More climbing: The Tetons

Okay, let me just get this out of the way: We borrowed a canoe, we were all psyched to use it, but then I called the rangers and they said Jackson Lake was still frozen. So we didn't bring the canoe. Instead, we went through the annoying minutiae that comes with every backpacking trip, deciding what to take and what too big and what's too heavy and what's absolutely essential and what we should leave home (poor Snoopy!), because we'd being hiking and bushwhacking to the base of Mount Moran.

But when we got there, it turned out the lake wasn't frozen at all. But now we didn't have the canoe. Plus, we learned there was still a lot of snow of the trail, and we'd be postholing the whole way to the foot of the Skillet Glacier. No fun! Then Craig looked at the mountain and decided he didn't like the way the snow looked, so we decided to do something else instead.

And maybe it was just bad vibes. We went a little ways up Cascade Canyon to check out Baxter's Pinnacle, which we set aside for the following day, and to do a little free-form rock climbing on some random cliffs on the canyon's north side. We saw a helicopter overhead - Craig thought it was some kind of scenic flight, but I told him, no, that sort of thing didn't go on in the Tetons. If you see a helicopter in the Tetons, it's always bad, and you can always read about it in the paper the next day. Later, when I was climbing, Craig saw the chopper fly by again, this time dangling something that looked like a body bags.



But we didn't worry about that. We did our fun little thing on the cliff, only mildly annoying each other when we were choosing a descent method (Craig thought it looked like rain and was in a hurry all of a sudden).



Instead of backpacking into the base of the Skillet Glacier on Mount Moran, we car camped at Spalding Bay on Jackson Lake. Well, almost. Snow blocked the final 500 or so feet, so we had to carry the stuff the rest of the way. What a beautiful night! Full moon, moon shadows, strange critters howling in the distance, colder than heck, the whole enchilada.



The next day: Baxter's Pinnacle. This was a five-pitch climb that I understood to be rated 5.6 - easy, same as Skyline Buttress in the Gallatin Canyon (below). Well, the first pitch, which Craig led, was super easy. The second pitch, which I led, was not so easy - seemingly at least 5.7. Craig, who got stuck carrying the pack with our shoes and water, had a short fall right before the belay point. But no biggie - it was a beautiful day, and we were ready for more.

Craig led the next pitch, which was a beautiful 5.6 chimney problem; after that it was easy-breezy to the massive and sttep summit pinnacle. Oh, and it rained. Pretty hard, too, but we decided to wait it out. Sure enough, the sun came out bright as ever, revealing not only a rainbow below us, but a bald eagle soaring right above the final pinnacle.

About that pinnacle: We didn't know how to get up it. The climb was supposed to be a 5.6, right? Well, there was nothing on that block of rock that looked remotely 5.6-ish. We discovered a little traverse that led to the west and north sides of the rock, so we decided to check it out... but we couldn't get up those sides, either. Oh, we tried, with Craig doing a noble job on the northwest corner. But no cigar. It was raining again, so we decided to rappel down to the base.



Later we learned that the summit block actually starts out as a 5.9, before turning back into a 5.6. The route Craig tried was a 5.8. Oh, well. Do we really need to carry the big, fat "Climber's Guide to the Teton Range" with us everywhere we go? Maybe so. I had copied down some notes from it, but I failed to discern's the climb's subtleties. We considered ourselves triumphant anyway. What the hell.



Oh, about the chopper? When we got to Jackson, we read the front-page headline: Two climbers killed on Grand Teton. We were witnessing the body recovery. They were local guys from Kelly. It happens a couple times every summer in the Tetons. I guess this year's just gotten off to an early start.