As I took off into the chilly dark night, the stars were out and I saw a few meteors. The approach was not difficult to follow, but it was very enclosed by bushes and eventually trees, making for what I imagined to be a perfect bear hangout. So, I clapped and sang myself along, and stopped fairly often to survey my surroundings. By about 4:45, I was sick of being in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, by myself. I had seen headlamps down below me eariler, but didn't see them now. Surveying the sky, it was completely overcast, and the clouds didn't look nice. I stopped for about 15 minutes trying to decide what to do. I finally decided that I couldn't justify continuing to ascend with the sky looking like it did, so I turned around. I had hiked down for about 30 minutes when dawn hit and I began to feel much more comfortable on the trail. I came upon the other climbers I had seen the headlamps of from earlier and they asked if I had already summitted and was headed back down. I replied that I had instead been scared away by the clouds. They brushed it off and said they're still high in the sky, no worries for now. They continued on, and I again sat and contemplated my situation. I finally decided that I would go up until I got wet or until I saw lightning, and that it was just too early to forgo the hike. So, back up I hiked.
I came across another pair of climbers eventually and stopped to chat. They were headed up the north ridge, a much more difficult climb. They were surprised to see me without a climbing partner. As I hiked on and finally reached the base of Teewinot, there was a cluster of about 10 climbers within sight of each other. Most were pursuing the same route as I. I decided to let most of them go in front of me because it seemed more likely I would find the easiest route up with people to generally follow.
After climbing a bit, we came across the big snow field on Teewinot. I had read the accident reports, and many of the accidents on the mountain came from this snowfield. As I stepped on, I immediately noticed that the snow sucked. I knew that it would be difficult to self arrest if I fell, and I stopped to consider the consequences. There was a rock field at the bottom of the snow field, which would hurt to fall into, but there was no cliff. The consequences were not life-threatening, so I proceeded. I made it 90% up the snow field and was very excited to get back onto rock, when I fell. I dug into the snow with my axe, but wasn't rewarded with the familiar sound and feeling of immediately halting. Instead, I slid, lost control of the axe for a few seconds, then regained control. I got the axe directly under me, dug my feet in and put all my weight into the arrest. But, I continued to slide. I remember thinking, 'ok, this isn't working, but I'm doing everything right and all I can do is keep digging in. If I slide all the way down to the rock field, I'll be ok, so just stick with it.' After a 90 foot slide, I came to a stop, about 60 feet above the snow field. All the other climbers were within earshot to hear the fall and slide, so they were all watching. A few yelled out a congrats on the arrest, and two climbers offered to snake down a rope and belay me up the snow field. (I wasn't the only one to fall that day- a guide did the same and fell into the rock field, slicing his leg open, and another climber had managed to arrest a similar fall the day before.)
I paused to regain composure, then retraced my route up the snow field and successfully reached the rocks. I laughed about the fall with a few of the climbers. I was never in any real danger, and I wasn't panicked while I was sliding, but it was still felt like a bad start to my climb. It was at this point that the two climbers that were headed up the north ridge suggested I rope up with them. Although they were climbing a much harder route (5.8), the idea of having partners and being tied to a rope was incredibly enticing, so I agreed. We set off up Teewinot at 7:30am.
Luckily, my two new partners were safe, experienced climbers, and a ton of fun to climb with. We climbed about 10 pitches and did about 5 scrambles up to the summit. We were in a total white out for about 3 hours, unable to see anything more that 100 feet from us. It wasn't the safest weather conditions to be climbing in, and I was worried about getting caught in a storm, but we couldn't descend the route we were ascending, so there was nothing to do but push on and enjoy the climb. Eventually the white out cleared, and though we were threatened with some dubious clouds at a few points during the day, we summitted at 7:30pm and managed to get back to the cars by 10:50pm without a single rain drop or lightning strike. There's maybe only 10 days like that a summer in the Tetons. We were incredibly lucky. It's pretty stupid to summit anything in the Tetons past about 2pm. I had promised Mark a 2:30pm turn around time if I hadn't summitted, which was ignored due to my change in route and inability to turn back. He was pretty disappointed in my lack of better judgment, but all I could do is take in the evidence around me and minimize the risks to the best of my ability.
In the end, that route required better planning on all our parts, and I'll never summit anything that late again. But, having said that, our immense luck provided for an absolutely amazing day. The pictures below are from various points up the climb. Absolutely gorgeous. It was so cool to be challenged by some tough rock routes while 5000 feet over the mountain's base. Overall, we gained about 5600 feet, and I hiked for 20 hours straight. My body hated me by the end, but it was probably the most rewarding day I'll experience this summer.
This is from the start of the trail looking at Teewinot, though not taken by me. Both times I stood in this spot it was pitch dark, and I couldn't even tell I was hiking towards a mountain.
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