WEBCAMS
Turn your scenic drive into an adventure through billions of years of history with a self-guided audio tour from Teton Geological Services.
There are countless ways to experience Grand Teton National Park, from scenic drives and wildlife watching to hiking beneath the towering peaks. But what if you could look beyond the incredible views and discover the story of how this landscape actually came to be?
With a self-guided Grand Teton National Park audio tour from Teton Geological Services, your drive becomes part sightseeing adventure, part storytelling experience, and part journey through geologic time. Led by Dominique, a local professional geologist and owner of Teton Geological Services, the tour reveals the fascinating forces hidden within the landscape around you.
It’s a fun, informative, and uniquely Jackson Hole way to explore the park, perfect for curious travelers who want to experience more than the view.
Turn Your Scenic Drive Into an Experience
One of the best parts of a trip through Grand Teton National Park is simply taking in the scenery. With this tour, those views take on an entirely new meaning.
As you travel through the park, you'll hear stories that connect directly to the mountains, valleys, glaciers, and lakes around you. Learn how earthquakes helped raise the Tetons, discover why ancient ocean sediments can now be found high in the mountains, and imagine glaciers thousands of feet thick moving through the valley you're driving across today.
Rather than experiencing the park through a classroom or guidebook, you're learning while surrounded by the landscape itself.
And because the experience is self-guided, you can explore on your schedule. Take your time at a scenic turnout, stop for photos, add a hike or picnic to your day, and enjoy the park at a pace that works for you.
Discover the Story Behind the Tetons
The Teton landscape has been billions of years in the making.
The story begins approximately 2.7 billion years ago, when geological processes formed the ancient rocks at the core of the Tetons. Thousands of millions of years later, a shallow sea covered the region and deposited layers of sedimentary rock.
Much later, the Teton Fault became active, lifting the mountains while the valley floor dropped. Then came the glaciers, slowly carving canyons, reshaping the valley, and leaving behind the features that helped create some of the park's most recognizable lakes.
It's one of the fascinating contradictions you'll discover along the way: Grand Teton National Park contains some of the oldest rocks in North America within one of the continent's youngest mountain ranges.
Look at Your Favorite Grand Teton Landmarks Differently
The tour gives visitors a new perspective on places you might otherwise simply drive past.
At Glacier View Turnout, for example, you can look toward the Tetons while learning about the glaciers that once covered the region. Throughout the experience, lakes, canyons, mountains, rocks, and valleys become clues to the park's past.
Jenny Lake, Phelps Lake, and Jackson Lake aren't simply beautiful places to stop and take a photo. Their stories are connected to the enormous glaciers that once moved through this landscape, carving valleys and leaving behind deposits of rock and debris as they retreated.
It's the kind of experience that may have you looking out the window and saying, “I never knew that.”
More Than Geology
The story of Grand Teton National Park isn't only about rocks and glaciers. The tour also explores the ways the landscape has influenced the people who have traveled through and lived in Jackson Hole.
Listeners learn about thousands of years of Native American connections to the region, early exploration, historic geological surveys, ranching, conservation, and the arrival of tourism.
By connecting geology, human history, wildlife, water, and the surrounding ecosystem, the tour offers a bigger picture of what makes Grand Teton National Park such an extraordinary place.
Add Something Different to Your Grand Teton Adventure
Whether you're visiting Jackson Hole for the first time, looking for a family-friendly way to learn while exploring, or simply want to experience a familiar landscape from a new perspective, the Teton Geological Services self-guided tour offers something different for your day in the park. All for free!
There's no need to rush from attraction to attraction. Listen, look around, stop when something catches your attention, and let the landscape tell its story.
You'll still get the mountain views, scenic stops, wildlife-watching opportunities, and unforgettable photographs that make a Grand Teton road trip special. But you'll come away knowing a little more about why the Tetons look the way they do and just how extraordinary the ground beneath your feet really is.