Climb #4: The Grand Teton

This was one of the big mountains that we were looking forward to climbing on this trip -- The Grand Teton. At 13,770 feet, it's the tallest peak in the national park.

We planned on climbing the historic first ascent route that was first climbed in 1898 -- a very bold climb at that time. The Owen-Spalding Chimney route, is a grade II, 5.4 alpine rock climb at over 13,000 feet.Our plan was to do it in two days, with a hike into base camp on the first day and the summit day being the second day.

The hike into camp was a pretty hard six-hour slog with our 70+ pound packs. It was about 5 miles and nearly 4000 vertical feet to the glacial moraine camp at 10,550 feet. After seeing a few guided climbing groups, where each person was carrying a small 15 pound pack, we were really glad to see that there were others like us who had the burden of bringing all of our own gear up the mountain. We met two great couples on the climb (Terry/Tom from Boston and Gord/Magdalena from Vancouver) who were both incidentally from cities at sea-level, and were also "panting" up the slope with big packs. We collectively dubbed ourselves "team sea-level" to celebrate the fact that we "might be" more susceptible to the high altitude than some of the other climbers.

To give you an idea of the terrain, here is an overview of our route, with the approach hike shown in blue, the location of the camp and the technical climbing portion of the ascent shown in red. You can click on the markers or generally interact with the map to see more detail.


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Once at camp, we quickly put up the tent and prepared to make dinner. As soon as I took out my stove, I realized that I made a HUGE mistake, and one that could easily have jeopardized our bid for the summit. I brought a stove and a large fuel canister, but somehow, I forgot to bring the fuel pump. The pump is usually connected to the fuel canister, but not this time. Without it, we could not use the stove, which meant no hot meals, no hot beverages, and most importantly, no drinking water for the climb tomorrow. DAMN.

Luckily, our camp neighbors Gord and Magdalena brought THREE fuel canisters for only one night of camping. Overkill to say the least, but by the grace of god, they literally saved our summit bid with those extra fuel canisters. Not only did they allow us to boil water for dinner and breakfast, but they were also kind enough to let us boil drinking water for the climb in the morning. We thanked them with a few swigs of local Jackson Hole potato vodka that Michelle brought with us on the climb :)

In the morning, summit day started at 4:30am with breakfast, and we began climbing at 5:30am by headlamp -- just before sunrise. Beginning in the dark is always easier because it goes by quickly and you can't really see far enough for your mind to play distance/time/altitude tricks on you.

We made the lower saddle by sunrise and began the steep class 3 & 4 climb to the upper saddle, where the real technical climbing would begin. That said, we put on our helmets on this part of the climb because the terrain was extremely steep and rockfall could have ended the climb in an instance. Also, it was COLD, and we were very glad to have brought our 700-fill down coats on the climb. We were the envy of other climbers on the route, no doubt.

Once at the upper saddle, we put on our harnesses and got out the rope for the first of what would be five short pitches of rock climbing above 13,000 feet. It was quite exciting -- there were two sections of the climb called the "belly roll" and the "crawl" that had moves with exposure to 2000+ foot drops below them. Click the links above to see videos of others doing these sections to get an appreciation for the exposure. (Note to Mom: we did this very, very safely and we managed the risk very, very conservatively.)

Unfortunately, there were several slower groups ahead of us on the route, and we would have to wait a fair bit throughout the day to complete the route. This is a classic mountaineering route on a classic American peak, after all. Some crowds come with the territory, and luckily we weren't doing the climb over the labor day weekend, where some hundred plus people were on the route!

We were climbing just below Terry and Tom from Boston, and wound up having a great summit day with them. To the left is a picture of Michelle and Terry at the "double chimney" portion of the climb. If they look cold it's because it was very cold and very windy. Since we were climbing the west face of the mountain, we didn't see the sun until we were nearly on the summit. After three more climbing pitches, and after nearly 9 hours on the route, we only had a short way to scramble to the summit, where Terry and Tom were kind enough to leave so we could have the summit to ourselves. Very nice of them!

The summit was absolutely stunning and somehow, there was no wind! It was interesting to look down on all of the mountains we had climbed over the past two weeks, and we felt like we were on top of the world because as far as the eye could see, we were higher than anything.

Unfortunately, we didn't stay at the summit too long because it was a long, long way down, and it was already after noon. After leaving the summit, we did two long rappels and then began the long down-climb back to the lower saddle, and ultimately to our camp for the night. All told, summit day was another 3000 vertical feet of climbing and nearly 6 miles round trip.

On the way down, we met a 66-year old gentleman named Gary from Utah, who had also just summited the mountain. His story is an inspirational one, so we'll write another post about him soon.

Back at camp, we were mentally drained, didn’t even have time to process the climb or the summit that we'd just reached. We had a quick dinner and went right to bed. We would need to recover to be able to make the 5-mile, 4000 vertical foot hike out in the morning. Sure, it was downhill, but we were still boulder hopping and negotiating steep, loose trails with 70+ pound packs, after a huge summit day. Our legs were tired and we needed to be careful.

Anyway, we slept very well and I was able to catch a spectacular sunrise while Michelle slept off her victory meal. We quickly packed camp and spent the next 4.5 hours coming down the mountain, where we ran into Terry and Tom again. When we finally arrived at our cars in the mid-afternoon, we invited them over for a celebratory beer. After all, we had both just safely summited one of American’s classic mountaineering routes.

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