Snake River (Wyoming)

The upper Snake River in Wyoming is one of the most iconic scenic rivers in the American West. Rising in Yellowstone National Park, the Snake flows south through Jackson Lake and then through the heart of Grand Teton National Park, where it braids across a wide glacial valley beneath the most dramatic mountain front in North America — the Teton Range rising 7,000 feet from the valley floor without foothills. The park section from Jackson Lake Dam to Moose is a Class I-II scenic float through braided channels with views of the Tetons that have defined the visual identity of the American West since Ansel Adams photographed them in the 1940s. Below Jackson, the river enters Snake River Canyon near Alpine, where the character changes entirely: eight miles of Class III whitewater through a narrow basalt canyon that produces some of the best commercial rafting in Wyoming. The upper Snake is three rivers in one — a braided scenic float, a fly-fishing paradise, and a whitewater canyon — all within 50 miles and all beneath the Tetons.

The Snake River in Jackson Hole flows across one of the most dramatic geological features in North America — the Teton Fault, where the Teton Range has been uplifted approximately 30,000 feet relative to the valley floor over the past 10 million years. The valley floor is filled with thousands of feet of glacial and lacustrine sediment from Pleistocene ice sheets. Alpine Canyon cuts through Paleozoic limestone and Cretaceous sedimentary rocks south of Jackson Hole.

The Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat trout is a subspecies endemic to the upper Snake — found nowhere else in the world. The river corridor through Grand Teton National Park supports one of the densest bald eagle and osprey nesting populations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Moose are common in the willow flats along the braided channels.