Grand Teton

Grand Teton

Current mood:pleased

Trip Report – Grand Teton - September 4, 2005 – Owen Spaulding Route – Price and Summers.

We really need to make a template for trip reports, I think that would make it a lot easier to put them together and make sure that I remember all of the details from the trip. Oh well.

I drove up to Rexburg from Utah on Thursday night with the expectation of going rock climbing at elephant rock on Friday, but the next day, Summers was stuck harvesting grain, so I went over to the farm and helped out for a little while. I went into Rexburg to get some supplies, but unfortunately, the local climbing shop is pretty much shut down. I’d estimate that they had about two feet of webbing, eight carabineers, and one harness. Still open, but not really helpful. (Someone go start a good climbing shop in Rexburg.)

We waited for my little sister to get off of work until about 6:30 and then drove up toJackson. She works at the 49er Inn and lives just around the corner. There were a couple empty beds in a room in the basement of her place, so Summers and I decided to crash there. We met some of her friends, and were joking around with them. We actually got to bed around 11:00 p.m. Then suddenly, around midnight, this crazy bitch flung the door open and started swearing at us and telling us to get out of her house because we called her friends assholes. In my utter confusion, I started swearing back, but Summers had enough sense to just tell her we would leave. So we left, leaving a burning hot trail of curses on our way out.

We hadn’t anticipated camping anywhere, so we just drove to the Lupine Meadows parking lot and leaned the seats in the truck as far back as they would go. I slept horribly until I was woken up at 5:00 by some amazing thunder. Thunder is bad news when you’re climbing in the Tetons. The storm had mostly passed by 5:30 so we decided to at least start up the trail and see how things went.

Three miles up the trail we had passed 4 groups coming down that had camped in the meadows or started much earlier than us. The last group told us that the lightning was horrible up on top. The combination of the bad reports, the questionable weather and our horrible nights sleep made us decide to go back and attempt it the next day. That’s what we did.

That night (Saturday) we got a room at the 49er. Good idea. We left the hotel just after 4:00 in the morning. In spite of a little sprinkling, we started up the trail at about 4:50. The sun was just rising when we reached the Platform. It was beautiful.

 

There were not too many people camped in the Meadows. I figured there would be more, but we continued on after filling up our water bottles and having a quick bite to eat. The trail gets a lot steeper after the Meadows, but we really didn’t slow down too much. We passed one group that told us they had started from the parking lot at 2:00 a.m. They were right where the big white rope is.

We got to the lower saddle at about 9:30 where we rested for a few minutes and I drank my first Red Bull ever. For some reason I always envisioned the liquid being red. It was gross and I don’t usually like caffeine, but it sure gave me a nice shot of energy. I practically ran up the trail and scramble to the upper saddle. The view from the lower saddle is pretty amazing. You can see so much of the Teton Range and all of the surrounding valleys. The wind blows really hard up there and it can be a little cold. We passed another group that had left the parking lot at 2:00 a.m.

So like I said, I pretty much ran up the trail to the upper saddle. I don’t even really remember it. I was flying high. At the upper saddle we found one group who was turning back. The storm that dropped rain in the valley had coated the Grand with ice and snow and the Owen Spaulding route is on the north western side. We made our way across belly roll, but we decided to straddle instead of belly rolling. I don’t know if I have a picture of that, but I have some video.

The double chimney was where we first encountered a group that we couldn’t pass, or wasn’t turning back. There were actually two groups navigating the route and they were both extremely slow. When you’re on the mountain though, you have to be courteous, and they were actually really cool. We just had to wait 45 minutes in the shade, sitting on snow for them to make it up. Finally they did and Summers and I, roped together with a 40’ piece of 9/16” webbing started up. One person would belay while the other climbed. It was actually fairly difficult with all of the ice and snow. It made it really slick. It’s supposed to be only a 5.3 climb, and I imagine it would be quite easy if it was dry. There is another pitch that seemed about the same in difficulty to me just after that first one. Then we were on the top at about 1:00 p.m. 

The top was . . . amazing Just look at the pictures. It was cold though, and we were hoping to hitch a ride on someone’s rope, so we headed down with the other groups that had summitted. The lines on the way down were even slower than on the way up. I guess they didn’t have quite the chill to kick them in the ass. The first rappel is easily down climbed, so we just did that. At the second rappel, a guided group had a rope set up and they offered a ride down on it. After that, it was just down climbing and hiking and hiking and hiking. The exit hike is always longer than the approach, or so it seems. We hiked pretty fast, but Summers rolled his ankle a couple times and that slowed us down. We finally reached the parking lot at 6:50. Fourteen hours exactly.

We picked up a trailmate named Tanya and went to Dornans for pizza. Dropped off Tanya in Wilson and drove home. That’s it. The end of the innocence. I have now climbed the South Teton, the Middle Teton, the Grand Teton, and Tewinot.

The end.