A Grand Day Out
Posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007
Having lived in Jackson awhile and not yet climbed the Grand isn’t really a topic I throw out at cocktail parties. Always been meaning to get up there, but with the mountain biking, fly fishing and other various local options, not to mention work and family, road trips and the Brew Pub, it has always ben too easy to put off for another day. I’m not a super devout climber, but c’mon, it’s the Grand. So, with the dual prodding of Greg Williams and local Freeskier ad rep Jason Smith, we settled on the day.
We decided to do the car-to-car (CTC) option in a day instead of dealing with the campground frenzy this time of year. Doing it in a day is roughly 18 miles of hiking and about 7,000 in elevation gain.
For most, that’s a solid two day endeavor, but in the land of Jackson, where the record, round-trip CTC is something like three hours, you don’t seem so cool knocking it off in a day.
After attending a party the night before at Paul Huser’s house (which I should have probably blown off), I woke at 2 a.m. and set off for the Cloudveil offices to meet the other guys. We got on the trail about 3:30 and made good time to the Lower Saddle.
The weather wasn’t really cooperating that day with very low clouds and a lot of moisture in the air, so when we set off for the upper saddle, we passed a number of guided trips heading down.
The lack of visibility didn’t make for very good scenery, but it was nice having the place to ourselves. The decision point for our group to continue came where the Upper Exum route splits off and we decided, although ominous, the weather didn’t look threatening so we went for the summit.
There wasn’t a watch between us, so not really sure when we summited, guessing sometime around 11 a.m. After coming off the top a little east of the rappel platform, we had to do some creative downclimbing to get to the fixed gear to set up our rap. Then, it was eight miles of ankle, calf, thigh and hip burn down to the car, arriving just after our pre-determined 4:20 finish time.
It’s a great thing to stand on top of a mountain and know that you got there on your own. Now, is someone going to talk me into skiing the thing this winter?
