Grand Teton Free solo Summit

This past summer a friend and I took a major road trip out west as I mentioned in a previous blog. One of the biggest climbs we did on the trip and possibly even the biggest climb I've done so far in my climbing career, was the Grand Teton free solo summit. The best part about this climb was the fact that it was done without any planning and very spur-of-the-moment.

                  (Grand Teton Range from 10 miles away)                  

Grand Teton is a gigantic mountain in Jackson, Wyoming. Notorious for its incredibly jagged peaks and steep, incredibly exposed faces with very long pitches. The peak sits at 14,770 feet, an altitude tall enough to affect your breathing.

Originally, Gordon and I had planned to do a hike up to Amphitheatre lake on the main mountain. This was an incredibly intense hike starting at 6100 feet and ascending directly up the mountain for 6 miles, climbing a vertical total of 5000 feet up to this beautiful high alpine lake at an altitude of 11,300 feet. We set out for this hike not at all expecting to be doing a summit of grand Teton. Typically, to do a summit on Grand Teton, you need about 14 total hours in total, while some people even make it into an overnight venture. Well, we set out that morning around 10 am; way too late to do a summit in one day.

                            (The hike up the side of Teton)

            The hike up was very hard and straight uphill for a whole 6 miles. But once you get there, its totally worth it. The lake was crystal clear and overlooked miles upon miles of mountain ranges. Despite being in mid-July, the water was very frigid and unsuited for swimming as tempting as it was.

                          (Amphitheatre lake, quite literally a lake in the sky)

                          (Gordon enjoying a rock by the side of the lake. The summit is that jagged peak you see in the top right corner of the picture. Over 4000 feet higher than we were in this picture.)

By the time we had gotten to the lake, it was roughly 12.00 in the afternoon. From there we enjoyed a nice lunch where we amassed this one hell of a crazy idea. While looking at the summit, I said to Gordon “Wouldn’t it be crazy if we could summit that right now with no gear?”. Of course, we didn’t even take more than a minute to decide. It was set. We were going to attempt a free solo summit of grand teton while ill prepared, already exhausted, and with no real set plan.

                          So from there, we filled up our water bottles from the pristine lake, and we just started climbing, it began with a very steep hill that brings you up to the base of an ice field. We ascended about 1200’ above the lake which is where the dangers of doing this climb with no rope became very real.

                          (To put it into perspective how high above the lake we are in this photo, those boulders you see down there, are the size of 2-3 houses put together. From here we were 1200’ above the lake on a very steep hillside.)

                          From here we ran into a 400’ scramble up rock faces mixed with ice, certainly not the safest point. After this, we came to a large ice field which you can see below:

Little do we know at this point, that we are walking on a glacier with crevasses plummeting hundreds of feet into an abyss. This was most definitely sketchy as hell. But after traversing the less than settling glacier field, we were back onto rock, but this was no ordinary climb. At this point we met up on a route that I knew of that is called “exum ridge”. Exum ridge is a full on rock climb with incredible exposure at every point. That meaning, if you fell off the rock, the consequence was without a doubt, death.

                          Sadly, my phone died at this point due to the meticulous planning we had done before hand where we charged our phones. (Sarcasm).

But the rest of this climb after the exum ridge, we reached the summit 2 hours later of intensive climbing, insanely proud and exhausted that we had just summited Grand teton, a summit that most would never think of doing without a rope.

Getting back down was a horrendous nightmare and we likely would’ve either had to stay a night on the mountain in sub freezing temperatures, or fallen off the mountain in the dark had we not brought headlamps. The descent took 5 hours to get back down just to the lake which we ended up at 9 o clock that night. From there we had a 6 mile hike back down the mountain back to our car. We didn’t make it back until well after 1 am.

We did prove to ourselves that we are some crazy mother******s and we had one great story and memory because of it. I wouldn’t trade this day for anything.

Little do we know at this point, that we are walking on a glacier with crevasses plummeting hundreds of feet into an abyss. This was most definitely sketchy as hell. But after traversing the less than settling glacier field, we were back onto rock, but this was no ordinary climb. At this point we met up on a route that I knew of that is called “exum ridge”. Exum ridge is a full on rock climb with incredible exposure at every point. That meaning, if you fell off the rock, the consequence was without a doubt, death.

                          Sadly, my phone died at this point due to the meticulous planning we had done before hand where we charged our phones. (Sarcasm).

But the rest of this climb after the exum ridge, we reached the summit 2 hours later of intensive climbing, insanely proud and exhausted that we had just summited Grand teton, a summit that most would never think of doing without a rope.

Getting back down was a horrendous nightmare and we likely would’ve either had to stay a night on the mountain in sub freezing temperatures, or fallen off the mountain in the dark had we not brought headlamps. The descent took 5 hours to get back down just to the lake which we ended up at 9 o clock that night. From there we had a 6 mile hike back down the mountain back to our car. We didn’t make it back until well after 1 am.

This past summer a friend and I took a major road trip out west as I mentioned in a previous blog. One of the biggest climbs we did on the trip and possibly even the biggest climb I've done so far in my climbing career, was the Grand Teton free solo summit. The best part about this climb was the fact that it was done without any planning and very spur-of-the-moment.

                  (Grand Teton Range from 10 miles away)                  

Grand Teton is a gigantic mountain in Jackson, Wyoming. Notorious for its incredibly jagged peaks and steep, incredibly exposed faces with very long pitches. The peak sits at 14,770 feet, an altitude tall enough to affect your breathing.

Originally, Gordon and I had planned to do a hike up to Amphitheatre lake on the main mountain. This was an incredibly intense hike starting at 6100 feet and ascending directly up the mountain for 6 miles, climbing a vertical total of 5000 feet up to this beautiful high alpine lake at an altitude of 11,300 feet. We set out for this hike not at all expecting to be doing a summit of grand Teton. Typically, to do a summit on Grand Teton, you need about 14 total hours in total, while some people even make it into an overnight venture. Well, we set out that morning around 10 am; way too late to do a summit in one day.

                            (The hike up the side of Teton)

            The hike up was very hard and straight uphill for a whole 6 miles. But once you get there, its totally worth it. The lake was crystal clear and overlooked miles upon miles of mountain ranges. Despite being in mid-July, the water was very frigid and unsuited for swimming as tempting as it was.

                          (Amphitheatre lake, quite literally a lake in the sky)

                          (Gordon enjoying a rock by the side of the lake. The summit is that jagged peak you see in the top right corner of the picture. Over 4000 feet higher than we were in this picture.)

By the time we had gotten to the lake, it was roughly 12.00 in the afternoon. From there we enjoyed a nice lunch where we amassed this one hell of a crazy idea. While looking at the summit, I said to Gordon “Wouldn’t it be crazy if we could summit that right now with no gear?”. Of course, we didn’t even take more than a minute to decide. It was set. We were going to attempt a free solo summit of grand teton while ill prepared, already exhausted, and with no real set plan.

                          So from there, we filled up our water bottles from the pristine lake, and we just started climbing, it began with a very steep hill that brings you up to the base of an ice field. We ascended about 1200’ above the lake which is where the dangers of doing this climb with no rope became very real.

                          (To put it into perspective how high above the lake we are in this photo, those boulders you see down there, are the size of 2-3 houses put together. From here we were 1200’ above the lake on a very steep hillside.)

                          From here we ran into a 400’ scramble up rock faces mixed with ice, certainly not the safest point. After this, we came to a large ice field which you can see below:

Little do we know at this point, that we are walking on a glacier with crevasses plummeting hundreds of feet into an abyss. This was most definitely sketchy as hell. But after traversing the less than settling glacier field, we were back onto rock, but this was no ordinary climb. At this point we met up on a route that I knew of that is called “exum ridge”. Exum ridge is a full on rock climb with incredible exposure at every point. That meaning, if you fell off the rock, the consequence was without a doubt, death.

                          Sadly, my phone died at this point due to the meticulous planning we had done before hand where we charged our phones. (Sarcasm).

But the rest of this climb after the exum ridge, we reached the summit 2 hours later of intensive climbing, insanely proud and exhausted that we had just summited Grand teton, a summit that most would never think of doing without a rope.

Getting back down was a horrendous nightmare and we likely would’ve either had to stay a night on the mountain in sub freezing temperatures, or fallen off the mountain in the dark had we not brought headlamps. The descent took 5 hours to get back down just to the lake which we ended up at 9 o clock that night. From there we had a 6 mile hike back down the mountain back to our car. We didn’t make it back until well after 1 am.

We did prove to ourselves that we are some crazy mother******s and we had one great story and memory because of it. I wouldn’t trade this day for anything.

We did prove to ourselves that we are some crazy mother******s and we had one great story and memory because of it. I wouldn’t trade this day for anything.