Climbing the Grand Teton

I've been waiting 20 years to climb the Grand, you think I would have known the route. I hate rock climbing using rock pro. Trusting my life to a piece of metal wedged inside a crack in the rocks isn't my idea of a good time. When necessary for a summit, I'm willing to endure the stress. I'm also very nervous with exposure but again, if it's required to reach the summit, I'll push through. The Grand has both so I was a bit nervous planning this climb. In the end, we were stopped short by one last pitch up the Sargent's Chimney. We looked up that way, but didn't think that was the route.

Here is a video I took of my climbing partner repelling down to High Saddle

From the base of Sargent's Chimney, you can't see how it opens to the right for easier climbing. You only see the dark vertical chimney directly above.

The trip to the Grand starts with a fine hike in the forest. If you are in daylight, the massive peaks tower above through breaks in the forest canopy. The hiking trail ascends a forested ridge west, then on easy switchbacks gaining your first thousand feet. As the trail works south toward Garnet Canyon, the hillside meadows come out and views out over the Jackson Hole region are very nice. Once the trail turns into the canyon, holy cow, it's amazing for the rest of the climb. With massive rock walls, steep snow chutes and waterfalls, this is definitely National Park quality. The trail works all the way up Garnet Canyon on trail with some large boulder hopping at times. Just below Lower Saddle is a cliff band where the park service has placed a fixed line. This rope is several inches thick and everyone just pulls themselves up since the rock has good footing.

At Lower Saddle are several Exum Guide Service Tents. They leave very early for the summit, before first light. From the pass at 11,600, you can see up the gully to the Upper Saddle. The route follows a trail up to a band of black rocks called The Black Dike. The best trail goes around left then to the top of the band. Climbers trails continue above a short distance before you need to look to the right for a blocky chimney that accesses the Eye-of-the-Needle. This is where you have to crawl through a small tunnel. We missed the route up to the eye by not turning right following easier terrain and found another way up (on the right) using one class 5 move. Knowing this alternate route probably skipped the eye, I dropped down about 10 feet to look down and see two climbers we recently passed crawling through the eye. They yelled up "it's full of snow inside", but they made it. A mix of steep climbers trails and scrambling gets you from here all the way to the Upper Saddle.

From the Upper Saddle you can look up and see the 120 foot rappel down to this point. From the eastern highpoint of the saddle under the cliffs is the traverse north with some extreme exposure. This is where you rope up and do the Belly Roll pitch and the Belly Crawl pitch. Both can be done on one belay but communication is difficult if others are yelling at the repel station nearby or if it is windy. I did not look down the entire pitch even though my head faced down on the crawl. Once past this traverse, you climb the Double Chimney. This had ice inside and took my climbing partner almost an hour to negotiate up. Once up this pitch, we were looking up at the Owen Chimney, a 5.5 route with some ice as well. Our mistake was not to take a look at slabby terrain that went to the right. We discussed it but the Owen Chimney didn't look too bad so we figured it was the route and Sargent's Chimney. Had we gone right, the Catwalk Slabs, we could have avoided the Owen Chimney altogether (see pic at bottom). This would have been nice because it was a real pain. Since there were a few pintons anchored in the rocks, my partner made good time leading the route. At the crux of the chimney, I lost grip somehow and fell for the first time ever. Luckily I was being belayed from above so it's no big deal, my partner barely noticed but mentally, it was as if I could have died. Man, I hate this stuff! With my nerves shot, we sat at what we thought was the top of the route, just some class 3 scrambling left. The Sargent's Chimney was actually right above us but we both thought we just climbed it. The chimney looks very hard from below so I did not think that could possibly be the route. If we went up...could we even get down? We weren't even sure we were on route. As we traversed south on an easy terrain, I was very happy to pass above the repel station. At least we could get down without repelling on rock pro. Eventually we ran into a few parties climbing the Upper Exum, although they weren't sure they were on route. Since we only had a small rack of gear, we weren't comfortable climbing the remaining pitches on that route. I had no information what to expect up there. We traversed back to where we came up and tried the other direction but hit the top of a deep gully with a sheet of ice inside. I had to assume this was the route but that it was just covered in ice and snow. After discussing it for awhile and one last look at Sargent's Chimney (which we thought was only a last resort), I called it quits since my nerves had suffered enough being this exposed for over 4 hours. The rappel down over an overhang on a new 9.2 mm rope was interesting, both of us had to grip with all our might as the rope was going too fast through our belay devices. I was overjoyed to be off.

After I got home, I found the picture on this page I took from Summitpost. Had we had this picture, we would have made it. Sargent's Chimney is obvious and although it looks difficult from below, the route cuts a hidden right out of the chimney before it gets difficult. With this new info and the fact that we could just go around the Owen Chimney, I think I'll give this peak another try.

Here is another image from the web of the final climb