Well, the climbing part of Day 2 was mostly downhill, unfortunately. After a night of feeling like the hut would be blown off the mountain, we managed maybe 4 hours of sleep total before waking at 4 AM for breakfast. The wind had not died down.
Paul opted to scrap the summit attempt because he felt gassed from Day 1, so Christian and I took off from the Hut at 6 AM. We climbed maybe 250 feet to the Black Dike on the southern face of the Grand, at which point it became very obvious that a summit attempt would be very dangerous. The wind kept trying blow us off the mountain. When your guide is saying, "Wow, this is windy," I take that to be a bad sign when your guide is intimidated by the weather. So we scrapped the climb, headed back down to the hut, and then picked up Paul and headed down.
And a good thing we did. We made it back to the parking lot just as a storm rolled over the summit. That was about 2 PM, which would have put us at the Hut. Hmm... down climbing tired in a rainstorm. No thanks.
Climbing is all about making it back alive. I'm happy I almost made 12,000 feet and felt strong enough to go the distance if it had been safe. Maybe another time...
Without a doubt, my favorite picture of this trip. I snapped this shot from the Black Dike under the Exum Ridge... aspen glow at 6 AM of the Middle Teton. Amazing, and so crazy to have to climb 5400 vertical feet to get something this perfect at just the right time.
This was as high as we went. The hut is visible from the Black Dike.
Looking out into Idaho from the Saddle. The flat top mountain, Tabletop Mountain, featured a helicopter rescue last year of a climber who broke his ankle. The helicopter was flown by Harrison Ford (of Indiana Jones/Han Solo fame). My guess is that it wasn't quite so windy that day. To the right is a famous peak called (and I am not making this up) Mary's Nipple.
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