A side road from North Jenny Lake Junction leads about 0.8 mile to Cathedral Group Turnout, the park's best place to see the Teton Fault as a break in the slope at the mountain front. Teewinot, the Grand Teton and Mount Owen rise directly above. The scenic drive beyond is one-way south.
Want to look a fault in the eye? Take the next left, North Jenny Lake Junction, and Cathedral Group Turnout is about three quarters of a mile down that road, on the way to String Lake. Come back the same way and turn left. Past the turnout the scenic drive is one-way south, and it drops you back on Teton Park Road behind where you turned, so you'd drive this stretch again. Stay on the main road, and Mountain View Turnout is the next one on your left. From Cathedral Group you face Teewinot, the Grand and Mount Owen. The Grand and Owen are granite, harder than the older rock around them, and Teewinot shows gray stripes where the granite cuts through. If you turned in, look low, at the foot of Rockchuck Peak, for a steeper band breaking through the gentler glacial slope. That's the Teton Fault, the best view of it in the park, and that step is the work of several earthquakes since the ice melted. This fault has gone more than five thousand years without breaking the surface. Scientists who dated it at Leigh Lake dug their trenches by hand, because heavy equipment couldn't go in, and the long quiet surprised even them. The Geological Survey has a phrase for it, ominously quiet.
Photo: National Park Service, Grand Teton NP (cropped) · Public domain