Grand Teton Attempt - 2010

The Tetons are the youngest and most spectacular range in the Rocky Mountain chain. They were formed 8-9 million years ago when the Teton fault resulted in an uplift of 30,000 feet. The great cleft and valley to the east of the range was filled by thousands of feet of sedimentary layers of gravel, cobbles and sand. This has left the valley known as Jackson Hole relatively flat and broad with the Tetons rising abruptly over a mile above the wide valley floor. Unlike many other peaks which sit atop large broad ranges with long approaches of progressively larger and higher foothills, the Tetons leap straight up from the valley floor to 13000 feet. Their jagged rocky peaks are all the more rugged due to recent glacial activity a 150000 years ago.

For well over a hundred years their peaks have entranced the settlers of the area. My own Grandfather climbed the Grand with the help of a guide with only one arm. I never knew him he passed before I was born. Climbing the Grand has been something I've wanted to do for sometime. My appreciation for what this entails has grown over the past several years as I've been more familiar with the mountains in general and had a few climbing experiences myself. I appreciate very well now the fact that I walk in the footsteps of others and I am present by the grace of others. When it comes to rock climbing, at this point others lead and I follow. I am confident in my following but not my leading. My plan for 2010 was to make a trip up the Grand with Seth and Dean, my partners with whom I climbed Rainier last year.

I was already in Utah for vacation visiting Stac's folks and dropping Kiah off for her first year at college at BYU-Idaho. We left Logan at Wednesday 4:15 am for Jackson Hole, an early morning start in attempt to get a first come/first serve permit for camping spots along the approach to the Grand Teton. Seth and Dean left Washington shortly thereafter for a 12 hour drive. We rolled into Jackson Hole around 7:30 am and I was at the Jenny Lake Ranger station by 8:05. I got the last permit for The Moraines campsite, which is the 2nd highest on the mountain at 10800 ft above sea level, a thousand feet below the saddle between the Middle and The Grand.

Seth and Dean arrived later that evening and stayed with a friend of Seth's in Jackson. Thursday morning they picked me up at the hotel at 9:30. We stopped by Teton Mountaineering for a last minute supply. We drove out to Jenny Lake to fill up our water bottles, change into our approach outfits and grabbed a sandwich at Dornan's. We drove to Lupine Meadows trail head and were on the go by noon. I carried a four pack of Thomas Kemper Root Beer that we stashed at creek a half mile into the trail. From Lupine Meadows your almost due east of the Grand but the Tetons are obscured by the high ridge line that rise above you. You start off due south for a mile or so until you begin gradually climbing the ridge. Even though I'd been living the past 10 days at 5000 ft plus. I felt a bit winded by the initial pace as we slowly climbed up through the pines. Eventually I caught my second wind, hit my pace and felt fine. Dean started dragging as his knee began tightening and bothering him. We took a nice break at the junction for Amphitheater Lake and had a few huckleberries. The trail begins climbing up the ridge and then turns and begins the approach along the right side into Garnet Canyon. As you wind among the large white pines the trail becomes rockier and suddenly your round a bend and you see the glorious peak of the Middle Teton with its striking vertical black dike and the cirque that houses the Middle and the Grand. All of us stopped in awe at the beauty. Your plodding along through grassland for so long with your destination out of sight that this first view is surprising and jaw dropping.

From here the trail begins to climb up the canyon with the creek running along side. Eventually the canyon narrows and the trail ends in a boulder field from rock fall on the steep rocky slopes on either side. Picking your way through the small car sized boulders is fun as the creek rushes next to you. The vegetation thickens and a beautiful meadow opens before you. The Middle rises directly overhead and the Middle Teton Glacier (the source of the streams) is to the high left. There are campgrounds in the meadows between the north and south fork of Garnet Creek. The meadow is filled with wildflowers and is a great place to relax and enjoy the scenery. Dean and I dropped our packs and waited for Dean to arrive. After some time I wandered over to peer back down the boulder field. I could see Dean picking his way up the rocks. I decided to shoulder the pack and head up to the Moraines to secure us a campsite. The rangers mentioned that it was full and there were many people in the meadows starting up. Seth stayed behind to await Dean.

A rocky slope rises above the meadows. Switch backs steeply wind their way to the caves formed by huge rocks that have calved off the rocky spires that surround the Grand. From here another more gently sloping mass of scree rises. As you wend your way up the boot path you come to the gushing creek that exits from the Middle Teton Glacier. By this time I'd run out of water and the exertion and the heat left me feeling very dehydrated. I was pushing perhaps a bit too hard trying to pass a group of three ahead of me to find a spot among the moraines. The stream was lined with gorgeous set of wildflowers. I kneeled down in a small side stream and stuck my face in the water and drank and drank and drank. I could immediately feel my body respond and I finally crested the scree to see a huge moraine field of scree and boulders at the base of the Middle Teton Glacier. The saddle between the Middle and the Grand was another 1300 feet above. From here I cut high trying still to beat the group of three ahead of me. Each campsite I saw below me along the trail was filled with groups all ready. As I dropped back down to the main trail I came across a semi-truck sized boulder and a small bivvy site. A short 10 feet from this was another small bivvy site. I thew my pack down to "mark the turf" and set off to look for something better. I climbed up to the trail and the first rise but couldn't see anything more and I really really didn't feel like climbing any higher. I wandered back to our site and got my bowl and water bladder off and set off for the creek to refill my water.

The sun was beginning to set behind the ridge and peaks were starting to glow with fading light when I ran across Seth making his way up. Dean had finally caught up to him and his first words were : "Don't talk to me, I feel like I am going to throw up". He'd been hit with a bout of nausea from the altitude. The best remedy is to stay low and acclimate. In no mood to head up right then anyway Dean stayed behind in the meadows with a group of climbers from the Carolina's who were convalescing from a successful summit that morning. Seth and I both wandered back to the creek for water. And then back to camp. We immediately broke out the Tim's Cascade Salt and Vinegar chips, there is no finer post-hike snack than a salty tangy chip. They were delicious. We laid out our respective camps; Seth was bivying in the tent fly as he'd left the tent with Dean. I had a bivvy sack. We started a pot of water to boil and ate our freeze dried meals and chatted.

By 9pm were both in our sacks and turned in for night. Tired and exhausted from the long slog up I expected to sleep like a rock. I tossed and turned and tossed and turned; I couldn't sleep. At times I felt like I couldn't get a full lung of air, at others my mouth would dry out completely and I felt like I needed a gallon of water to salivate again. I got out my iPhone and read on my Kindle and watched the moon come up around midnight. I finally feel asleep around quarter after 1am. Around 2 a smattering of rain feel on my bivy, but the wind kept whipping around me and nothing really got wet. At 3:30 am my alarm went off like a klaxon. This was Seth's and I's agreed upon start time. There were thick clouds boiling over the saddle and the wind was a steady 20-30 mph. I put my pants and coat on and hopped down to Seth's bivvy and woke him up. We agreed things looked foreboding and that we'd see how things looked at 5am. I immediately feel into a deep sleep. Around 4:45 am the rain started falling harder, coming down in a steady drizzle. I woke feeling the cold and wetness soaking through my bivvy sack. The rain fell for 40 minutes or so all the while the wind kept blowing. Neither Seth nor I even bothered getting up at 5 to consult each other. I fell back into a deep sleep.

Around 7:00 am in a fog of sleep I heard a voice commenting : "I never thought I'd find you guys. This was the very last campsite in the moraines that I looked at." Dean had wandered into camp. Apparently the night before around 8pm he'd started to feel better and he threw on his pack and hiked up in the dark wandering over the moraines trying to find us. Given that I was off the main trail behind a big rock and we were in bed he never found us. So he'd wandered back down to the Cave's where he'd holed up in a cave, which was fortunate given the rain that feel. The next morning he'd come up again without his pack or gear and finally found us after traversing the entire area. We chatted for a bit and Seth and I decided to head up to the Saddle to "see what we could see" and maybe try the Middle and Dean headed back down to the Caves. His knee still wasn't up to any hard exertion.

Seth and I slowly made our way up to the Saddle. The clouds were still dark gray and the wind was whipping. Just below the saddle is a cliff band that intersects the top of the Middle Teton Glacier. There is a route that traverses the snow field onto the top of the cliff band and a route with a hand line up a crack in the cliff band. Standard class 4 scrambling stuff with the rope to give you a bit extra security. We paused at the base while several parties made their way down. They were Exum Mountain Guides and their clients who due to the weather were turning back. This made Seth and I feel a bit better about our decision to not climb at 3:30 am. As we got up onto the saddle the gusts of wind became even more intense. A wind anemometer on the saddle showed the gusts were hitting over 50 mph. At the saddle you could look across the gulf into Idaho at Table Rock a peak at 11,600 feet that I'd hiked many many years ago as an 18 year old assistant scout master. Dark clouds rumbled on the horizon and were blowing our way. All this further ratified our decision to turn back. At this point we decided not to even opt for the Middle and after wandering around for a while we headed back down to camp.

We packed up and got our gear together and started back down the moraines and dropped off the ridge into the meadows where we rejoined Dean for the final descent. In the meadows blue sky bombed above us. The gray had blow out after all. Big white puffy clouds built in the sky. But the wind was still blowing hard. It was hard to not second guess and feel a bit conflicted about the weather now. But you have to make your decision at the time based on the weather that is present vs. the weather you see on the way down. Unless you have time to hunker down and wait it out and we didn't. We had families to get back to and hundreds of miles to drive.

Seth and Dean stopped to take a break. When I am heading down and out and I don't like to stop, I like to just keep on motoring down. I want to be off the trail. I kept on trucking until I reached the creek where we'd stashed the rootbeer and settled down to retrieve them, sit and sip. Seth and Dean showed up 20 minutes later and after enjoying the drinks we headed together down the last half mile. Arriving at the car relieved we piled in the car and headed down to Jenny Lake. We grabbed a change of clothes and walked down to the lake and waded in to swim and wash off. The water was crystal clear and felt so refreshing.

Afterward we got in the car drove towards Jackson. As we passed along the photo pullouts with their overviews of the Tetons from afar. We stopped for one last view and photo of the Tetons. The first time you view them you can't help but be in awe of their magnitude and glory. And yet after you've traversed them, and been in their midst, up close and personal your perspective changes. They no longer become these distant impressive monoliths, but are faces you know intimately and personally. After a photo or two we went into Billy's Giant Hamburgers in Jackson next to the Cadillac Grill for an awesome cheeseburger and fries to commemorate our adventure. Stac and the kids picked me and we headed for Iona Idaho to stay with my Aunt. Dean and Seth headed to the AAC Climbers Ranch for sleep and then the next day to drive 12 hours back to Washington. An adventure had, not the one we'd hoped for, but still a grand time in the mountains with great scenery and good friends. We'll be back.

Grand Teton Attempt - 2010

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