Climbing at Vantage.

For the past two days, we've enjoyed the relative peace and quiet of eastern Washington. We camped at the Vantage climbing area and lazily climbed seven routes, read more of our vacation books, swam in the Columbia river, and marveled at amazing sunsets over the Columbia Gorge. Amazing and relaxing way to end a three week vacation.

You can see more of our pictures here.

We're home now and a little stunned by our re-entry into the civilized world. :)

W*rk tomorrow is going to be even more shocking...

Leaving Jackson...

With the unstable weather and cold temperatures, we're not able to do the larger climbs we wanted to do over our last few days in the Tetons, so we've decided to move along. That's one of the great things you can decide on a road trip since you have a car with you.

So, we'll head up through Yellowstone today and check out Old Faithful on our way through. We're also hoping to see some old friends on our way through Montana. Then, it's on to Washington, where we'll find warm temperatures and sun in the high desert.

Since our vacation is not over, we plan on spending the next few days climbing in the sun at Vantage, one of our local climbing haunts about 3 hours from Seattle. We'll camp there a few nights and be home by Saturday night. Nice way to end our three week vacation.

Mellow hike in Cascade Canyon

Well, instead of starting the canoe part of the Mount Moran trip, we opted for a hike through scenic Cascade Canyon on Tuesday. Although we could have made it a 10+ mile hike, we opted to turn back about 3 miles in, making the round trip a nice 6.4 miles overall.

We took the Jenny lake boat shuttle across the lake, so the approach to the canyon was very reasonable.

This canyon is known for it's views of the Grand Teton, Teewinot Mountain and Mount Owen. The scenery was incredible, and our GPS track shows how close we were to these mountains (near the top of the picture to the right). Cascade canyon is literally a mile straight down from the summits of these mountains, and having been on two of them, we surely know what it's like!

In addition to the great views of the mountains, we were lucky enough to see two moose -- a bull and a cow. The cow was out in the open near a stream, and the bull was thrashing through some high brush, so we only saw antlers.

We also saw, a few rock climbers high on a ridge, and a few nice, lush waterfalls coming down from the glaciers. All in all, a really great hike in the canyon.

More pictures here.

Climb #5: Mount Moran -- Cancelled.

Well, yesterday, we were supposed to embark on our final and most ambitious climb of the trip, the CMC Route on Mount Moran. It's an amazing route that begins with a 3-mile canoe across Leigh Lake, and then ascends a quick 4000 vertical feet into base camp. The summit day would have been a grueling 16-hour day, climbing one of the most striking faces in the Tetons. The face looks pretty terrifying from this angle, but it's really not that difficult of a climb. Other than the Grand Teton, both Michelle and I were really looking forward to closing out our trip with this one.

Unfortunately, the weather has turned on us. The mountains received their first snow yesterday, the temperature has been averaging around the freezing mark, and the wind has really, really kicked up at altitude. All in all, we had to make the hard call to cancel this climb for this trip. In addition, Michelle picked up a cold over the last few days, so that made the decision even easier.

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.


View Larger Map

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.

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...)

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