Nathalie Figueroa’s laugh echoed down the trail on the way to the aquamarine Delta Lake. It’s one of the most popular spots in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park after going viral on social media.
“Sorry. I’m out of breath,” Figueroa managed to say, trying to talk while trudging up the final 2,300 feet on steep dirt and rocks in late July.
She and her friend Sofia Villatoro, both from Los Angeles, were soaking up supposed words of encouragement from hikers coming down. One person said the worst part was yet to come.
“We thought that part was bad,” Figueroa said, of what they’d already hiked.
“Why would he say that?” responded Villatoro. “Let's go back.”
But they don’t. The two 20-somethings are determined to jump into the lake, which gets its intense color from suspended glacial dust. They were inspired by videos on TikTok.
“It's difficult, but everybody on the way down keeps telling us it's really worth it,” Figueroa said. “We’ve been dreaming of coming to the Tetons since last year.”
Plus, this trail could have been a lot harder. Thanks to a creative partnership this summer, it got a big facelift. That’s because the previous web of informal, hiker-made paths wasn’t built to withstand the hordes of people descending on it.
“[Hikers would] be up there. They'd be crawling over roots. They'd be crawling over trees. They'd be using their hands to scramble on boulders,” recalled Corey Kruse, assistant trails supervisor at Grand Teton National Park.
But now the park’s trail crew and a team from the Access Fund, a national climbing conservation group, are hard at work.
“Here comes a rock falling down on us,” Kruse said, pointing to a small stone a hiker had kicked down. “That's what we're trying to prevent.”
They spent six weeks moving unstable boulders and pounding small rocks into place. It’s a strategy Kruse referred to as “rearranging the furniture.”
“Just taking what's there and trying to move it and reshuffle it to make it more of a trail that catches your eye and is more stable to walk on,” he said.
That’s to protect the surrounding plant and wildlife habitats and make for fewer twisted ankles and torn ACLs. The park has seen more rescues here in recent years. Ten years ago, 57 people came each day in the summer. Last year, it averaged 308.
Social media aside, it’s the park’s top-reviewed hike on AllTrails, and now even AI includes it on itineraries for visitors.
“There was kind of a gap in the amount of support that would be needed to take on a project of this scale,” said Andrea Hassler, who oversees the Access Fund’s trail crews.
So, the group brought in more workers, and the local Grand Teton National Park Foundation paid for it.
“Combining forces allowed us both to leverage our skills and expertise and get a significant amount of work done in a short amount of time,” Hassler said.
In six weeks, the trail went from a loose, rocky stair stepper to a more manicured one.
The climbing group is one of numerous nonprofits stepping up to steward public land. That’s because many federal agencies are hamstrung by staffing cuts and bureaucracy, while dealing with record visitation numbers.
Since 2019, over 13 million more people have taken up hiking, according to the Outdoor Industry Association’s 2026 Hiking Report.
“We've just seen a pretty significant influx of different apps and technical resources for people to know about more opportunities to go and recreate in the outdoors,” Hassler said.
Delta Lake is just one of many hotspots. The Access Fund has projects in Utah’s Indian Creek and American Fork, Colorado’s Estes Park and Nevada’s Red Rock National Conservation Area.
That’s all to help climbers and hikers like Figueroa and Villatoro, who audibly gasped as they crested the hill to see the glistening Delta Lake.
“Wow,” Villatoro said. “They don’t have this in California.”
The granite Grand Teton peak hovered above the lake as dozens of hikers sunbathed on the rocky shore on the late July Thursday.
“I’m going to cry,” Villatoro said. “Is it OK if I cry on the radio?”
The hike was a lot of effort, but they said they’d do it 10 more times for this view and the shockingly cold splash into the water.
“I’m shivering my timbers right now,” Figueroa said. “It was worth it, definitely.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
