Grand Teton, Upper Exum Ridge

SummaryNone
OwnerJames Huang
Creation Date2014-09-29 22:32:05 UTC-0400
DescriptionGrand Teton
Upper Exum Ridge (5.5)
Sep 4-6, 2014
James, Lina

As part of our first anniversary getaway to Wyoming, Lina and I decided to climb the Grand Teton (13,770ft) in Grand Teton National Park.

We arrived in GTNP on the last day of August, with the small window of favorable weather closing fast. We spent the first 4 days on an enjoyable backpacking trip starting at Death Canyon and ending at Jenny Lake. This allowed us to fully acclimatize to the elevation we would encounter while climbing the Grand.

After we got out of the back country, took a shower, and ate a huge lunch, we headed back to the AAC Climber's Ranch to rest up and read up on the beta for the big climb.

The next morning we got an early start to make the trek up to the Lower Saddle (11,600ft) where we would set up camp for the night before summit day. The hike in starts at Lupine Meadows and gains 5,000ft of elevation over the course of 8 miles. We took this nice and slow since we had the entire day to get to the saddle.

After reaching the saddle, we set up camp next to the 9 or 10 guided groups that were also there. I think there were at least that many guided groups and only 2 unguided groups including us. It was nice to know that by being self sustainable, we were saving roughly $700 per person.

The next morning, Lina and I woke up at 4:30am to start the climb. We got to the rope up section just as day was breaking which made for perfect timing. The climbing is mostly fourth class scrambling with short sections of fifth class. I climbed it in approach shoes and Lina only had hiking boots. I recommend approach shoes for both the leader and the follower for this climb, rock shoes would be overkill.

After a couple rope lengths of pitching it out and creating gear anchors to belay up Lina, I quickly realized that this method would take us way too long and would risk us getting stuck in the dark. A much more efficient way, I discovered, after observing the half dozen guides that passed us, was to shorten the rope and climb in shorter pitches through the steep sections and then set up a terrain belay on a solid horn or boulder right after the steep section eases off. This was much faster than climbing the full length of the rope and setting up gear anchors.

We reached the summit at noon, 7 hours after we left camp and enjoyed the wonderful view from the top. At this point we still knew that we were only half way there and still needed to get down. However, we were dead last to reach the summit, meaning, there was no one else on the mountain to follow to get down. The descent route is on the west side of the mountain and therefore almost entirely snow covered. Fortunately, we had brought one set of crampons that Lina put on and we started our way down. We were able to follow footprints in the snow which was very lucky, and after 2 rappels and 4 hours of sketchy scrambling, we made it back to our tent!

Getting back at 5pm, we decided to camp one more night on the saddle before doing the 8 mile hike out on day 3.

I have more photos of this climb here