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Steve Anderson pilots a boat away from the South Jenny Lake Boat Dock in early June for a trip across the lake. Anderson, who is training to become a captain, cannot pilot a boat without a captain on board. Grand Teton National Park requires that all captains hold liscenses from the U.S. Coast Guard. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / BRADLY J. BONER

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The boat quietly pushed off, waves from Jenny Lake splashing against its side.

“Your captain today will be Steve,” comes the announcement over the loudspeaker.

Steve Anderson, 22, will pilot this tourist-laden craft across a mile of open lake in Grand Teton National Park. It’s a 10-minute trip, shuttling tourists to the popular sites of Inspiration Point and Hidden Falls. But all the while, Anderson is under the watchful eye of a boat captain – because for now he remains an apprentice.

It seems a mundane enough task. Back and forth across the lake during the day with little motorized traffic and hardly a tide, reef, buoy, lighthouse or foghorn to complicate things.

Anderson will steer and dock his craft. He will oversee its embarkation and disembarkation. He knows to call the left port, the green side starboard. He knows bow from stern, what to do when somebody yells “man overboard!”

All on a lake that’s two miles across at its widest.

The 11 boat captains at Jenny Lake are not teenagers hoping to make some extra spending money. With year-round benefits, a signing bonus, profit sharing opportunities and a four-day work week, the captain’s jobs at Jenny Lake Boating, the park concession for the popular shuttle to Cascade Canyon, is coveted. Most captains are veterans, many living full-time in the valley.

And though Jenny Lake is more than 600 miles from the nearest coast, all hold captain’s licenses from the U.S. Coast Guard, a park requirement. Since April they also possess a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, required by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Coast Guard doesn’t have jurisdiction on Jenny Lake because it is not navigable water used for trade. The little wooden dock at remote Cascade Canyon must be at the very bottom of any terrorist hit-list.

Still, maritime bureaucracy thrives, even 6,783 feet above sea level.

“It’s what’s happening to America,” said Matt Carr, operations manager with Jenny Lake Boating. “More paperwork, more bureaucracy, more red tape.”

To ensure the safety of more than 100,000 people who cross the lake every summer, Grand Teton National Park requires boat pilots to hold Coast Guard licenses, Carr said. That means, as of April, they also must have a Homeland Security TWIC card, too.

The arrangement for the Coast Guard to oversee operations began in about 2000, said Mallory Smith, chief of park business resources. The goal was more oversight of boating operations.

“That is my overall and the park’s overall objective, to provide the safest boating operations and visiting experience we can,” she said.

The earn their Coast Guard licenses, captains complete 140 hours of training and must pass a written test on how they would interact with other boats in different situations. TWIC cards, required as of April 19, enhance security at ports across the country, according to the Web site for the Transportation Security Administration.

Doug Colonel, owner of Jenny Lake Boating, pays about $1,000 to get each captain licensed. The Coast Guard needs paperwork certifying prospective captains have done the training, including 24 landings in various wind and current situations. Candidates must prove two days of man overboard drills and competency in other safety and emergency situations.

In addition to three letters of recommendation, a physical exam and drug screen, there is a $100 fee for a new TWIC card, a $95 exam fee and a $45 issuance fee, plus the cost of traveling to and from a TWIC station – twice.

Colonel pays additional costs, shared with Colter Bay, to host the Coast Guard for boat inspections each year.

To get a TWIC card, a captain must go to a processing station in Portland or California for fingerprinting and a test. After 10 to 12 weeks, he or she must return to pick up the card, in person. It can’t be mailed or delivered. It must be renewed every five years.

The park has just begun to explore and evaluate the new TWIC requirement, Smith said. She hopes there will be a way to make the cards more accessible, such as offering a mobile certification station.

A mobile station came this year in Salt Lake City, Carr said. Several captains made the several-hundred-mile trip to apply for their cards. They are waiting for the mobile station to return to Utah to pick them up, he said.

The park will continue to use the Coast Guard for working with the boat concessions, Smith said.

“They truly are the known industry experts,” she said. “I believe it is to everyone’s benefit that we use the Coast Guard.”

There are about 100 piloted boat operations in national parks throughout the country, said Kathy Kupper, spokeswoman with the National Park Service. About 65 of those are on coastal waterways and must have Coast Guard-certified captains. Another 10 are inland parks that choose Coast Guard licensing.

For those operations not on coastal waters, the individual park decides how to ensure safety.

“In some parks, it’s institutionalized,” Kupper said.

Yellowstone National Park does not work with the Coast Guard. Glacier National Park, which offers boating services similar to those at Jenny Lake, has a memorandum of understanding with the boat concessions, said Denise VanArtsdale, co-owner of Glacier Park Boat Company.

The company, which operates on five lakes in the park, uses the Coast Guard to inspect its boats and test its captains. The testing requirements are the same as if they were getting a full Coast Guard license, but they are only certified, so they don’t have to get a TWIC card.

The agreement has been in place since the early ’90s, VanArtsdale said. The park also pays the majority of the cost of bringing in the Coast Guard since it is the one that wants the inspections, she said.

If the park service didn’t require an official Coast Guard license, the captains’ training would stay the same, Carr said. The training is in-depth and long established.

“The only thing that would change is the bureaucracy,” he said.

Anderson, the company’s captain in training, is in limbo as he waits to see if the red tape will be slashed. He isn’t quite a captain, but hopes to become one.

For the past three years, he has worked at the docks at Jenny Lake. He jumped at the opportunity to move onto the water, piloting the boats.

He can drive passengers across the lake with a licensed captain onboard. When he isn’t on the water, he studies diagrams in his manual. For a part of the written exam – when he takes it – he can miss only two questions.

In addition to Coast Guard requirements, he must know basic geology and ecology, so he can tell passengers that Jenny Lake was glacier-formed and remind them how to get to popular spots such as Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point.The goal is to make the simple boat ride across the lake a true experience.

“For some folks [Hidden Falls], that’s their Mount Everest,” Carr said. “For some people it’s a real backcountry experience.”

The company tries to respect that and make it part of the adventure, Carr said.

Normally Anderson would have earned his captain’s license by the middle of June, taking about a month to complete his training and take his test. In September, the park will revisit the memorandum of understanding it has with the boating concessions in Grand Teton, Carr said.

Carr and Colonel are hoping Anderson won’t have to get a Coast Guard license and travel to get a TWIC card. The possibility leaves him an apprentice for the summer.

Like his bosses, Anderson doesn’t mind the safety regulations.

“I take their lives in my hands, basically, when I’m driving,” he said of his cargo.

He could face high winds or thunderstorms on the lake. Whatever situation arises, he is confident it will be one he can handle.