In discussing our trip plan with Mike I found that he too wanted to climb the Tetons. We had both recently read about a Grand Traverse (in which one would climb all three of them). We thought that this was awesome! But we had some lovely ladies with us and we wanted them along, so after more research we decided on a very historic route (that was also the easiest) up the Grand Teton, the middle and southern Tetons had lame names middle and southern. Now we just had to convince the ladies.
The thought was they could come as far as they would like. Jessica very much wanted to make the climb but was having a bad bout of shin splints; Allison, on the other hand wanted nothing to do with any mountain with "grand" in the name. After much debating and a lot of anxiety on Allison's part, it was decided that the girls would stay down at a lake-side campground and the men would hike in, spend the night and push for the summit the next day.So we had a little over five miles and 3000 ft up to go before bed. We assumed we would sleep till 530 or so and then make the rest of the hike/climb in the morning, summiting some time before noon and be back for an early supper. This would require another 4000 ft up, the last 300 ft being roped for climbing. But after our beautiful hike in we got bad news that the latest we should be leaving camp was at 330am. There was another party that would be leaving at 1am (we thought they where a little nuts) so we decided that we would leave between 2 and 3. We also learned that there would be 25 mi/hr winds which would make the 15 or 20 degrees we expected before the sun was up drop down to -4 to -5.
We ended up hitting the trail at 2:15am. It was cold and dark but we had no wind until we got out onto the lower saddle. With out the sun to warm, the air and stones we were scrambling up were freezing. Our water froze in its camel back! Needless to say our hands froze up too. The hiking was more often like scrambeling then walking, and we began to feel that we had started this venture way to early. You see, normally in the heat of the summer, thunderstroms roll in nearly every afternoon so you want to be off the peak by noon. Since we climbed this in the fall chances were much less. We realized this and decided to take regular breaks on the way to the top. As soon as we got up on the saddle the wind began to how and we quickly froze, so we pulled out an extra layer and took a breakfast break (half an apple and a power bar). Even huddled in the nook of a ginormus rock we quickly froze, so torn between the desire to wait for the sun and the ever pressing need to move to stay warm we pressed on after just 5 min.
From there we lost our trail to the massive boulders strewn mountainside. We spent about as much time on all fours as we did on two. The route took a more or less strait line up to the upper saddle. It was nothing short of grueling! We trudged on and on. The sun came up, finally, but we were on the west side of the mountain. Thankfully, the air did start to warm up a bit. When we hit the upper saddle we took a longer break. The guys that started at 1:00am, who we passed, caught up and decided not to climb to the summit. This was crazy, the hardest part was behind us.
The next part was the actual climbing, we had 3 pitches of really easy climbing, except for some pretty icy sections. It had some spectacular exposure, we could see 5000 ft straight down. After that we summited and came into full sun light. It was so nice and warm and the sky was clear so we spent some time up there.
From there we had to climb down. We hit a wonderful repel on the way (video below). Then scrambled down and down. The hiking took forever and we just wanted to be in our ladies' arms. After what seemed like forever we made it out, it was awesome and we were completely spent.
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| The Hike In |
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| Camp |
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| Half Way |
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| The Summit |
by Motsenbocker
Wow Taylor - Very Awesome!!!!
ReplyDeleteWay to go Taylor!
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