As much as we thoroughly enjoyed our visit back home we were itchin to get back on the road. We have adapted and really grown to like this little gypsy life of ours. Our tenative plan when we wrap up the trip is to move to Whitefish for my job. With that, our frequenting Bozeman and Chico Hot Springs will be limited to about zilch due to the long drive. We figured that we should spend a day pokin around Bozo and finish it off with a nice soak at Chico! To get to Tetons we went through Yellowstone National Park where we did another hotspring soak in the Boiling River. This is a great spot where the hot sulfer pots pour into the chilly river melding into a perfect and serene soaking temp. After a relaxing morning in the river we made our way to Old Faithful where we sat on the deck of the old lodge drinking coffee and watched it erupt. That evening we camped outside the Teton park and plotted our following days. Our next objective was the Taminah Arete on the Matternought Peak. Permits were obtained to camp in the backcountry and we were off once again. For a few miles of the approach we were to follow the National park trail and then venture up canyon on a "good" climbers trail. The climbers trail disappeared and we found ourselves struggling up and over tedious boulder fields. We spent many hours traversing up and over boulder after boulder until we saw an easy point to drop down to the meadow next to the river. We both happened to be in a seriously weird funk and couldn't pull ourselves together or get in the hiking groove. Once we hit the meadow, the very well used climbers trail magically showed up and it was smooth sailing for a few minutes. Not 10 minutes after regaining the trail we rounded a corner and 15 feet infront of me was a huge mooses butt. It was a moma moose with it's baby and this wasn't anything to mess around with. We made a circum-navigation of the two moose and made lots of racket in hopes that they wouldn't stomp us to death. We were in the clear and took a huge breath of relief....well for a moment. Just as we avoided one threat we darn near walked into the daddy moose a tiny bit further up the trail. He was a bit more skiddish than the mom and the baby and quickly ran off the trail down to the right. Phew! My heart was thumpin and a bit flustered but we were on our way up trail again. Moose seem like big magestic creatures from far away but get too close and your as good as dead. This time we continued to make a serious amount of noise to ensure that we'd scared them all away. We aren't entirely sure what we saw next but there was another brown creature that made a rapid movement up ahead behind a large rock. At this point we had seriously had enough of this and at almost a running pace took off into the upper boulder fields to clear all the danger. Finally all the animal spooks had stopped! After we reached our destination, camp was set up, dinner consumed and we assesed our route endeavor for the following day. For a handful of reasons we were having doubt on doing it. The Tetons already are pretty stiff on their climbing grades and this route was going at 5.9 which would probably feel like a 5.10 to us. We decided the prudent decision would be to sleep in and hop in the alpine lake the next day.
We had a couple of other options as to which climb we'd attempt next. A few years ago we climbed the Grand so we decided to look around at other peaks in the area. We ended up choosing the South West Ridge of the Enclosure. this peak lies directly behind the Grand Teton and is only about 500ft shorter and gets summited far less than it's asthetic neighbor. It's tucked away at such an angle that really no matter your persepctive it isn't necassarily a summit that would catch your eye. With it's summit at 13,400 and 12 pitches of 5.7 we were beyond stoked to give it a shot! Ideally we wanted a camping permit for the lower saddle ( which is the best and most logical place to start when climbing the Grand) but with it being a weekend in the middle of August we were going to have to settle for a bivy farther up the mountain at the col below our climb. To get to our camp destination we had to reach the lower saddle and then continue on up the mountain. When we finally finished the ugly slog up to the lower saddle we were beat. Knowing that our campsite would by dry of water we needed to filter some H20 and get some dinner into us before continuing on. It took some major motivation to push forward but we rallied and made it across the scree slope and the 5th class traverse on the side of the granite walls to our destined spot. Once there we were beyond stoked at our position on the mountain. We were higher up so that meant we got an extra hour of warm daylight before the sun dipped below the hills in the distance. Watching the sun set over the valley gave us some sick photo op's!
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| view of the Grand Teton from the Lower Saddle |
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| lower saddle between the Middle and the Grand |
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| Thats our peak! (Enclosure) |
By camping only minutes from the base of our route it also allowed us to sleep into the very civilized time of 7AM. yes please!! Sam owned the route like a beast, I on the other hand had a strangely hard time with this climb. The rock quality was immaculate but very very slippery! In comparison, imagine taking your granite counter tops, turning them vertical and added a few slopey bumps to try and cling on to. This is what I felt like I was doing for hours. As stated before, the grades are sandbagged a bit here in the park. Even though this route went at 5.7 it was certainly a challenge. All the pitches were long and good except for one horrendusly bad traverse in the middle. I cried, and cried alot. Not because it was strenously difficult but it was awkward and towards the end if I were to fall I'd either bash my head in or shatter my feet, neither seemed like situations I wanted to deal with. Sam gave some very kind words of encouragement to get me through it...**cough..NOT. Alas we summited and watched the debauchery of people herding off of the Grand Teton next to us. In total, there were 7 people on top of our peak (including ourselves). During the half hour that we spent on the summit we counted 63 people coming off the Grand and that didn't include the 30+ that had already descended or the few that hadn't summited yet. YIKES! It took us less than an hour to get off our summit back to the lower saddle. We chose to spend one more night up in the alpine before leaving towards the van. Between the two of us, we both managed to take zero pictures of either the climb or the summit of this route.
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