The Grand Traverse
The Grand Traverse is a fantastic journey of choss scrambling, surfing and sniffing across one of the most iconic mountain ranges in North America --- the Tetons. The traverse covers each principal summit of the central massif: Teewinot, Mount Owen, the Grand, the Middle and the South Teton. It also covers several sub-peaks, notably Cloudveil Dome and Nez Perce.
A few weeks ago I climbed the fabulous Full Exum ridge of the Grand Teton with my now friend, Alex Fischer. Being our first time climbing together, it was apparent that we could get up to some trouble in the alpine. We compliment each other's skill sets nicely and since then we've been brewing up plans to go back down for a bigger mission. This past weekend the stars aligned with splitter weather and both Alex and I being stoked and available to go for the Grand Traverse. Exciting!
It was both of our biggest objective in the alpine and it was fun to compartmentalize the logistics.
“I'm going to bring a sleeping bag and sleeping pad. What are you doing for sleeping?” Alex asked in the visitor center lot.
“Meh, I think I will do a big puffy on the top, with a smaller puffy on my legs. Wrapped up in my tin-foil bivy I should be fuckin good. And then I am going to flake the rope to sleep on, light and fast.” I suggest.
“Damn I had not thought of that, good call. Although, I am going to bring my sleeping pad if you got the rope. Haha! I like light and fast, but we should bring enough food in case we get stuck out there. Who knows how long this will take us .... This is gonna be great!” Exclaims Alex.
“Yeah man, the only thing I saw timewise was that if we don’t make it up Teewinot in sub-3 hours then we are probably going to have to bivy on the Grandstand.”
Alex looks at me confused, “No way, really?”
We both think back to a few weeks ago when we took around 4 hours to do it at the end of a long weekend of climbing. This time around we are confident we will be much faster and Alex already suggested a good start time, so we have some leeway if we are a little slow on the first day. Always remember to set the alarm clock nice and early in the Tetons, you will never regret it.
“Oh shit dude, also guess what I was thinking for the rope .. let’s just bring my 8.1mm 70m and double it up for any roped up climbing. It’ll be a lot lighter and we can just simul climb or build belays early.” I unearth this revelation and we discuss it a little deeper, finally agreeing that it’ll totally be worth it since we will be carrying the rope for most of the traverse.
“Dang man, we are doing this in proper alpine manner!” Alex perked.
Our climbing and sleeping systems were now in place. Ope, also I had approach shoes and no rock shoes, while Alex had a pair trail runners and TC pro's. In other words, if we come across any technical difficulties harder than what we are expecting, Alex will take the lead. This increased our safety margins slightly and it felt nice to know that if we got off route …. I would have a rope gun! Haha.
That was about the extent of our logistical preparation; We liberally packed food and went light on everything else. Our med kit was a bottle of extra strength tylenol, a roll of tape and some caffeine. Our rack was a single rack with some nuts and ten alpine draws. Our beta was largely from Rolando Garibotti, a legendary alpinist, which I printed out just in case our phones died. In case of emergency I brought my mini-inreach. We drove into the park after packing our bags in the visitor center lot and slept at Lupine Meadows trailhead with the alarm set for 2 AM, my personal favorite start time.
Ninja like cat, cat like ninja. I repeat this mantra as I focus on breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth. Alex is ahead setting the pace. I think about how long we will be moving and try not to push too hard. Three hours of this and we are at the top of Teewinot, feeling ready to rock and roll. We bust down to the notch just south of the summit and scramble skiers left up and over the ridgeline, dropping down a 3rd class scramble on the backside towards peak 11,480. We find our way down the SW gully making 4 rappels. Quite frankly, this took longer than we had thought and we later heard rumors of a much quicker descent a bit more SW of ours.
Done with the rappels we pack up and hike over to East Prong, where we arrange a rappel to drop into the Koven Col. This was black ice and could have been managed by downclimbing close to the rock, but shit there was a rap station here so we figured we would just rap into it. We rap the ropelength and run on the black ice over to the rock king-swing style. Somewhat thrilling. We were now at the base of Mount Owen’s snowfield, filling up our water and having a quick lunch.
“I feel like that looked a lot more fun than it actually was. Sorta fuckin spooky dude. Some good alpine trickery right there.” I recall, glaring at the Koven col. This happened to be a part of the traverse I was particularly stoked for, mostly because I thought it looked awesome. Little did I know the fun we would have getting across it.
“Yeah that’s what I was kinda thinking when I was doing it. Definitely looked more fun than it was.” Alex nods.
We start up Owen and traverse under the snowfield on easy terrain. A yolo free solo gentlemen gave us some beta on how to do the final 5.4 chimneys, which helped a bit. We drop the packs and tag the summit without experiencing much difficulty.
This next part, getting from Mount Owen to the Grandstand, is widely considered the crux of the entire traverse. We were greatly anticipating it and the two photos we had for beta showed two different ways to go. Rolando’s had us heading down the first notch south of the summit, while the other said the 2nd. We went to the 2nd notch because we dropped our packs back there. We downclimb and peek in, too steep and long. We continue around a small blob and see two shiny bolts with tat. Perfect. Three 35m rappels later, with 3rd class scrambling in between, and we are plopped on more or less a trail leading us to the Gunsight notch. Holy shit, that was the route finding crux? Probably would be with no rope, but with rappels it seemed pretty hard to botch.
Some scrambling got us just above Gunsight notch, where we rapped in since the beta advised not to downclimb. Plus, there was a great rap station. We scramble out of Gunsight and hit an obvious part where the beta says to go 50 feet climbers left and continue straight up on 5.7 rock. We do this and rope up for it, although it ended up being a bit more right-slanting than ‘straight up’. Next, Alex takes us up a 5.6 chimney which had a fantastic hand to fist crack crux and provided a few really fun, steep moves. We gain the Grandstand and continue over on some of the most heinous and time consuming scree I have ever dealt with. We position ourselves just below the obvious giant flake marking the start to the north ridge of the Grand Teton, the technical crux of the traverse. It also, in my opinion, marked the route finding crux given that the entire ridge is a sea of choss and it is hard to distinguish features when it is all so broken up.
I head into the flake, chimneying my way up as Alex repeats chimneys are a safe space. I pull up and onto the flake and place a mediocre green totem in a shallow, flaring crack and ponder my next series of moves. After stalling for a second and hollering down to Alex that I am sorry for being slow, I manage to pull a series of crimpy moves out left marking what felt like the hardest climbing we encountered. I later see on the topo that I should have continued up more before gaining the loose 3rd class gully. Either way, Alex soon says 'that's me' and we start simuling. I am racing up the gully and just as Alex hollers he is at the crux I manage to place a bomber blue camalot off to my right, meaning it was actually pretty safe as he pulled those moves. We simuled some more and I built a belay. Alex swings the lead, finishes the gully and stops where he thinks we need to traverse left to get to the Italian cracks. He nailed this part. We get to the base of Italian cracks and continue upwards experiencing decent climbing on decent rock. Next time I may opt for a different variation. We hit easier terrain and I take us up to a ledge system where we can now escape to the Owen-Spalding route. We toss the rope in the pack, get over to the Owen chimney and bust up to the summit of the Grand Teton.
We make it down with little light left in the day and manage to set up our cozy beds without headlamps. I had no appetite and told Alex I kinda felt like shit. He filled up all of our water with no hesitation, which we drank periodically throughout the night. There was a wonderful meteorite shower that night and we saw too many shooting stars to count — a nice sprinkle of magic amidst our grand adventure.
The first alarm went off at 4 that next morning.
“Yo. I think there’s no point getting on that north ridge of the Middle while it’s dark out. Let’s try to time it so we get to the base at sunrise and can see where we are going. Say, 5:45?” I suggest in the early morning darkness.
Alex rebuttals, “5:15. packing up will take longer than we think.”
The alarm comes again and this time we get up and begin to pack. I still feel like shit, but not as bad. I take 1,000 mg of tylenol and a 5 hour energy and decide I am feeling alright. Alex gets his caffeine and painkillers, albeit less than I, and we are off.
Alex guides the scramble up the north ridge of the Middle and we make good time to the summit. We start down the SW couloir and begin the march to the South Teton.
“Dude that ridge line from the South to Cloudveil Dome looks technical, there’s no way we are climbing across all that. Are we?” I observe the ridgeline that has no major summits, yet looks time consuming.
“Yeah we are staying on that ridgeline the entire time, not dropping down. Aim for the obvious couloir on the South to get up there.” Alex replies.
After getting to the top of the South Teton, we drop down the east ridge and rope up for one long simul-pitch up the climbers left side of Ice Cream Cone. This was a nice steep jug haul. Next, we maneuver down the east face and up the north side of an unnamed blob, eventually gaining the west ridge of Gilkey Towers, which we climbed. We then make our way over to Spalding peak, which we summit as well. Actually, now that I think of it, I traversed below Spalding peak and Alex climbed it proper. I should have gone his way, it was faster.
I underestimated this section of the traverse and will say it was considerable negotiating all these minor peaks. At the end of it, we walk up Cloudveil Dome and manage to get off its east ridge without any rappels.
Alex and I briefly debate how we should traverse over to Nez Perce, ultimately following Rolando's beta. Once at the base of the west ridge, we see a party and they advise us to ‘in doubt go left'. We listen to this advice and, with a fair amount of route finding trouble, get to the summit. It was a nice feeling to be sitting atop the last summit, admiring the progress we have made. Eventually we manage to do two rappels, scramble off the ridge and make our way down to Garnet canyon.
Once we hit the trail we pick up the pace and jog down the switchbacks that mark the end of our day. We high five in exuberance at the parking lot and someone shouts from their van, “good job!” which was oddly nice. We both agreed Mexican sounded good so we headed into town, feeling pretty alright about our adventure.
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