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September 23, 2006
Ascent of Grand Teton
What does climbing the Grand Teton have to do with Technology? Not much. But I climbed it last Labor Day and decided to write about it.
Being described as, "one of the finest mountaineering objectives in the United States" by The Climbers Guide to the Teton Range, I jumped at the idea of climbing Grand Teton this past labor day. In fact, this would be my second attempt in two years. Last years' attempt was marked by foul weather and ample amounts of ice and snow. No one in our group (Todd Thesing, Jason "Frouny" Frounfelker, Nick Armitage or I) had successfully summited, but were all eager to do so. So this year, the four of us started planning early. The barrage of emails started in early July, trying to decide when we all could go. With the exception of Nick, we are all desk jockeys of one type or another, so we were looking at weekends. It wasn't looking good, as each one of us was booked for one weekend or another. Eventually, we settled on Labor Day weekend, so we marked our calendars and began planning our second attempt.
About a week later, Nick said that he had a friend coming into town and was going to be unable to attend. While disappointed, we were not swayed. At this point, shy of Yellowstone erupting, Todd, Frouny and I were going for it.
We all suspiciously eyed the forecast for Labor Day weekend. A storm in Portland on Tuesday threatened to pass through on Saturday, but ended up drying up somewhere over Washington. On Friday, we all noticed the same thing: high pressure and sunny skies forecasted for the next several days. We were all elated, and our anticipation grew. Saturday morning we all met at Todd's house, gathered our gear and started the drive down to Jackson. Between the coffee, sunny skies, and adrenaline, we were all vibrating in our seats as we could hardly wait for the ascent to begin. Half way down Todd got a call on his cell phone. It was Nick. He was going have dinner with his friend and then bee line down to the park and catch up with us early Sunday morning. I think the thought of the three of us summiting without him got the best of him.
We arrived to a packed parking lot in Grand Teton National Park. It was Labor day weekend, after all. After checking in at the Ranger Station, we quickly repacked our gear and began our hike around 1 p.m.. The trip from Lupine Meadows is not especially exciting, but the three of us were psyched and felt as much anticipation as high school boys on prom night.
The weather forecast turned out to hold true, and we spent the afternoon hiking in perfect 75 degree weather. Our packs soon began to take their toll, though. 8 miles and 5,000 feet later we were exhausted. Carrying all our climbing gear, as well as food, tents, sleeping bags and warm clothes had drained away our excitement. Todd summed it up best, "There is no glory in this. Only a slog that we have to get through." We found our camp near "the Saddle" around 6 p.m.. I don't think any of us had ever been so excited at the prospect of not moving. After sunset, we retired to our sleeping bags, refreshed and refueled for the tomorrow's ascent.
Around 5 a.m., Nick walked into camp and woke us up. He had started hiking up around 2:30 that morning and had made it to our camp in half the time we did. Having just a day pack, we were sure to tease Nick about how nice it must have been not to have to carry any heavy climbing gear, letting his Sherpa friends tend to those matters. He took it well and ended up taking all the gear we could throw at him. We had some coffee and a light breakfast and left our camp around 6 a.m. carrying only small packs for the summit attempt. We each carried one liter of water for the sake of speed, a decision I would later regret.
The morning was beautiful and the skies were all clear. Jackson had very little of the smoke and haze that we have had in the Big Sky area for the past week. From the saddle to the summit, there are a variety of ways to the peak. We chose the popular Upper Exum, a 13 pitch (a pitch is an measurement of distance: one length of climbing rope or about 50 meters) exposed route on the Southern Face of Grand Teton, spanning approximately 3 miles and 2100 vertical feet. The route derives its name from Glen Exum, who made the first ascent using this ridge (solo) in 1931.
We scrambled up the ridge in relative silence, soaking in the morning tranquility. While there were several other groups of climbers, they did very little to detract from our experience. I climbed Mount Rainier several years ago, and found that to be much more distracting. There were literally lines of people ascending the mountain, and if you got caught behind a slower group, there was little you could do other than wait. This was not the case with the Grand Teton, at least on the Upper Exum, with one exception: Wall Street. "Wall Street" is a large ascending ledge (about 15 feet wide and 200 feet long) that is easily identifiable and marks the beginning of the climbing to the summit. At the end of Wall Street, there is a step around a corner, that although not too difficult, is extremely exposed, and usually marks where climbers rope up and belay each other. We got caught behind 14 people and were forced to sit and wait. A friend of mine who had climbed Grand Teton via this same route told me of the exposure at the end of Wall Street. She told me to take a moment and look at how far down you can see. I understood her clearly as I rounded that corner: I looked down and saw perhaps 2,000 feet of space below me. Yikes!
Once we cleared Wall Street, the rest of the climb to the summit was wide open and in the sun. The Climbers Guide to the Teton Range mentions "There are so many variations available on this ridge that it is possible to make two or three ascents and scarcely touch the same rock twice." I had a hard time grasping this concept until we started this part of the ascent. The rock is quite wide and allows multiple groups to spread out and climb where they want to. At this point, we put on our climbing shoes and got to work. We split into two groups of two and started simul-climbing. While traditionally one person climbs and the other partner belays (controls the rope being fed out to the partner), we would wait until a piece or two of protection was between us and then began climbing. This allowed us to move much faster than most groups, and we quickly passed 16 people on our attack on the summit.
Everyone was delighted to be climbing in such wonderful weather. Indeed, I knew some friends who had summited Grand Teton the previous weekend in blizzard like conditions. They could hardly see 100 feet in front of them and had to brave driving winds. In contrast, we could not have asked for more perfect conditions. And the climbing was lots of fun. Not too difficult that you weren't sure if you were going to make it, but not too easy that you didn't have to pay attention to what you are doing. I think our guide book described it as "Golden Rock," and I couldn't agree more. We summited the 13,770 foot peak around noon. No clouds in the sky and barely any wind meant there was no hurry to get off the summit. We spent about a half hour on top soaking in the views and snapping photos. The views on the top were spectacular and a great reward for such hard work.
Unfortunately, we were all out of water for the descent, and I got a pretty bad case of the "umbles." That is: stumbles, mumbles and grumbles. We spent about 3 hours walking down talus fields and rappelling (lowering yourself on a rope). I had to be careful about each step, knowing that my fatigue made me more prone to stumbling or rolling my ankle. Thankfully, however, we all made it back to the saddle without incident. We did end up coming down a different drainage than we planned on, an error that cost us about an hours time. We made it back to camp around 3 p.m., where we took about an hour to relax, rehydrate and re-pack.
Nick's girlfriend Allison met us at the Saddle and was nice enough to help carry some our our gear down. We spent the next four and a half hours trudging down the mountain. We made it to our cars around 8:30 p.m. utterly exhausted, but all proud of our accomplishment. Looking back, I think I would recommend one of two ways: one long day with a small day pack, or doing it in three days with a heavy pack: one day to the saddle, one day climbing to the peak and back to the saddle, and one day out. If you have a guide service, that, of course, takes away having to carry a heavy pack and knowledge of the route. Any way you look at it though, it is a long climb, but certainly manageable and definitely worth it.
