the need to write it out...
Watching the weather over Middle Teton
You gotta love the Tetons… When we arrived at the national park entrance gate to pay for a pass, the ranger told us, “Cash or check only. The credit card machine got fried by lighting two weeks ago and it hasn’t been working since.” This wry tidbit of information seemed commensurate with all my past experience in the Tetons.
The Boy and I had come to climb Irene’s Arête to the summit of Disappointment Peak. The route was named for Irene Ortenberger, the first ascentionist and a pioneer back in the day when a woman’s presence was truly rare in the mountains. (The ratio is still skewed.) Though technically more difficult than any other route I’d ever done in this range, the climb went off without a hitch. Employing gear far superior to that which Irene had access to those forty years ago, I still found the route pleasantly challenging.
Since climbs that go off without a hitch aren’t fun to write about, it was the story of a climb full of hitches that began knocking around my brain on the descent hike, asking to be written some five years after it took place. Feelings retingled my nerves; phrases formed; laughter prevailed.
This silly story is dedicated to the gutsy Irene, though I’ve never met her personally:
The Exum Ridge Route, which ascends to the summit of The Grand Teton, is listed in the book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. It is a climber’s rite of passage. If you were to tell an expert mountaineer that you climbed The Grand via Exum Ridge, you just might receive a nod that said, “Welcome to the Weeblos”. And yet despite how often this route is climbed, the breathtaking high exposure it serves up manages to generate thrills for the expert and beginner alike. This is largely due to the famous “Gap Move”, the route’s technical crux.
Five years ago, I climbed The Grand via Exum Ridge. Before setting off for the Tetons, I’d received many different accounts of what the gap move entailed, but I didn’t know who to believe. My town is full of mountaineering wisecrackers-I worked with a whole posse of them at the local mountaineering company- and they tended to deliver their advice with a gleeful, shit-eating grin. Perhaps the best advice of all was from the friend who simply said, “You’ll see.”
We allotted ourselves two days to complete the Exum Ridge. The first day would be spent hiking up to the Moraine field. On the second day, we’d assault the mountain, climb to the summit, and hike back down to the car. We’d start our adventure in Lupine Meadows, travel along the forest floor and up the woodsy flank of the mountain into Garnet Canyon.
There’s something magical about the Tetons-and Garnet Canyon in particular. Garnet Canyon is named for the presence of that mineral in the rock, tinting the otherwise grey hues to a sublime coral pink. Here, streams bubble and gurgle into and out of the rock, playfully reflecting the sunlight; wildflowers spring up in strange places; fat marmots munch Fireweed until approached then race off with their plump hinds tracing an orbit; an occasional stunted pine drops its cone on the path. After eight years of competitive cross country ski racing, I’m no slouch on the ascent hike, even when judged by the wisecracking boys, which means I'm able to look around and take in the views along the way.
As we gained altitude in Garnet Canyon, the temperature dropped sharply. Storms were still waging war on the high mountain just as they had been all week, but the ranger had promised us that it was “due to clear up”. I hoped so since I was already decked out in my hat, thermal top and bottoms, warm socks, and an outer layer. I’d forgotten gloves.
Just past the Petzoldt Caves, we departed from Garnet Canyon, burgeoning with life, to begin the challenging hike up the monochromatic moraine field. There we’d set up camp for the night. The moraine consists of five football fields’ worth of rubble on an incline. Shouldering my heavy pack, I began the solemn march up the irregular stone staircase, over and around car-sized boulders.
The narrowness of the shared track forced me to take note of climbers who appeared to be retreating from on high, their gear wet, their faces scrubbed from the cold. Suddenly, among the hordes I spotted a face I recognized. It was our friend Jim, who I like to call “The Safety Officer” for his habit of taking precautions while climbing that strike me as the equivalent of wearing two seatbelts while driving. Though beads of rain still scattered his Gore Tex, his face looked cheerfully sanguine as he greeted us.
“Funny meeting you…” said Jim.
“How’d it go?” I inquired.
He flashed a frown. “We got weathered out on the Petzoldt Route. It rained and hailed on us all morning while we hunkered down up there." He paused. "We tried to climb, but in the end we had no choice but to turn back.”
He’d used all the phrases necessary to discourage the usual teasing. For the first time, I noticed his rag-tag companions who had pulled up behind him and Jim noticed my glance towards them. He introduced them as “Rhino” and “Beardo”, former business school chums he’d hoped to supply with the memorable experience of ascending The Grand. They lifted their dejected heads long enough to shake our hands. My fingers had plumped and reddened from lack of circulation in the cold and Rhino squeezed them a bit hard.
I winced. “Sorry, my hands are freezing.”
“Here...” Jim began pulling off his gloves.
I tried to protest.
“I won’t be needing ‘em. We’re on our way back down.” He hitched a thumb toward the congenial valley below.
“Are you sure?” I asked slowly.
“We’ll be drinking beers in the Cowboy Bar in another three hours,” he grinned.
That settled it.
He handed over a pair of men’s size medium Well’s Lamont gloves, lined with sheepskin but slightly damp. I took them as greedily as if he’d offered me the Elder Wand and pulled them over my women’s size extra small hands. They fit like a pair of floppy catcher’s mitts.
Jim, Rhino, and Beardo turned in the direction of beer while we turned back to face the moraine. That night, I tucked the Wells Lamonts under my makeshift pillow for extra padding from the rocks. The next morning, we awoke in the pre-dawn, swallowed a cold breakfast, and pulled on our headlamps to begin the remaining trek to the base of the climb. For two solid hours, our team of three processed up the mountain. Our headlamps and the headlamps of climbers ahead of us floated in the inky air like buoys on a calm sea. In the beam of my light, I watched my breath expire in neat little wisps. The air grew thinner.
By 7 a.m., we’d breached the headwall, an intermediate cliff which we ascended with the aid of a fixed rope. Thick and knotted, it proved easy to grasp hand-over-hand while we stepped from one patch of terrace to another. By 9 a.m., we’d threaded “The Eye of the Needle”, having entered and exited a short natural tunnel in the rock. Finally, we stood on the famous Wall Street, a veritable sidewalk protruding out from the east face of the massif. We craned our necks upward as if standing in NYC gawking up at the Stock Exchange Building.
Inspired, I decided to become the bull.
“Can I lead out?”
My partners conceded, we roped up, and I began heading south along Wall Street. After thirty feet, I noticed an unwelcome trend: the sidewalk narrowed linearly. Worse yet, the last visible spot before it mysteriously rounded a bend was no wider than a bar stool.
Hmmm….
I wedged a large camming device into a nearby crack and pressed on to investigate what lay around that corner. Like many, we’d decided to climb the route in approach shoes, not our usual climbing slippers, and I began to regret the lack of dexterity as I edged forth. Furthermore, the wall above the sidewalk began to bulge out like a potbellied stove, forcing me toward the brink. Luckily, where the wall met the sidewalk gaped a small crack. I underclung this cold crack with my hands, still toasty and warm in the trusty Wells Lamont gloves. I soon began to feel like I was playing a game of crab soccer, my legs flexed deeply, my upper body leaning back as the pot belly continued to expand outward. When it became difficult to inch out any farther, I craned my neck around the bulge…
GREAT SCOTT! What is THAT!?
The first rays of weak sunlight had illuminated a 2,000 foot drop into an abyss, at the bottom of which lay the moraine. I suddenly wished Shel Silverstein were still alive-and that I knew his address-so that I could write and inform him I’d found the place Where the Sidewalk Ends.
“I’M AT THE GAP MOVE!” I yelled back to my partners, who I could no longer see. Could they hear the extra two notes my voice had risen?
“GO FOR IT!” yelled the Boy.
He always encouraged, but I wondered if he might secretly be fighting back envy. Without so much as a lively game of Rochambeau, the classic pitch was mine, all mine.
I studied the boulder on the other side of the gap which one must reach out for and grasp the top of-some five feet away-in order not to take a sideways dive into the abyss. At once, a glorious YEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAW” broke the air from above. I processed the meaning of that sound: A climber ahead of me had just completed this pitch. Elation. That meant it had been difficult…
“Well, if he can do it, so can I!” my stubborn brain decided.
As I ruminated on this, one hand began to slip out of the sweaty sheepskin, then the other. Yikes! I threw a glance back toward my last cam, now a good fifteen feet away.
Oh, ill fated gloves! I needed to get rid of them-and fast!
With one hand still clutching the rock, I bit down on a leather finger with my teeth, pulled the glove off, and threw it across the gap. It tottered atop the large boulder on the other side as if wishing to play out before my very eyes what a 2,000 foot drop into the yawn might look like. Keeping panic in check, I switched hands, bit off the second glove, and threw it across the gap too, this time with more gusto. Glove number two landed safely on the back side of the boulder. I hastily snatched a small grey tri-cam from my over-the-shoulder sling of gear and wielded it in my teeth while my fingers searched desperately for the trigger... I pulled the trigger back like a hypodermic needle and plunged it into a small seam at my feet, reducing the fall potential from fifteen feet to five... I could live with that.
In order to complete my transaction on Wall Street, I needed to get closer to that boulder. I didn’t like the idea of resorting to a lunge. My newly-naked fingers traversed out on a small flake the size of the sidewall of a tunafish can. Underneath me, my deeply bent legs were still playing that desperate game of crab soccer, my torso still arched back from the bulge by a strenuous thirty degrees. I didn’t trust my low-tech shoes as I plastered them onto the pot belly to diminish the distance by a few more inches. Oh, to hell with being 5’4”! A few more inches… that was all I needed… Streeeeeeeeeeetch….
“I GOT IT!” I yelled to no-one but myself.
With fear as my catalyst, I stepped across the insanity of the gap and scampered atop the boulder, chest heaving with my own breath. I was ready to let out the roar of a bull moose, but instead my lips slowly curled into a smile.
Straight above me, a low angle ramp called "The Golden Staircase" glinted in the sun. Chickenheads simply made for the human hand to hold onto protruded out everywhere like gilded nuggets of gold. And the best part of all? I’d just joined the ranks of the initiated and I was eager to start telling naïve males tales of “The Gap” while wearing a shit-eating grin. I picked up the Wells Lamonts and pressed onward, into the sun.