Back from Grand Teton!

Just to let you all know, we're back safe and sound from the summit of the Grand Teton today. Not sure why the geological marker at the summit doesn't include the elevation, but to be sure, I snapped a shot of my altimeter... The summit is at 13,770 feet above sea-level.

The climb and summit were absolutely epic -- we'll have a full report with pictures tomorrow...

Off to climb the Grand Teton tomorrow...

This morning, we got our back country permits to climb the Grand Teton on Thursday. Our packs are packed and ready to go. We plan to spend three days and two nights out there, so our packs are a little on the big side. I'm sure a few pictures of these babies will make it into the full trip report. Anyway, our intention is to hike into basecamp at the the glacial moraine camp around 11,000 feet on the first day. We'll set camp and plan a full summit of the Grand Teton on Friday via the Owen-Spalding/Owen Chimney route, a grade II, 5.5 alpine climb. On the third day, assuming we have some energy left, we may climb the Tepee Pillar, a four pitch 5.4 alpine climb at 12,000 feet. Check it out -- it's begging to be climbed! Hey, we're already up there, right?

So, we'll be out of touch for a few days, but expect an update over the weekend. (That is, unless we can provide a live update from the mountain via cell phone...)

Climb #3: Teewinot Mountain

One of the most unmistakable mountains in the Tetons is Teewinot mountain. It's sharp summit is the kind of summit most climbers dream of reaching and they're generally fairly difficult to attain. Luckily, the East Face of Teewinot is a class 4 route that can be difficult on the endurance side, but it's not as technically demanding as it may appear. The entire route is about 10 miles round-trip and gains 5600 vertical feet, more than a vertical mile straight up!

We got a pretty decent alpine start, leaving for the national park at 530am. We were shocked to see storm clouds over the peaks as we drove in! Sure enough, within 15 minutes, it was raining pretty hard, and we were sure that all hope for climbing Teewinot was lost. Without anything else to do at that early hour, we drove to the trailhead and watched the sunrise. We were lucky enough to see several herds of Elk grazing early in the morning as the rain fell.

As the sun came up, the storm clouds had blown past the mountains and there were clear skies beyond! We were in luck because it appeared to be an isolated morning squall.

By 6:40am, we shouldered our packs and began the approach to the mountain. Man, was this trail STEEP! Michelle referred to it as StairMaster on steroids, and we both kept uttering the word "relentless" as we ascended the lower slopes. I generally consider a 1000ft gain per mile to be a pretty steep slope, but this was well beyond that. The crisp morning air and the now glowing sunlight kept us moving up the hill.

Although we were making incredible time with our sizable packs (we brought a rope and a small climbing rack as a precaution), we were passed by a few REALLY fit groups, including a park ranger who appeared to be sprinting up the mountain. Us? We were going to enjoy the route at our own pace.

After another hour or so, we reached the start of the actual climb near the base of the "Idol" and the "Worshiper" rock formations shown in the picture (click the picture to see them in their full glory -- Idol is the taller one, Worshiper is the shorter one.) We stopped to put on our helmets, have a quick bite to eat and to get out our ice axes. It was time to climb!

The first part of the climb was the steep snow slope, which was airy and exposed, but also easy and fun. We began to cross paths with other people on the route near the snow portion, and we were able to get some valuable weather information from people coming down from the summit. The biggest issue with weather on this mountain is that you can't see storms coming in from the west, because you're climbing the EAST face. Once the weather in upon you, often times it's too late, and quickly down climbing wet rock is no fun.

Anyway, after the steep snow section, there was a lot of class 3 climbing leading up to the hardest part of the route, about 300 vertical feet of class 4 rock climbing. We did get a bit off route and had to rope up for a short pitch to get back on route, but all in all, this section was fun and exciting.

It is interesting -- this climb really brought together all of the different climbing techniques that Michelle has learned over the years, into a single climb. From carrying a heavy pack, to exposed alpine scrambling and rock climbing, to climbing steep snow with an axe, as well as altitude -- this one had a bit of it all.

After the hardest part of the route, another 300 vertical feet of class 3 climbing led to an absolutely stunning summit. To put this in context, the true summit was tiny and only had room for one person -- it was truly one of the sharpest summits I've climbed and the view was breathtaking. You could see the entire range with only Grand Teton appearing to be higher than Teewinot.

It was a long, hard day with a brutal uphill climb and an equally brutal descent. Steep slopes like this one can lead to knee replacement later in life -- seriously. Anyway, we took our time on the way down and it wound up being another full 12 hour day in the mountains. Thank goodness there was a beer waiting for us in the Jeep, we certainly deserved it after today.

You can see the rest of our pictures from this fantastic climb here.

Updated Reading

Just finished reading "Tales of a Female Nomad". It was a great book, I highly recommend it. Really enjoyed reading it on vacation because it gives you the time to really enjoy it and reflect on it.

Next on the list is "Monique and the Mango Rains". Rated as one of the top 10 narrative travel books.

Dinner with New Friends

While we were enjoying drinks at the Couloir Bar, we met Hank and Kathy. Chris and I we were getting ready to order "round number two"; Chris had already decided on another new IPA and I was debating (as always) about which new wine to try. Luckily, before I could decide, Hank turned around from the table in front of us and offered to share their bottle of wine!

We talked with Hank and Kathy for the rest of the afternoon. Hank has lived in Jackson since 1988 and Kathy has lived there for three years. We exchanged stories about climbing, biking, hiking, Jackson, etc, and had a great time. Chris and I left and took the gondola down. We realized we left without giving them our contact info (because they said Seattle was on their list of places to visit). So we waited for them, gave them our contact info and then they invited us over to Hank's home for dinner.

We arrived at 7pm and to a wonderful dinner prepared by Travis, his cook. Before dinner we headed over to the two made made trout ponds and fed them. Each pond is stocked with 150 trout each year because many get eaten by Osprey (we actually saw the Osprey circling the pond two times during dinner looking for it's next victim.)

Tonight was bean bowl night! This was the most perfect "Michelle meal" if I had planned it myself! The meal was basically a bean burrito, minus the burrito. It worked like this: Get a big bowl, layer in fresh romaine lettuce, freshly cooked brown rice, perfectly prepared azuki beans, and then layer on top any of the following: red onions, corn (freshly grilled and then cut from the cob), tomatoes, salsa, radishes, avocado, sour cream and then crush corn chips crushed on top of your masterpiece or put them in a bowl on the side. All this was topped off with freshly made hot corn muffins!!!!

Besides the wonderful food, we enjoyed dinner outside on the patio with Hank, Kathy, Nicole (Travis' wife) and Carl. We shared more stories and great conversation.

Dessert was fresh pomegranates with goat milk yogart. Some of us had two desserts! The second dessert was ice cream with chocolate sauce from Maine (I think). Then we had we had a wonderful Port (can't recall the name) while sitting around the heat lamp and gazing at the stars.

We headed home around 10pm after a partial tour of his house. Every room in the house (that we saw) had an amazing view of the Grand Tetons! Unbelievable!

All in all, a great dinner with our new friends.

Teton Village: Gondola and Vino

After the bust at the Antique and Art show, we took the gondola up to the Couloir Restaurant and Bar to have an afternoon cocktail on their sunny outdoor deck. At 9,095 feet, it is a great place to check out the incredible alpine views of the ski mountain.

Teewinot Mountain

That's Michelle pointing to the summit of Teewinot Mountain that we plan on climbing tomorrow. It's a more difficult, class 4 climb and one of the best peaks in the Teton range. We're looking forward to a long, hard day. Should be back in the late evening -- we'll post an update as soon as we can, probably the next morning. Wish us luck!

Teton Village

Friday was another great day in Jackson...sunny and 80 degrees! We finally moved into our room where we will be staying for the next two weeks! What a great feeling it is to be settled. We are staying at the Ranch Inn. A friendly little affordable Inn in the heart of Jackson.

After getting settled, we took a drive to Teton Village, about 25 minutes outside of Jackson to check out the Antique and Art show. We saw a few cool things, but otherwise the show was a bust.

Here are a few things we found interesting at the antique show:

Some of you may recognize that this wine rack is similar to our coffee table back in Seattle:

A unique old suitcase:

A fun vintage print of Mont Blanc:

Climb #2: Buck Mountain

On Wednesday, Aug. 20th, we set out to climb the East Face of Buck Mountain, one of the classic and major peaks in Grand Teton National Park.

We had read a lot and talked to a lot of people about the route , and it still seems like a big mystery -- no one seems to know exactly how to get there. We knew we were in for something strange when one of the park rangers told us that he has been lost up in this area several times himself. Despite what you might read, the fact is that there really is no defined trail on the way to this mountain. Even friendly locals that we met in town said they’ve been up there several times and haven’t even found the alpine lake at 10,000 feet, more or less the mountain itself! So, using all available information, we set out with a good map, compass and a good attitude.

Sure enough, we got lost. We spent nearly 2 hours on the lower slopes of the foothills trying to find a drainage system called Stewart’s Draw. It was fun navigating by map for a while, and we eventually did find it. Since there was no trail and we were bushwhacking, we did lose a lot of valuable time and energy (takes a LOT more energy bushwhacking than hiking on a trail).

Even with the challenging route, it was great to be so far out in the backcountry with no one else around. We did not see a single person all day, which meant that we had an incredible mountain on an incredible day, all to ourselves. We kept the bears away by talking a bunch and keeping our bear bell ringing. However, we were very fortunate to run into a bull elk high in the drainage system. We were as startled as he was and we locked eyes for about 5 seconds before he took off. There wasn't enough time to snap a picture, but he looked something like this. So, to put this in context, this nearly 800 pound elk with a HUGE 12 point rack was only about 30 yards away! Absolutely majestic.

Back on the route, we continued climbing along the drainage systems taking different forks and climbing ridges to get closer to Buck Mountain. Eventually, after hours and hours of bushwhacking and navigating, we finally made Timberline Lake, a major milestone on the route. Timberline Lake is literally at the base of the Buck Massif, signaling the start of the climb.

We stopped for a quick break and studied the mountain and east face route we intended to climb. It was intimidating to look at, for sure, but it's only a class 3 climb. At first, the east face route did not look climbable because the snow in a critical chute had melted away (see the picture), leaving a dangerous mix of bowling ball-sized rocks to possibily tumble down on us. Luckily, as we approached it, it looked much safer and doable than from further away.

We started up the initial chute and we had arrived in climbing heaven. It was immediately clear why this is one of the classic climbs in the Tetons. I knew we'd summit this peak unless something unforeseen got in our way. Within an hour, we had done 1200 feet of fantastic climbing on the east face. From class 3 climbing, to steep snow with ice axes, to easier grassy ledges, this was totally fun stuff.

However, at 11,200ft, we hit a roadblock -- a section of the route that was too unsafe to climb (the red "X" on the picture shows the spot). The route is supposed to cross a small "finger" of snow and then continue on rock after that. Unfortunately, the snow was dangerously thin and had a waterfall running underneath it. We tried to skirt the hazard on the rock above, but by this time in the day, the rock was very wet and slippery -- not good. It was also getting pretty late in the day (430pm), so we ultimately made the conservative call to turn back and call it a day. We had a long and hard descent ahead of us before sunset, so this was definitely the right call. We had warm clothes, headlamps and other necessities for getting out after dark, but we didn't really want to push our luck. We had a great time on the mountain so far, and we wanted to keep it that way.

To get a sense for our overall route, you can check it out in Google Maps here. Unfortunately, our GPS tracking unit lost connection to the satellite half way through the trip, so I don't have any cool 3D visualizations of the route like on Table Mountain.

All in all, it was a 12 hour day, with about nine miles of bushwhacking and navigating by map to reach the mountain. We did nearly 5000 vertical feet of climbing, and especially loved the last 1200ft of technical climbing on the east face. The journey was a good one, despite having missed the summit by only about 500 feet (so close!).

After the climb, we drove to the town of Jackson, where we checked into the Ranch Inn, where . we'll be staying for the rest of our trip. We had a quick beer and some chips, and called it a night -- we didn't even have the energy to eat dinner!

You can see the rest of our pictures from this climb here.

Bear Sighting

Driving through Tetons National Park we saw our first (and hopefully last) grizzly bear. As we were driving, we saw a huge traffic jam ahead of us. At first we thought it was road construction, but it was actually a "wild life traffic jam". There was a bear about 50 feet from the road eating his most recent kill.


Naturally we joined the circus and took a few photos...

Rest Day - Jenny Lake

Tuesday was our second rest day after the Table Mountain hike. We were both feeling pretty well rested (despite a not so good nights sleep in our bunks at the cabin) and our legs were needing a little stretch...so after a little breakfast at the Climbers Ranch we headed over to Jenny Lake for a nice leisurely hike to Inspiration Point.

The hike turned out to be 6 miles round trip! Not bad for our rest day :). The hike was nice, relatively flat with a little elevation gain to the top. Very pretty and lots of foot traffic - actually most of the hikers were Europeans. I am sad to report that most of the Americans were paying $5 to take the ferry to the other side of the lake so they only had to hike .1 mile to Hidden Falls and .4 miles to Inspiration Point.

You can see more of our pictures from this hike here.

Climb #1: Table Mountain

Ok, I'll try to describe these climbs in order so we don't lose you.

First up was Table Mountain on Sunday 8/17, the morning after we arrived in Driggs on the west side of Grand Teton National Park.

Since we were coming from sea-level and looking to slowly acclimatize to the altitude, we chose this "easy" class 2 climb on Table mountain to start.

The route is basically a long hike with a short section of "steeper" class 2 climbing near the summit at 11,106 feet. The route was 11.2 miles round trip with a vertical gain of 4206 feet. You can see the route in Google Maps here.

I had heard that people have seen both moose and bears on this route, but unfortunately we only saw other humans. Most of them were on the way down, and we were lucky enough to share the summit with only one other guy, a local named Mike. One of the best reasons to do this mountain is for the view from the summit -- you can see the Grand Teton very closely, as well as the rest of the entire Teton Range. It's a spectacular summit and a great way to start a three week trip in the national park.

We have been carrying a GPS tracking device that records our movements as we hike and climb, so we can retrace our steps and/or remember where we've been. Once back in town, I plotted our hike in Google Earth, so you can see a 3D image of the route we took. It also shows how close we were to the Grand Teton (click the picture to see a larger view).

Also, as some of you read earlier, we were able to post a note and picture from 11,000 feet using my cell phone -- pretty amazing what you can do with technology these days.

All in all, it was a pretty successful day in the mountains, but having just driven 13 hours over the past 2 days, we were pretty tired afterwards. A quick descent, and we were off to the Pines Guest House in Driggs for our second night.

As they say, climb high, sleep low. We'll keep doing a few of these easy class climbs to prepare for the other big climbs we have planned.

You can see more of our pictures from this day here.

Lunch at Planet Palate

Yum! This place is a gold mine of goodness!

We're in Jackson now...

We're on a rest day in Jackson, WY (also known as Jackson Hole) today after a big day yesterday. Although we're still pretty tired right now, we're pulling together the pictures and details from Buck Mountain and will put a post up later in the day...

Quick update...

We've been staying at a place called the "Climber's Ranch" inside the national park, and which is operated by the American Alpine Club (yes, we are card carrying members!). It's literally $8/night and filled with lots of good-hearted, like-minded folks.

Today was a rest day, and we still managed to kick out a 6 mile hike around Jenny Lake. We'll post some pics later on.

Tomorrow is a big day, however. At 7am, we start the all-day climb of the east face of Buck Mountain. For those who care, it's a class 3 climb to about 11,938 feet. We should have some great pics from this one, and we'll post a full recap when we get a proper internet connection. (yep, typing this on my phone!).

Vacation reading...

Everyone needs a little vacation reading... Here is what Michelle and I are reading on this trip (at least to start):

Michelle:
Tales of a Female Nomad, Rita Gelman










Mountain Madness, Robert Birkby










Chris:
Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range, Jack Turner

A little background on this trip...

Many of you know that I spent a bunch of time in Colorado, but you probably don't know that for the entire three years I lived there, I was begging all of my climbing partners (and anyone else that would listen) to take a climbing trip to the Tetons. The Tetons are America's Alps and the birthplace of American mountaineering, so it's a very special place.

It all started when I bought this book back in 1996 and started reading about the classic climbs that were being done in the Tetons, and how climbers from the late 1800's up to the golden age of mountaineering in the 1960's were climbing these gigantic, steep mountains with primitive gear compared to today's standards. It was inspiring, and only a short 8 hour drive separated me from also climbing these classic routes.

Well, after climbing all over the country and a few places around the world, and 12 years after I bought the Tetons climbing guide book, I'm finally here. It's odd because most people tell you to find new dreams when you get married, but I'm incredibly lucky to have a wife who not only supports, but also shares these dreams.

Anyway, with that background, we're here for the next three weeks to take in all that the Teton mountain range has to offer. There is a lifetime of climbing here and three weeks seems so insignificant, but we'll take it! The basic plan for the next three weeks is the following:

• Week 1 - Do three day climbs of increasing difficulty so we can ease into it.
• Week 2 - Do two overnight trips with three climbs (2 technical ascents)
• Week 3 - Do one overnight trip (3 nights) with two technical climbs.

Of course, there will be lots of rest days in between that we'll spend exploring Driggs, Jackson and other nearby small towns. All in all, we have an incredible trip planned and we'll be sure to update you on where we are and what we're doing...

Live from the summit of Table Mountain!

We're at 11,106ft here and breathing a little heavier than at sea-level, that's for sure. And yes, that is the Grand Teton (mountain) behind us...we climb that next week...

We'll post a lot more pictures and more detail when we're back in Driggs.

Pulling into Driggs, ID...

Ok, tonight's destination is Driggs, a small town on the west side of the Tetons that serves as a jumping off ppint to our first aclimitization climb tomorrow - Table Mountain. It has spectacular views of the range and the Grand Teton, in particular. But, for tonight, it's the Pines Guest Haus.

Idaho?!

We're approaching the Tetons from the Idaho side, and I have to say, ID is an unbelievably flat state with nothing but fields as far as the eye can see. We're already considering returning home to the north through Montana. Sorry all of you Idahoians out there!

On Our Way!

After days of planning, we are finally on our way!! I don't know how it all fit in the jeep, but it did. Check it out.....

Three Days Until the TETONS!!!

WOW! I can't believe we leave in less than 3 days for Teton National Park! This is the one place Chris has always wanted to go since I met him back in 1999. Here is the route we will be taking. We plan on leaving Friday at 6pm! Can't wait!