Grand Teton National Park (Aug. 29-30, 2008)

This summer I had decided it was time to plug that gaping hole in my alpine resume by climbing one of the classic routes on the Grand Teton.  Plans earlier in the summer fell through, so we decided we would do it over the Labour Day long weekend.  Roanne's sister Meredith was visiting for the weekend, so it would be a great reunion activity for the Master of Grit (me) and the Ladies of Grit (Ro and Mer) since we hadn't climbed together in a while.  As the weekend neared, we were disheartened by forecasts of thunderstorms, however, Saturday still looked clear so it would be possible to still do the climb as long as we did it in one day on Saturday (the storm system was forecast to move in on Sunday).  The peak is typically done over two days, as it has a substantial approach that can be done on the first day, then camp overnight and finish the climb on the second day.  This would have been a nice way to do it, but faced with the reality of the weather situation and the dire need to climb the Grand Teton, we decided to pull the trigger and get 'er done in one day.

Mer arrived Friday morning and in the afternoon we packed out bags and headed out the door around 4:15.  We hit some holiday traffic leaving Salt Lake City, due to some construction on I-15, but after about an hour we were clear of that and heading north towards Logan.  We decided to stop in Logan for some food, and after much debate we settled on the Golden Corral Buffet restaurant.  This was an interesting experience in a quintessentially American restaurant, and we left feeling quite full and a little sick.  But no matter, we now had plenty of calories in our systems for the next days activities.  We rolled on north towards Jackson, and after a minor route finding fiasco we arrived in Jackson around 12:30am.  This was considerably later than we had planned, so we headed straight for the Lupine Meadows trailhead, thinking that we would get a few hours of sleep before starting off.  Mer and Ro bedded down in the back of the truck while I pitched my thermarest on the ground behind the truck and we tried our best to sleep.  However, soon after we had settled down, cars started rolling in to the trailhead full of climbers setting off on the approach.  A car would arrive, the climbers would spend a few minutes slamming doors and yelling at each other, and then they would head off down the trail.  There would then be a few minutes of silence before the next car rolled in and the process repeated.  This continued for a few hours, and none of us slept at all, until finally at 3:30am we decided to stop pretending to sleep and get up and head out.  We were all a little bleary eyed from not sleeping at all, here are Ro and Mer rousing themselves and contemplating the day ahead:

We set off down the trail with our headlamps, and didn't have any trouble finding our way since it was very well traveled and well sign posted.  There were plenty of other climbers out, and we could see headlamps on the switchbacks above.  Here is a shot of a tired looking Roanne swinging her water bottle while Mer adjusts her shoes:

As we continued, the stars disappeared and the sky slowly started to brighten, and the peaks around us began to come into view.  The clouds made for a spectacular sunrise that we witnessed from the mouth of Garnet Canyon:

As we continued up, the warm morning light illuminated some of the nearby peaks on the approach:

We moved through the meadows and continued up to the Moraine, here is a shot of Mer hiking with the Middle Teton and Middle Teton Glacier in the background, and Roanne and Mer moving up the Moraine:

From the Moraine, we continued on up to the Lower Saddle, which is the highest backcountry camping area and the spot where most of the climbs start from.  Here are two shots of the approach to the saddle, the first with Roanne and Mer moving towards the Lower Saddle on the horizon, and the second looking back down on the final approach to the Saddle with the Middle Teton Glacier in the background:

And here is a shot of Mer cresting the Saddle, looking back down towards the plains below:

We arrived at the Lower Saddle around 8:30am, 4.5 hours after starting out.  The Lower Saddle is at 11,650 feet, about 4900 feet higher than our starting point of 6,750 feet, so we were making some good progress.  We stashed some of our extra water for the way down (since we would descend back to the Lower Saddle), took a break to eat some food, and then at 9:00am we headed up towards our intended route, the Upper Exum Ridge.  After a bit of a route finding snafu and some scrambling and down climbing, the first pitch of climbing came into view, the Wall Street ledge which traverses out to join the Exum Ridge.  Here is a shot of Mer on the approach, climbing through one of the holes that we had to negotiate:

Here are some shots of Roanne and Mer ascending the final loose gully before Wall Street:

The Wall Street pitch was fun, with just one exposed move at the end that we roped up for.  It was super windy after coming around the corner onto the Exum Ridge, but as we proceeded up the Golden Staircase the wind died down.  From here we continued up the route, soloing/scrambling up most of the route since it was pretty easy.  Here is a shot of Roanne and Mer making their way up the 'Wind Tunnel' section:

Here is a shot of Mer and myself posing while we waited behind another group on the route:

And here is another of me doing my best terminator impression, trying to inspire confidence in the Ladies of Grit with my steely demeanor, and one of Roanne having a water break:

We continued on up, belaying here and there when it got too sketchy to scramble, and putting on our climbing shoes for the Friction Pitch, which is the 5.4 crux of the route.  All the other parts of the route were pretty straightforward and we just climbed them in our approach shoes.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and aside from the odd windy section it was warm and pleasant for the climbing.  Finally we approached the top, here are Rosie and Mer on the final steps:

And finally, great success!  We stood on the 13,770 foot summit just before 3:00pm.  Here are some shots of reactions from various members of our party, with Roanne showing signs of happiness in the first picture, and Mer showing signs of despondence in the second picture, perhaps thinking of the long descent that lay ahead?

Here is a shot of the victorious Team Grit, as well as the summit marker for proof of our achievement:

We then headed down the mountain, descending the easier Owen-Spalding route.  After two rappels and a long descent down a loose gully, we found ourselves back on the lower saddle at 5:45pm, where we retrieved our water stash, fueled up, and then continued on down.  Here is a shot of Ro and Mer descending the fixed rope section below the Lower Saddle:

We continued down, with the hike seeming much longer than it did on the way up.  At one point this strange Ukrainian guy caught up to us and when we offered for him to pass, he refused and said he wanted to walk with us.  As we walked, he explained that he had come up with 4 friends who were going to climb the Grand Teton, but he had waited on the Saddle since he was too scared to climb, then he had fallen asleep, and now he didn't know where his friends were.  He wore a 'Police' hat and had a bandana over his mouth like a bandito, which added to his weirdness.  He walked behind for a while, but then we made him walk in front since he was making Mer nervous.  Finally we were passed by some other faster people descending, and just as I was hoping they would 'adopt' our Ukrainian friend, he announced that we were too slow and he sped off after them.  Great success!  This reminded me a bit of when I was climbing in the Squamish boulders with Fras and we had to babysit Ron.  Who's got Ron?  As this was going on, it was slowly becoming dark, and soon we switched our headlamps on and were walking in complete darkness.  At this point I started feeling a bit nauseous, partly from the long day and partly from not sleeping the night before.  We finally arrived back at the car at 10:30pm, and found our Ukrainian friend waiting for us, announcing that he had still not found his friends.  We offered him a ride into town but he refused, saying that he had to wait for his friends.  We felt bad leaving him there, as it would suck to stand around in a parking lot all night, but we weren't in great shape to be offering assistance so we drove off to go find a well-deserved hotel room in Jackson.  As we started driving, Roanne suddenly started to feel sick and we had to pull over to the side of the road for her to get out and make a pukie.  As we were waiting for her to feel better a ranger pulled up with flashing lights and asked us if we were okay.  We told him we were fine, but told him to go help the stranded Ukrainian in the Lupine Meadows parking lot.  He sped off to do that, and Roanne was soon feeling better so we continued on into Jackson.  Unfortunately, this was the night of the Lotoja bike race (Logan to Jackson) that finished in Jackson, so all of the hotel rooms were fully booked.  The only thing we could find was a Deluxe Cabin at the Rustic Inn for $280/night.  This was a little more luxury than we needed, but at this point we probably would have sold our souls for a bed to sleep in, so we took this and settled in for a well-deserved night's sleep.

The next morning dawned with mostly clear skies, and we felt 100% better after our nights sleep, so we headed back into the park to do some sightseeing.  We stopped at the Visitor center where we had a good view of the Teton range, with the Grand Teton that we had climbed the day before being the highest peak in the picture:

We then continued on to Jenny Lake, where we waded around for a bit, had a rock throwing contest, and had our photo taken:

As we were at the lake, the predicted weather system started to move in:

From here we continued on north before looping back down towards Jackson and stopping at the snake river overlook.  By now the storm was in full swing over the Tetons, and we were happy to not be up on the peak where we had been the day prior:

Here is a shot of the snake river, with the tetons obscured by the rain and mist in the background:

We then headed back into Jackson where we walked around the town a bit, witnessing various sights such as the archways built from Elk antlers before having dinner at the Wort Hotel and commencing the long drive in the rain back to Salt Lake City.