Jackson, Wyoming & The Grand Teton
Danny and I left the hungover comforts of the brewery early in the morning to avoid the afternoon heat in hopes of making the drive with our shirts on this time. When we first purchased Bam Bam, we were unaware of how much harder (and hotter) the engine ran while climbing hills that would be unnoticeable in a regular car. Though we left before the heat set in, the climb heated the engine so much it managed to make the cabin smoke, forcing Danny and I to find the recently purchased fire extinguisher and pray we weren’t about to just total our engine with the fun foam. I got used to the dashboard being lit up like a Christmas tree and often assumed it to be that all of our onboard sensors were broken, so I was surprised the ambulance wasn’t bluffing this time when a light wasn’t just on but actually flashing at me.
As we pulled over and used our mechanically uneducated eyes to inspect the smoking engine, we did what any reasonable young adult would do while driving in the middle of nowhere: close the hood and pretend it didn’t happen. As it turned out, the smoke billowing from the engine had turned out to be a melting glow plug relay, which we would only discover down the line when the truck became incapable of starting… A melted glow plug relay means, to start the engine, cranking your key no longer works. Instead, your buddy (not you, because it would be dangerous) needs to shove his arm in the engine with a screwdriver and touch the terminal head of the relay with the metal end of the screwdriver to cause it to arc. This bypasses the relay and allows the engine to crank. Not only is this quite dangerous and causes a large number of sparks, but when you do it shirtless in the middle of nowhere it is the definition of sick cowboy shit.
We carried on with our arduous and again shirtless climb up the canyon hill to be finally met with relief that our steepest climb was over and we could enjoy a fairly mellow, albeit ear ringingly loud cruise down to Jackson Hole for Danny’s flight out. Arriving in Jackson meant a goodbye to my temporary roommate but also a reunion with some of my best friends from college.
We spent the first few days in Jackson reconnecting and doing very little climbing. We looked at each other’s vans, went on tandem bike rides, and hiked with a dog that has a high propensity for getting cliffed out. We enjoyed Labor Day weekend shenanigans on the lake, Kirill and I practiced setting up our porta-ledge for El Capitan (the hanging cot we will sleep on), and I cooked a rack of lamb so poorly it merits a PETA notice.
Notably, Claire and I got to demonstrate our cycling prowess when we teamed up on a tandem and could not settle on an easy going pace since the adults all decided to wear their speed suits. My helmet says HotWheels after all...
Visiting Jackson always means, for Kirill and I, an attempt at the Grand Teton. Our last attempt several years ago ended just shy of the summit with a spontaneous hail storm, bleeding heels, and exhaustion that made for some pretty neat, drug-free hallucinations on the way down. Back then I thought Vans would be a suitable choice of footwear for such an adventure. I like to pretend I’ve matured since then.
For anyone unfamiliar with climbing in the Tetons, it is quintessential alpine climbing. Most (read: wise) climbers opt to spend three or four days for their climbing objectives in the Tetons. Hiking in on the first day, climbing the second day, and hiking out on the third, sometimes with a buffer day for the unpredictable weather. This is likely time well spent to acclimatize to the elevation and obtain adequate rest for the most consequential part, the climbing. For us, we prefer a “light and fast strategy” (read: less wise), doing the whole thing in a single day. At around 10,000ft of elevation gain and 17 miles round trip, Kirill and I don’t exactly look like the usual suspects for such enduro-challenges. Nonetheless, we just prefer to do it in a single push, car-to-car, sans the heavy camping nonsense. We set our eyes on the Full Exum route, one that would include the section we failed last time with additional, harder climbing required beneath where we bailed last time. Naturally, for such an intense and demanding day, I carried with me 1.5 L of water, a handful of bars, and an almost fully charged headlamp (yes it died).
The Grand Teton is the highest peak in the park at 13,775’ (4,200 m) and is home to many classic American alpine climbs. It is long uncontested in its place in the list of 50 Classic Climbs of North America, with sister routes such as the Cassin Ridge of Denali, and The Nose on El Capitan.
I spent a full day preparing for this year’s attempt, wearing a bathrobe, teaching Claire how to play chess, and slowly reducing pieces from our safety rack until it felt just shy of unreasonable (light is fast and fast is… safe?).
High-elevation technical climbing, coupled with difficult and dangerous approaches in the dark, a very light alpine rack, and blood sugar low enough to make Martha Stewart question her purpose here on Earth probably sounds like not a lot of fun. Guess what, you’re completely correct, it is an absolute suffer-fest and every year we wonder why we’re doing it again.
Doing the GIAD (Grand in a day) usually means leaving the warm comforts of our friend’s house at 1:00 am. An ideal team would head to bed at maybe 3:00 or 4:00 pm to get adequate rest. Instead, for not much necessity, Kirill and I just stayed awake and actually watched Batman: The Dark Knight right before leaving opposed to obtaining precious shut-eye. We had both seen the movie many times so I’m not entirely sure why the judgement call came as it did… So, the clock started with already ~18 hours on it. Worth it.
Kirill and I set off on the trailhead at exactly 2:02 am and scrambled our way through the lower meadows in a darkness that is both hard to comprehend and describe. It’s a darkness that shows you how remote your objective is and makes you wish you reconsidered bear spray. The 4.5-hour approach to the base of the mountain went quickly and we were rewarded with the awe of a desolate sunrise in the Tetons. We clocked our time at the base of the route at exactly 7:00 am, after our accidental descent down the “death gully” (oops, but we didn’t die) when neither of us did our homework on how to actually get to the climb in question.
Kirill and I made fairly quick work swinging leads (taking turns) of the bottom 6 pitches of the route, these 6 pitches alone comprise the "Lower Exum” which goes at grade III 5.7. While 5.7 is a very pedestrian grade, the first ascent (FA) was done in 1936 by Jack Durrance and Kenneth Henderson (first ascensionists), back when 5.0 was the beginning of the actual climbing difficulty, and 5.9 was the hardest grade in the world, defined by the Yosemite-decimal system (YDS). By modern standards by no means does the route go at 5.7, but because of its status, no one would dare question the first ascensionists’ opinions. Welcome to alpine climbing, where the system designed to tell you how hard things are and what to expect is kinda useless.
For those curious about what it is like to lead one of these pitches, below is an uncensored (lots of swearing) first-person view of what it is like to climb pitch 5, The Black Face, the crux of the route.
Fortunately, Kirill and I made good time for the bottom half of the route, reaching Wall Street at 1:10 PM, the halfway point and the point at which the major difficulties subside and we return to the route we had been on three years prior, the Upper Exum. From this point forward, Kirill and I would employ a technique called “simul-climbing” where we are both climbing at the same time with about half of a rope length (35 m) between us. This allows us to travel quickly through easier terrain while at least having two pieces of protection between us at all times. While this allows for faster ascents, it also carries with it an added risk that if one of us were to fall, we would take the other down with us, with the hope that one of our pieces would arrest the two-person fall. This allowed us to finish the upper 6 pitches of the climb in 1 hour and 56 minutes (1:56), passing several parties along the way who chose to “pitch out” the terrain as we did earlier.
After the final 6 pitches of the Upper Exum, Kirill and I had one final obstacle before us before the summit, The Boulder Problem in the Sky. We made quick, unroped work (whoops) of this final section and summited at 4:25 pm. We celebrated briefly with a beer at the summit that hit us far harder than we were expecting and we began our slightly tipsy trot downwards toward the first rappel station, which, unsurprisingly, we couldn't find in our IPA-induced haze. Shiny protrusions of rock would look like bolted stations all across the face. Mixing a celebratory beer with over 40 hours on the clock was the perfect example of celebrating too soon. Fortunately, after pacing back and forth on a sheer 6,000 ft ridge for half an hour, the station revealed itself to us and we began our way down.
At this point in the day, Kirill and I are beyond exhausted and the adrenaline wears off as the main difficulties of the objective have been surpassed. During our summit push, our friend Claire, who served as our base camp of operations to initiate a rescue in case we didn’t come down by a pre-determined time, decided to hike up to the saddle of the Grand Teton, a 6-7 hour hike all alone. Claire made it to the saddle and spotted us just as we were reaching the summit and radioed up to us to let us know she brought cookies and would help guide us down the talus field during what would be the most extensive part of our exhaustion, where hallucinations set in, muscle cramps are unavoidable, and route finding in the dark can lead to serious consequence moments. Having Claire there to shepherd us down would ease the anxiety and mitigate the remaining danger when we were most prone to make mistakes (get-home-itis, most mountaineering accidents happen on the way down, not up). Claire was kind enough to greet us at the saddle with cookies she had just picked up from a nice baker in downtown Jackson. I thanked her by biting into it and immediately projectile vomiting as my body rejected it.
The video below shows Claire’s attempt to capture our descent from the summit, although she claims she could see us and was disgruntled that I was wearing gray (even though I was wearing red on the descent). I think Claire was looking at some rocks and UHC declined to cover her glasses this year.
We made it back to the safety of our car at 12:27 am, nearly 24 hours since we started without sleep from the previous day. Too tired to celebrate, we drove back in near silence slapping each other to maintain our alertness and ensure we at least made it to the parking lot of the house before completely crashing.
After a 16-hour slumber, we found ourselves back on the road, excited for our next adventure to Yosemite.
