last year. We never made it. The said we “HAD” to go in 2008. So, we’re planning to go in August.

I hope, I pray, we can find two open sites at Hoback. We love it. I thank your Grandfather for his work! And if we run into you, and you say HI, I guarentee, you’ll get a smile and “How are you” back! I may not know it is you, or was your Grandfather, but in my heart, we’ll think it is about anyone we meet. We love to say hi.

We don’t do downtown Jackson, we cook great food, hit the river, swim, and mountain bike down the Teton Pass trail back into Jackson Hole. And we go home sad to leave!

God Bless!

C. Weber