Trip Report - Complete Exum Ridge on Grand Teton - 7/2-4/22
Climbing The Grand by the numbers
~7,500’ of gain
around 16 miles traveled
13 pitches of climbing
50 hours spent in the park
30 hours spent moving
Big takeaways from the trip
If the entire party isn’t certain they want to continue, bail! (We had a pretty easy time with our decision to bail, but we watched another group get pretty ugly about it. Not what climbing is supposed to be about.)
Traveling with a party of three is wonderful when everyone’s skillsets complement. I was super thankful to be up there with Zac and Kika, I would have had a very rough time on the crux pitch of the Lower Exum.
Sufferfests don’t have to be bad when everyone keeps laughing the whole way through!
The Trip
On the Friday before the 4th, the forecast showed thunderstorms across all of Montana, Idaho and Washington so Zac, Kika and I decided at 5 pm to drive down to the Tetons and see if we could get a permit for the Grand. 12 hours later we were on our way.
After a six hours drive, we were lucky enough to pull a permit (though I couldn’t find parking at the ranger station). We headed up to Moraine Camp, where we got hit by a thunderstorm thankfully just after getting our pyramid set up.
Slogging up with heavy packs
Kika tries to figure out how to make her cheesy tuna
On Sunday morning, we got moving at 4 am and scrambled up to the base of the Lower Exum.
Trying to figure out exactly where the route is, just as the sun is beginning to come up.
The winds were whipping, but at belays we hunkered down in little nooks until the sun finally got high enough to warm us up.
Zac leading pitch 1
The Lower Exum was burly and definitely took us more time than we’d expected, especially trying to crawl through chimneys and up offwidths with packs full of crampons and ice axes, which we’d been told we would need for the descent.
If you look closely, you can see Zac leading on the left.
Chilly belays even in the sun
Kika leading just right of center!
Once we were on the Upper Exum, the climbing got a lot easier, but we ran into a ton of other parties and got slowed down pretty badly. We scrambled everything we could and roped up for ~6 pitches. I was stoked to lead the Friction Pitch and V-Pitch, both of which were super fun.
The Golden Staircase
Scrambling through the Wind Tunnel
Looking back down the route from just below the V-Pitch
After finishing all the climbing, we made the decision to bail about 100’ short of the summit to make sure we’d have time to descend safely.
We made it back to the lower saddle by sunset and were starting to relax (only had 800’ more to descend) when we saw a sign from the guides saying “a massive landslide took out the standard descent” and that they had put in a separate rappel.
We found the new rappel and lowered onto steep snow in the dark. It would have been a manageable situation with just our group, but three other groups were trying to descend too. We wrangled a mega-rappel (tying multiple ropes together with loops to help pass the knots) and it took 2 hours to get five of us down with all the shenanigans. Shoutout to Kyle and Alexa though for keeping things fun!
Ended up leaving our setup for the next groups to descend and retrieved it the next morning.
With all the nonsense, we got back to camp at just after midnight - 20 hours after beginning. A very long day.
Looking back up at Exum Ridge (the center-right skyline).
Rapping into the dark.
Standing on a snow ledge for hours.
On our third day, we relaxed a bit before hiking out and heading back home! It was hard to leave such a beautiful place after just three days, but I’m so glad we went.
View of the Tetons on the skyline two hours into the drive home!