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Doing this with a buddy come summer. Anyone got any words ?
Data jackpot!
1.) Where does one fly into?
2.) How do you recommend preparing?
3.) Anything you feel might be helpful to know?
Agree that this (and many other peaks) isn't always a walk in the park. The Jenny Lake Rangers save more lives than they should.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_tetonrescue.html
Hey WhiteCoat, thanks dude !
1.) Neither of us are mountaineers. I was a boy scout, and I "know my knots", but that's as much experience as we have.
2.) We're planning to use a guide-service. There are no mountains in Florida here for me to hike. Planning on a multi-day trek because I sure as hell will need to "acclimatize".
3.) MOAR photos, please (this goes out to anyone/everyone else, as well).
Oh, you'll be fine with the Exum guides. They're excellent with clients. Not cheap. But excellent. Plus you won't have to lug the heavy pack to the lower saddle. You'll get to do that 5000 vertical foot hike to the lower saddle with a day pack. That alone is probably worth the $800 or whatever they're charging these days. I'd still try to get them to take you up the Upper Exum if you can, but they might insist on the OS.
You might want to climb a little one first some weekend in N Georgia or NC. I was amazed to learn for 60K you can climb Everest with no experience, but it may be the last thing you ever do.
UPDATE:
Training is coming along nicely. Need to buy gear. Can anyone recommend a set of pants they really like for this purpose?
Also, BuddyClimber told me: "No cotton at 10,000 feet." Can anyone recommend some undies that will work?
@The White Coat Investor -- in your opinion, how does the grade at grand teton compare with yosemite? been thinking about doing the great teet for some time now.
View attachment 198564
This was taken shortly after dawn, about an hour and about 4 pitches before the storm hit.
Day one of climbing school was today. Wow. We're filthy, tired, and got our asses kicked. Forest fire has everything smokey. At local mexican restaurant. Check you all later.
HR = 122. BP = xxx/xx. RR = 34. SaO2 = 90%.
Doing this with a buddy come summer. Anyone got any words ?
TRIP RECAP:
DAY 1 (Sunday): Fly from Tampa to Denver, meet TripBuddy in Denver at airport pub. Ask bartender: "Hey; what's a good local beer?" Guy responds with "Coors Light". Lolz. Fly to Jackson, Wyoming. Pick up rental car. TripBuddy wants to upgrade our rental car to his "dream car", which is a red convertible Mustang GT. Boom. Top down, we cruise the highway south into Jackson, which is a cute little town. Check into hotel and drop our gear. Starving, we hit up the "Silver Dollar Bar and Grill" for food. Buffalo burger was tasty. Feeling better, we get in the car and drive the "Teton Pass" around to the other side of the mountain range. Check Idaho off of "list of states that I haven't been in". The country is beautiful. The mountains, the trees... Dear God. I've never seen such beauty. Drive back into town. Hit up "Million Dollar Cowboy Bar" for a drink. What a cool place. The barstools are SADDLES! Enjoy drink, cash it in for the night.
DAY 2 (Monday): Awake around 6AM. Drive to Yellowstone thru south entrance. On the way, we drive right thru a herd of Buffalo. Crazy. Reach Yellowstone. Saw "Old Faithful". Asked park ranger to "push the button that makes the geyser go off". Moved on to Grand Prismatic Spring, Paint Pots, and Yellowstone Grand Canyon, all of which were amazing. Drew dirty looks from parents when I convinced their child to ask the park ranger: "where to buy the bear food". FUN FACT: Yellowstone is home to 30,000 buffalo and 3,000,000,000,000 Chinese tourists, all with obnoxiously large cameras. PROTIP: Your iPad's camera is not as good as your smartphone camera. Put it down and knock it off.
Satisfied with Yellowstone and out of beef jerky, we drive back thru the south entrance. Just after exiting the park, two park ranger vehicles barricade off the highway south to Jackson. "Road's closed" they say. The Berry Creek Fire has jumped the creek (and the highway), and driving south would be entering an inferno. Park ranger tells us that we should "stay here for the night, or drive to Cody, WY". No way. We have climbing school bright and early. I bust out my phone, and TripBuddy and I take a Mustang GT over 30 miles of dusty washboarded mountain road (Grassy Lake Road to Ashton Flagg Road) and pop out just north of Tetonia, Idaho - on the OTHER side of the mountain range. Drive back to Jackson, demolish some food. Goodnight. Road is still closed as of the time of this posting due to the fire.
DAY 3 (Tuesday): Climbing school, day 1. We head to the backcountry with the Exum guides and learn how to rope in, belay, do some bouldering. Fun stuff. Climb some pitches. Guide looks at me and says: "You haven't eaten or drank anything; fix that." I say: "I'm not hungry or thirsty. I'm nauseous and have a headache." This was my first clue that ol' RustedFox doesn't handle altitude well. Do some rappelling at the end of the day. It gets cold quick when the sun hits the other side of the mountain. Finish day one and wonder "where all the oxygen went". Pulse oximeter back at the hotel reads 90% on room air, and I'm tachy at rest. Zofran ODT for the win. Snake River Brewing Company had good food, but marginal beer. Enough with the IPAs, hipsters. Slept hard.
DAY 4 (Wednesday): Climbing school, day 2. More technical work. Climbed several class 5.7 to 5.9 pitches; but did not do it very well. Headache is back. Now wheezing. Pulse ox in the mid-80 range, HR in the 130s. Fell twice. Carpopedal spasm while clinging to vertical rock face was not cool. If it weren't for the ropes, I would not be typing this right now... that exposure. Scared as $hit. Made it to top of pitch and rolled onto my back for 30 seconds and pant/wheeze before having a near-syncopal episode. Absolutely "saw stars" two or three times - but did not lose postural tone or consciousness. Now I'm scared. Turbo scared. Decided then and there that summitting the Grand is "not a good idea for me". Still had fun with climbing school and all. Mountain guide says to me: "You can do it, man. You climbed the technical stuff... But do you want to ?" Answer: Thanks, amigo - but I'm sleeping in tomorrow and not summitting. TripBuddy is unaffected by the altitude (lives at elevation) and will summit. Return to base camp/offices where I politely tell them I will not climb tomorrow. Owner gal looks at me and asks where I'm from. "Florida." What elevation? "Six feet above sea level." Gal looks at me like she's seen a ghost. Six feet to seven thousand feet in 3 days is apparently not a good idea.
Head back to town, do some laundry, get dinner. Asked TripBuddy how his plate of pasta/meatballs tasted at the "Town Square Tavern". The response that I got was: "You could pile dog**** in front of me right now, and I'd tell you it was delicious." I decided that "mountaineering" belongs on the list of things that RustedFox is not good at, somewhere between "basketball", "Calculus" and "real-time strategy games".
DAY 5 (Thursday): Drove TripBuddy to the Exum Mountain Guide office for his ascent. Hug him in case he doesn't come back. I've known this guy since sixth grade. He looks nervous. Drive back to town. Eat a monster lunch. Nap for 3 hours. Wake up, still tired. Drive around and see various sights and other wildlife. Took several "small hikes" and did touristy stuff. Exhausted. Think about TripBuddy in the "lower saddle" while sipping on a margarita at "Hatch" (decent mexican food; not great). Still tachycardic with pulse ox in the low 90s at rest. Read the comment above about nurse ordering a sepsis bundle on me. Hardest I've laughed all year, in all seriousness.
DAY 6 (Friday): More touristy stuff and small hikes. I still can't believe the beauty. TripBuddy comes back in the late afternoon/early evening. "How was it?", I ask. TripBuddy gives mixed response. Sure, the view was incredible from the top - he says - but the hike wasn't fun. "All I saw was the tops of my feet and all I could hear was the guide telling us that we needed to MOVE MOVE MOVE." He shows me pics from summit (cool), and says "I'm retired from mountaineering." Says that the climbing itself wasn't as hard as day 2 of climbing school... but the expsoure was amazingly scary. TripBuddy says to me: "You could handle the climbing, Fox - but you can't force more red cells out of your marrow overnight." TripBuddy passes the hell out after I buy him a congratulatory steak at the "Snake River Grill" (AMAZING FOOD!).
DAY 7 (Saturday): Awake with TripBuddy, who says that he needs breakfast, now. Watched as TripBuddy consumed at least 4,000 calories at breakfast while I sipped my coffee. Drove south along the Snake and Hoback rivers (beautiful!) to Granite Falls and Granite Hot Springs. Soaked our aging bones in the warm mineral springs, which felt amazing. Get out of hot springs and sit with TripBuddy on the deck for a bit. Feels like someone is shaking the deck. Wait.... EARTHQUAKE! - No joke! Magnitude 4.8 quake lasted about 15-20 seconds. Looked up to see if any of those big rocks on the hillside were a-gonna come rolling down. They didn't. Back in the mustang, top down. Drive back to Jackson, see actual forest fire up 'yonder in the trees somewhere on the south bank of the Hoback river. Wondered if Smokey the Bear was on the telephone already about it. Last night in town, so we hit up the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar again for drinks and the best country music I've ever heard; proper live fiddle and harmonica and all.
All things considered... I still had an amazing trip, even though I didn't summit. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, although I'd stay for a few more days to acclimatize and I would certainly start acetazolamide prior to landing in Jackson. Someone needs to spin this off into a thread about how to anticipate and treat altitude sickness/HAPE/HACE/etc. I am absolutely going back and bringing my wife to Yellowstone, so at the very least - I want to know how/when I should start the Diamox.
More water, less alcohol, a bit more physical preparation for an intensely physically demanding trip, and one more night at 7000 feet is probably all you needed.
One more night at altitude is worth way more than any dose of diamox. You can't rush acclimatization.
Dehydration + altitude sickness will kick the snot out of anyone.
Where'd they take you for your climbing school, Guide's Wall?
Coming from a fellow sea level person, it might not. I didn't climb at Jackson, but both there, Yellowstone, and Big Sky, I had periodic breathing for the entire week I was at each. Make me feel ****ing exhausted. Was able to hike pretty well though.More water, less alcohol, a bit more physical preparation for an intensely physically demanding trip, and one more night at 7000 feet is probably all you needed.
One more night at altitude is worth way more than any dose of diamox. You can't rush acclimatization.
Dehydration + altitude sickness will kick the snot out of anyone.
Where'd they take you for your climbing school, Guide's Wall?
Thanks all,
Just so people don't get the wrong idea; I'm wasn't out boozing every night. I limited myself to one beer per night, with the lone exceptions of day 1 (beer + irish coffee to pick me up) and last night (throwdown at Million Dollar Cowboy Bar! Whoo!)
Climbing school... hmm - not sure. We went to the Exum offices, then rode a boat across Jenny Lake to a trailhead and hiked up into the backcountry. It was no joke, this climbing school. Climbed several vertical walls with multiple pitches. Scary stuff. If the rope failed (or something else went wrong) during school - it was game over for old Fox.