Up the Grand again

After dealing with a painful shoulder for a few weeks, Mark finally decided to go get an MRI. As was somewhat expected, he had torn his labrum, and created a small bone spur in the process. He wanted one last weekend on the Grand before surgery, so we had planned to do the Petzoldt ridge with one of his friends from work.
After spending a few days in Rapid City hanging out with Jason and my parents, I took off at 3am on Thursday morning. I arrived back in Jackson at 1:30pm and stopped in the park to see if I could get a camping permit. I managed to get the very last permit in Garnet Canyon, the launching spot for the Grand. I was set to camp in the Morraine, at 10,200ft, in an attempt to let my body acclimatize. I packed and set off from my car at 6pm. At 6:02pm it began to hail pretty hard, so I sprinted back to my car and decided to sleep a bit and take off at midnight. However, I was worried about getting lost in the dark. So, when I awoke at 7:30pm to a gray sky but no precip, I took off again.
Hiking in daylight was nice, and I covered a decent amount of ground before 9:30pm, when it became dark. Soon after, I encountered a climbing pair headed down the mountain. Seeing that one of the guys was in a lot of pain, I asked if I could help. He had run into a rock while glissading, and had broken his arm, right below his elbow. He was trying to hike through rock fields, while stabilizing his arm with his other hand- no wonder he was in so much pain! Within about 25 minutes I had helped them use the removable padding of one of their packs and some extra clothes to make a splint and sling. I then quickly took off, eager to get to the Morraine.
I was able to stick to the path for the most part, getting lost only a bit in the rock fields. By 10:30pm I thought I must be close to the Morraine, but the trail was becoming impossible to follow. The darkness left me with little clue of which direction I needed to be heading, so I spent considerable time exploring, then backtracking to the trail. At 11:15 the mountains were enveloped by a whiteout of clouds, and by 11:30 my visibility was no more than 5 feet. Finally, at 11:45, I lost the path for good and decided that I should find shelter and attempt to sleep. So, not knowing where I was, I found a rock to crawl under, covered my pack with a raincover, and got into my sleeping bag.
Within 5 minutes of lying down the whiteout became so dense that I couldn't see my hand when it was stretched in front of my body. I spent about 45 minutes shivering slightly before I decided to get out my emergency blanket and put it around my sleeping bag. I was then decently warm and comfortable under the rock. It began hailing, then the hail turned to snow, and finally rain. I lied there, unable to sleep, though not worried because I was dry and relatively warm. I pulled my mummy bag so that only my nose stuck out, and just listened to the impressive gusts of wind. At about 3:30am I opened my sleeping bag enough so that I could see out, and was utterly surprised to see a clear sky and stars. I poked my head out and saw two beams of light below me, and about 1/4 mile away. Headlamps! I thought, 'I bet they're on the trail!'. So, I marked their position by a big rock nearby, quickly packed up my things, and took off toward that rock, hoping to find the trail nearby.
I found the trail again and had made it to the Lower Saddle by 4:45am. I curled up in my emergency blanket and waited for Mark and his friend to show up, which they did around 6:15am. Mark said that his shoulder was hurting quite a bit on the hike in, so we decided to forgo the Petzoldt Ridge and climb the Upper Exum instead, an easier route. The route was covered in a thin layer of ice, and clouds chased us all the way up the mountains, making for some hairy spots. But, it was a fun climb, and we hit the summit at 11:55am. The descent went smoothly, and by the time we had reached the Lower Saddle again it had begun to snow. We hiked through a blizzard for a bit, but the snow stopped below 10,000 ft. We made it back to the cars around 8pm, and although I was incredibly tired, my body felt marginally better than it had on our last trip up the Grand.


This was my last trip up the Grand for the summer. Mark had surgery a week later and everything went well. We left Jackson a few days later. I already miss the Tetons, and will definitely be back soon. They left a much larger impact upon me than I anticipated heading out there at the beginning of the summer.