The Grand Teton

I called up my friend Cody a couple of weeks ago and told him that I wanted to climb a mountain. So, less than two weeks later we were starting the 7000 ft. accent to the top of the Grand Teton. We left on Saturday afternoon and hiked up to a place called "The Caves" to spend the night. We tried to fall asleep as soon as the sun went down because we were getting up at 3:30 am to start our summit hike. We wanted to be sure we were on our way down before noon in case weather started to role in. So we hiked by head-lamp the first few hours of the morning. The sun came up right about the time we started getting to some more technical parts. We only had to wear our harnesses and rope up for a couple of sections. And then not because it was that technical but because it was a 2,500 ft. fall straight down if you made any small mistake. Unfortunately it had snowed on Aug 9th, so the route we picked had some ice on one of the "chimneys" that we had to climb that wasn't supposed to be that difficult, so we hadn't roped up. Needless to say, all three of us are grateful to still be alive. From there the summit was easy, a long rappel by-passed the climbing sections, and then it was a LONG hike out to the car. We would have been on the road by about 7 pm if I hadn't been a little delirious from hypoxia (altitude sickness) and thought I was lost. That little gem set us back another couple hours. It was a cool experience. But next year I will try to be a little bit more prepared physically and give myself a little more than 24 hours to adjust to the altitude.