The Enclosure, Southwest Ridge

The Enclosure, SW Ridge, August 14-15, 2015 (written Aug 29, 2015).  The Enclosure is actually the prominent western spur of the Grand Teton.  It tops out at 13,280 feet, making it the second highest prominence in the range.  It's a worthy goal.  One other reason I wanted to climb was to see the archaeological site at the summit - a small ring of stones, presumably placed there by native Americans.

Once again, I was fortunate to climb with Keith Sidle, who I had climbed with for the SW Ridge of Symmetry Spire and the Serendipity Arete of Mt. Owen.  He's one of the best around and I knew I could trust him to get us to the top, weather permitting, of course.

On Friday morning, Aug 14, we left Lupine Meadows with fairly light packs on our way to Corbet High Camp.   After a slow hike, we got to the camp at 11,160 feet a little after 4 pm.  We passed through a few showers on the way, but stayed dry. Camp was unoccupied; we'd passed by some others coming down as we made our way through the Meadows of Garnet Canyon.  Over the next hour and more, a few more guides and clients drifted in and it looked like about there would be 8 of us; only Keith and I would leave early the next morning.

We had dinner at about 6:30, and I headed off to a tent about 7:30.  The sky was clear then, the wind calm, but of course difficult to sleep.  I did sleep an hour or so, but was awake when the first thunderstorm struck about 9 pm.  Very dramatic:  hard rain, high wind, close-in lightening and ear-shattering thunder.  Soon the rain stopped, but the wind continued, and did most of the night.  I may have slept a little before there was a repeat of the storm just about midnight.  I think I finally got to sleep about 2 am.  Then woke again at 3 am; dozed a little until the alarm went off at 3:30.  Not much sleep for what was to come.

I met Keith in the big tent for breakfast; we then packed up and headed out with our headlamps at 4:00.  The sky looked mostly clear; plenty of stars and even a few shooting stars to watch.  We got to the lower saddle at about 5 am.  We took a short water and snack break.  I pretty much felt lousy; feeling the effect of too little sleep.  From the lower saddle, we went up slightly and rather than continue up toward the upper saddle, we soon turned to our left on the Valhalla Traverse, which is a series of ledges and slopes when encircles the Enclosure and eventually leads to the north side of the Enclosure/Grand Teton. It stops at the top of Valhalla Canyon, which was our launch point for the Serendipity Arete route on Mt Owen 2 years ago.

After nearly two hours of ups, downs, and traverses, we find the big cairn marking the bottom of the SW Ridge route at 7 am.  The sky is pretty light by now.  I was happy to be there:  looking up at the route I could tell it would be a great line; very steep, very dramatic.  But, unfortunately, I had to be honest with Keith and tell him I felt really crappy.  Over the last 2 hours, I felt worse than I had at the lower saddle - nauseated and low energy level.  But this is not uncommon for me: typically I feel much better by about 8 am or so.  So I said let's get going, I'll get better as the morning goes on.

At the Carin along the Vahalla Traverse marking the beginning of the SW Ridge of  The Enclosure.  The Middle Teton is in the backgroudnd behind me.

From the cairn looking up to the SW Ridge.  A few hundred feet of 3rd and 4th  class scrambling are immediately in front of us.

From the cairn, there is a few hundred feet of 3rd and 4th class scrambling up the to the beginning of the first 5th class section.  As we moved along, I was hoping the harder work would actually make me feel better.  It really didn't; but it did remind me I could feel crappy and climb at the same time.

As usual, Keith is looking very happy to soon be climbing. 

The first part of the first pitch of 5th class work. 

A peek to the north shows the sun is now up.  But on the west side of the mountain, there'll be no sun for us.

We got to the start of the fifth class work at 7:30.  It's darn cold as we start off; I had all but one layer on, and was still wearing gloves.  Keith leads up the pitch while I sit and belay.  The guide book says there's a 5.7/5.8 move on this pitch.  Hmmm, that's actually a pretty tough move before a person gets warmed up and comfortable on the rock.  Keith of course, will have no problem whatsoever.  Well, I think, when it's my turn, it'll be okay, it will just help make me feel better to get some rhythm going, which always helps.  Keith finishes the pitch, goes off belay, soon has me on belay and I'm climbing up the first steep ramp/face.  Feeling okay; climbing is easy; it's cold and I left my gloves on.  Then I work right a little way to a big flake.  Must be that 5.7/5.8.  I'm not thinking clearly at this point; I tell myself I can just force it.  So I head up, just expecting good handholds and solid footing.  Man am I surprised when I lose grip on both hands and feet at the same time and I'm falling!  What? this can't be happening.  I know I'm not feeling real great, but a FALL?  WTF? Fortunately Keith's belay catches me really quickly and I can easily get back to the move and I try again.  And I fall again!  Tried the same thing exactly, and fell again just the same way.  Now I hang suspended on the rope and talk myself out of this craziness.  Looked at the holds again, see what I did wrong, catch my breath.  Then back to the rock, execute my plan, and complete the move.  I get up a little way to a better stance and breath hard and get my breath back.  Wow, not my best moment.  But then 8 am is not known to be my best time of the day.

Time to climb again; I complete most of the pitch, and then I see Keith above me.  Problem is, there's this hand jam move between him and me.  It's only a 5.6.  In the Tetons, you can almost always avoid a jam by finding a nice little nubbin inside the crack; you don't really need to jam do you?  Just find some really small small holds and sorta turn it into a hard face climb, right?  So I start up; Keith is telling me how to do the move.  I get up there, I can see in the crack, I still have my gloves on (big mistake), and I put my left hand in the crack looking for that nubbin to use while my attempting to smear my climbing shoes on the rock and reach way up with my right hand to a nice hold above the crack.   It takes about 2 seconds for my left hand to come out of the crack due to lack of anything to hold onto.  While I can hold myself in place and don't fall again (pretty tight rope I think), I sure am feeling vulnerable again.  So.... my idea about how to climb the move wasn't so good.  But okay, catch my breath, get ready to try again.  Keith wisely says "Dan take off your gloves".  I unwisely answer back "no I don't want to".  So I get settled, and this time I make a fist with my left hand and try to jam the crack correctly.  It doesn't feel secure, I just can't go up, so I back down a little.  Well not surprisingly,  Keith is right, I need to take off my gloves.  So I do that, and map out my moves again.  Then insert my left hand in the crack again, make a fist,  and it feels okay.  Then all my weight goes on that, I get my feet smeared on some crystals, and throw my right hand up to the handhold.  Which, as Keith told me it would be, was totally secure.  Then, the idea is to extend my left hand from its fist, and slide it out.  Except I couldn't get it out.  Great, now I'm stuck to the mountain. Okay, then the thing to do is to cuss a lot and wiggle, cajole, and force the hand out.  That actually worked. A moment later I was up with Keith, and about ready to keel over from oxygen deficit and excess adrenaline.  Took a few minutes to return to normal.  Wow that was quite a pitch.  I hope that was the crux.  Ha! No chance!

Actually, by now I was no longer nauseated and felt closer to normal.  It was somewhere around 9 am and my early morning difficulties were slowly passing,  although I was a bit apprehensive and didn't have my confidence yet.  On the next pitch, a 20 ft section consisting of an inside corner with a face on the right would be the next challenge.  It was one of those faces that really was easy, but you have to place your right foot very carefully before moving up to a nice handhold above.  (Keith's chalk marks made that handhold easy to see.)  A delicate move, good balance required, but really not hard.  Guess I still wasn't up to par, because I choose the wrong crystal for my right foot, and, sure enough, it slipped and my right hand was not quite up the the chalky hold yet.  Fall number 3!!!

Well, once again, get a little slack from Keith, and get back onto the rock.  This time, I pick a better crystal for my right foot, weight it carefully, and move my right hand up to the beautiful hold and it was done!  Above that, the pitch was easier.  I explained what happen to Keith.....his response:  "yeah that's a pretty delicate move."

From this point up, the climbing  became more comfortable -  wide cracks, middle 5th class faces and ramps, and the occasional 4th or easy 5th class sections where we could make good time and I began again to feel comfortable on Teton rock.  A bit higher, and I have no idea which pitch (maybe 6 or 7), there is an interesting section about 30 feet or so up from our belay point.  It's a wide crack in an inside corner; the only way to climb it is a classic stem technique.  I looked for at it for few minutes, saw what should work, and then climbed it with one foot forward and one foot to the back and using hands on what I could find; it seemed pretty strenuous.  While it wasn't really so hard it was kinda complicated so was very satisfying to pull it off. Finally I felt like I could climb normally again!

Throughout the climb, Keith was running out full pitches with our 60 meter rope.  It was straining my voice to yell up to him, but we communicated safely and well and made good time over the last few pitches to gain the summit ridge at 10:45.  It was nice to get a drink, eat a little, and change from climbing shoes to approach shoes.  Plus it was sunny for the first time!  The weather was perfect; clear skies, windy, but not excessively so.

On the summit ridge, it's sunny but still a little windy.  Keith  packs away most of the rope.

After easily traversing the 3rd and 4th class climbing along the ridge, we arrived at the summit at 11:30.  Total time from the cairn was about 4 hrs 15 min.  No speed record, but I felt pretty good about the climb,  the wimpy start I had seemed like a long time ago.

On the summit.  The immense west face of the Grand Teton is in the background.  The entire Owens-Spalding route  is on that face.   There's no good way to judge distance, the height of the face behind us is about 500 - 600 feet, and we are well over 1/2 mile from the middle of the face.

The next thing to do was to see the Native American site.  Known as the Visonquest site, it was smaller than I expected.  It's somewhat disturbed, but many rocks are the way they were placed hundreds of years ago.  It's easy to see the attraction humans have for this site....the view is one of the most dramatic I can imagine.

The VisonQuest site.  Apparently the stones are not from the immediate area of the summit, and no one has found their source.  The northwest face of the Grand Teton is on the right, the summit of Mt. Owen on the upper left, and Jenny and Jackson Lakes in the far background.

From here, it was down to the upper saddle, then descend a short distance to a good lunch spot, make our way down to the lower saddle, and then of course all the way out to Lupine Meadows.  Arrived there at 6:15 pm.  Totally beat, but feeling very glad to complete another Teton climb!

Mt Woodring, Southern Slopes

Mt Woodring, July 9, 2015 (written August 29, 2015).  Mt Woodring is not often talked about, but it is a respectably sized peak at 11,585 ft, and makes up much of the division between Paintbrush Canyon and Leigh Canyons.  There's a small bit of class 3 climbing near the summit, but is mostly class 2 after one leaves the Paintbrush canyon trail. Ortenburger and Jackson's guidebook refers to this route as the Southwest Slopes, but it looks  pretty much to be strictly southern to me.

Spring and early summer this year was pretty wet and rainy, and I set off from the String Lake trailhead at 6 in the morning under a light mist and occasional light rain.  While I was concerned about the weather worsening, I knew from the forecast that there might be a brief clearing before rain was forecast for the afternoon.  So with a little luck, I might sneak this in.

It's about a 3 hour hike to Holly Lake at 9,416 ft, From there, I left the trail and start climbing a large alluvial fan up to the broad gully making up the southern slopes of the peak over boulders and scree.  Clouds hovering over the summit keep me from seeing the summit, but it's easy to see how the route goes.

Mt Woodring and Holly Lake.  The climb is up the prominent alluvial fan in the middle right, then pass the snowfield in the middle of the pictureon it's right.  Then, today at least, up into the summit's cloud bank.

As I climbed, I stayed in the broad gully and well to the right of a large buttress attached to the SW ridge.  Within the gully, there is a small pinnacle which sits in the middle, forcing one to decide to go right or left to attain the summit ridge.  In spite of the fact that the summit still lurked in the clouds, it looked better to the left of the pinnacle, so I continued that way.  It was typical Tetons:  plan carefully and choose the path of least resistance.

In the upper part of the broad gully, about 3/4 of the way up the south slopes route.  I choose to go left around this small pinnacle, and that worked out fine.  Going right may have been good too.

At about 11 am, the clouds finally descended and enveloped me.  No rain however.  I started dropping way-points in my GPS program on my iPhone so I wouldn't get lost on the way down.  At bit later, I got to the summit ridge, and had to do a bit of careful route finding and I also built a few small cairns at key points in case the weather worsened.  Still no rain, and no thunder and lightening.

I reached the first, and lower, southwestern summit at 11:40.  I wasn't exactly sure where the higher northeastern summit was, as visibility was only about 30 feet.   After a minute, the other summit briefly cleared; it looked like a very long way away.  However, knowing it was hard to judge distances in these conditions, I checked the GPS and decided it couldn't be far.  I had to be thinking about getting down off this peak before the weather deteriorated!  It took only about 10 min to get to the higher northeastern summit. There I found the USGS survey marker.  Someone had left a shiny new quarter next to it....I wonder why?

The benchmark on the summit.  Note the shiny new quarter someone left. 

Grabbed a quick lunch in the fog of the summit.  The view to the north was exciting:  a dramatic vertical drop entirely wrapped in fog.  Don't slip here.

Soon I was backtracking, finding my cairns, and knocking them down as I went.  As I descend, the clouds cleared away, and I enjoyed a dramatic view of the central part of the range that included Teewinot, Owen, the Grand, and the Enclosure.  Lucky me.

The clouds briefly clearly, a dramatic view of the main part of the Tetons.

As I continued down, the clouds returned.  Still no rain.  Made it down to Holly Lake at 2:15 pm, had a snack, and started down the trail. Two minutes later, what I thought was a non-threatening sky suddenly became quite threatening and one minute later, the rain started; it accelerated quickly and forced me under a tree to get rain gear out.  Before I completed that, the thunder and lightening started, the rain came on mercilessly, and I was feeling very thankful to be down off of the summit.

Continued a long hike out; raining much of the time along with occasional intense thundershowers that drove me under trees for short periods.  The rain finally let up, and I was back at the trail head about 6 pm.

South Teton, Northwest Couloir

South Teton, June 16 - 17, 2015.  (written on Aug 12, 2015) The southernmost of the "Teton" peaks is the South Teton.  This peak is fairly easy to climb but is a pretty good walk in.  A spring climb on snow saves the climber much tough travel on boulders, cobble, and scree, but it can be quite cold and windy on the summit in June.

Betsy and I have been planning this climb for about a year, basically since I had climbed the Middle Teton by myself.  I couldn't help but see during that ascent that Northwest Couloir route on the South Teton looked very fun and would be just a perfect route for Betsy to add to her few experiences in snow and ice climbing.  So we followed the same approach I had made in 2014 and set out mid-day from Lupine Meadows and hiked to my favorite new campsite at the Meadows in Garnet Canyon.

Our camp in Garnet Canyon.  Tomorrow we'll be making our way up the snowy slopes in the background.

After a cool night, we were up and moving out by about 5:30 am as the sky was starting to lighten in the East.  The snow surface was fortunately quite hard and we put on our crampons as soon as we moved out of the flats of the Meadow and onto steeper slopes.  Then we walked steadily up, occasionally crossing rocky areas but mostly on gentle snow slopes in the South Fork valley.  After about 3-1/2 hours of this, we were not quite to the saddle proper between the South Teton and the Middle Teton, but decided to turn south a bit early, in order to take advantage of prior climber's steps which had been kicked in the deep snow in the days prior.  These slopes were much steeper now and eventually we came to the entry to the couloir.  The sun was on the slope, but it was still quite hard.  One needs to be careful here; a slip on this hard surface could be extremely unpleasant if one did not self arrest quickly.

Betsy with a smile as we enter into the upper part of the Northwest couloir.

Inside the couloir itself, there were occasionally short rocky sections to cross.  Then, at the top, it narrows dramatically, and then we popped out on the summit ridge.

Betsy just as she comes onto the summit ridge.  The top of the couloir is just to her left.

It's a quick and easy scramble to the summit, and we arrive at 10:30.  The joy is somewhat moderated by the howling wind and quite cool temperature.  We bundled up with all of our warm outerwear, found a spot somewhat out of the wind, and settled in for a long lunch.  We hoped for the hard snow of the ascent to soften to make travel back down the couloir safer.

Betsy at the summit of the South Teton.  The first peak behind her is the Middle Teton, although it tends to blend in with the much larger Grand Teton in the middle of the picture.

About 11:30, we gather ourselves and scramble back to the top of the couloir.  I lead down; now the snow is soft enough that I can improve the steps somewhat.  It's steep enough, however, that I down-climb facing into the slope through much of it.

Dan descending the couloir.

Betsy soon came down behind me.  Then we moved together to cross the top of the snowfield, and found soft snow and moved quickly after that.  Soon we were back to the South Fork valley and soon found some glissading opportunities.  We were back at camp by 2 pm.  Had a bit to eat, packed up, and heading down to Lupine Meadows, arriving about 6:30.  A great day!