It was early and the clouds had just started to part,
leaving the muted morning sun in their rain-dampened wake. I rounded the corner; Yellowstone Lake
came into view and at its far end the beginning of the Teton Range rose
majestically into the cool, fresh air.
I was in a strange state of delirium, tired from the previous days,
which included 15 miles of hiking, a mini-epic on Middle Teton, catching up
with an old friend over drinks and the Olympics at the local brewery, and very
few hours of sleep in the back of my car the night before. Mixed with that exhaustion was the
coffee I had just chugged in an attempt to fuel myself for the next 11 hours of
driving; the end result of which was a strange sensation that my whole body was
tingling. Suddenly, I broke into a
smile. The smile grew until it was
a face-splitting grin. Then I
started laughing. This was it. I had finally gone nuts. No, no! On the contrary, I had been abruptly taken from a coffee
induced delusion to a state of extreme clarity. I felt completely liberated and
utterly happy. For the first time
in my life, there really were no expectations for my future. My life was before me, and I could
choose to do with it whatever I wanted.
I wished to bottle the feeling up and save it forever, to open it up and
breathe it in and experience it all over, again and again. I was elated. Happy and free.
Rewind a few days… I left the north woods of Wisconsin upon
completing my internship with WI, and headed back to Minneapolis for one more
night in the city. It was much
harder to leave than I had suspected at the beginning of this journey. I met so many wonderful, exciting,
genuine, and just really great people, and saying goodbye to them without
knowing when we would see each other again was really tough. I am extremely grateful that I got to
spend my summer in the company of such amazing people. The other best thing to come from the
experience was having the time and space away from my old habits and rituals to
rediscover myself and reevaluate some of the things that are important to me
(if you know what I’m referring to, you know what I’m talking about and that
that was a really fancy/roundabout way of saying it. Thank you for indulging me :-P). Being in the Midwest was a surprisingly wonderful
experience, but needless to say there were things beckoning me West. Those things were 1. Mountains 2.
Chelsea and 3. Titan and Star.
After postponing my departure for over half a day, I finally
left Minneapolis and started to drive.
I drove across Minnesota and into North Dakota, and almost all the way
across it before pulling over at a rest stop and climbing into the back of my
car for some sleep. In the morning
I was back at it. My next stop was
Billings, MT, where I picked up my co-worker Kaybe. She had been leading trips in Yellowstone all summer and had
a few days off before her last one.
After a bite to eat we were back on the road headed for REI in Bozeman,
MT. We decided to go do some Teton
climbing so we needed a guidebook and Kaybe picked up a sweet new climbing
helmet. Then it was back in the
car yet again, now headed for Jackson Hole. I was geeking out over seeing
mountains everywhere throughout the whole drive. I felt a little bad that Kaybe would repeatedly be mid-sentence
when I would interrupt her with OMGMOUNTAINS!MOUNTAINS! It seems that I had missed their
presence…
 |
| Kaybe! |
So the Teton climbing.
I will try to keep this concise.
We somewhat randomly chose a route on Middle Teton because it sounded
fun, varied, and not too hard. We
hiked the 7 miles in to our backcountry campsite, went to sleep early and set
the alarm for an alpine start the following morning. Unfortunately, my $5 watch decided not to function reliably
and we didn’t wake up until 5:45.
Alpine start blown. The
approach to the climb took longer than expected and included climbing up a
snow/ice field (good thing we had ice axes). It was an adventure from the start! Unfortunately the bottom of the climb
is blocked by an ice couloir so we weren’t entirely sure where we were supposed
to start. We didn’t have many
options really once we reached the ice except to get on whatever rock was in
front of us and start climbing up.
(That rock turned out to be off route.) Anyway, we had a very enjoyable time meandering up the
rock. It was pretty obvious that
we were off route because none of the moves were 5.7, but we were moving up and
having a good time. After about 5
pitches, I reached something that fit the description in the book (pulling a
roof on chickenheads... so fun!).
Unfortunately that was on pitch 3 of the actual route. Realizing that it was far too late in
the day to only be on pitch 3 and looking ahead to the next pitch (aka crossing
the death abyss… wtf?!) we decided to bail. Up until that point the day had been really fun, but from
then on it turned into a mini-epic and a temporarily hating mountains
situation. We managed to find a
few good rappel stations, which greatly helped our cause. In between rappels we were faced with
sketchy downclimbing, skree skiing, talus surfing, and a ridiculous crossing of
a snow/ice blob thing. After hours
and hours, we were finally back on the ground. Once on the ground it still took quite a while to hike back
to our campsite, and we had to re-cross the steep snowfield, but in the dark
this time. At one point we looked
up and saw the moon rising and we both sat down and watched it for about half
an hour. Finally, at 11:00 PM, we
made it back to camp. What a
day!
The next day we hiked back down and went into town and met
up with my great friend Jason. The
three of us spent hours lying in the grass in the middle of town, talking,
catching up, eating ice cream and discussing climbing. Jason put us to shame when he told us
he had hiked 9 miles and summited two peaks before we even found our route the
day before. It was great to be in
Jason’s company, and we finished the night off right with a couple beers at the
local brewery. The next morning
came too early as Kaybe and I blearily made our way to Yellowstone where I
dropped her off so she could guide her last Yellowstone trip of the
summer. Now we have caught up with
my enlightened self, in the car on the way to Breckenridge to see Chelsea.
Enlightened as I was, it still took quite a bit of coffee to
get me to Breckenridge. I arrived
there looking haggard- bloodshot eyes, and extremely dirty (I had last showered
on Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, it was now Sunday evening and I had driven
1,800 miles, hiked 15, spent countless hours on Middle Teton, slept in my car
three times, and was still wearing the same pair of shorts after all of
that). But, I was reunited with my
PIC! I was so incredibly psyched
to see Chelsea! I don’t think we
have ever been separated for so long since we met.
The next few days in Breckenridge were fantastic! We climbed, fished, drank beer, danced,
walked around, and took inflatable kayaks down the Colorado River,
which was a blast! Unfortunately,
Chelsea had to go back to work, and I had to drive across very hot Utah,
terrifying Las Vegas, and all the terrible B’s- Barstow, Boron, Bakersfield,
bleh! Finally I made it back to
San Luis Obispo and to my wiggly squiggly puppies. I am now in Tahoe and getting back into climbing shape. A new post on that will be coming soon
:D (And hopefully it will be a lot
shorter than this one).
