For my generation and circle of friends the north face of the Grand Teton was always the test piece for grand alpinism in the lower 48. It was one of the few domestic alpine settings with the history and the powerful alchemy of weather, glaciers, rock quality, and route finding challenges to match our minds image of what climbing in the European Alps must be like. Sometimes the reality of the thing can never match the dream, but this would not be one of those times. During the mid 1980’s John Ferguson and I had a go at the North Face after our usual flirtations with the Middle Teton. We walked up the valley to the foot of the Teton Glacier, geared up in crampons and axes, and headed to the base of the north face. The weather had been gorgeous and the reflective snow of the Teton Glacier felt like a solar oven set to broil. Once in the shade of that daunting north face all was well insofar as temperatures were concerned, but the setting rather overwhelmed our senses. We did not have a topo of the established north face route, but thought “how hard can it be to find the route?” Pretty hard, it turns out, at least for us on that occasion. At this point the day was rapidly moving on and the clouds were moving in. Being this was an alpine grade IV and that we had started the day from the Teton Climbers’ Ranch, we expected to bivy somewhere on the route. Originally we just figured we would go until the lack of daylight forced us to bivy, and then make the best of it. We roped up and John took the first pitch, which was not the actual first pitch of the actual climb as described in the guidebook. Whatever it was, it was pretty stout. We were both climbing in mountaineering boots and shared wearing the alpine pack with our food, water, parkas, and bivy sacks. I thought that first pitch was about 5.9+ and that John’s non-whimpering lead was pretty heroic. I have never been quite so happy to not be on the sharp end of the rope as for that lead. Fortunately there was a passable ledge beneath an overhang at the top of that pitch, because the weather decided to break. I have heard that the Eskimos have 50 names for snow and I would like to know the name for precipitation that is equal parts rain, graupel, and rocks. The choss brought down from the north face by the weather was truly epic and we were not about to leave our protected perch. We burrowed into our bivy gear and practiced looking unamused. The following morning dawned icky and poopy, with so much crap raining down from the north face that it felt like being down range in the butts at Camp Geiger on qualification day. Since the overhang would protect us rapping down our first pitch from the previous day, we wisely elected to bail. Once back on the glacier we were able to glissade fast enough to get out of the impact zone safely and avoid further drama. Thus ended our first attempt through this alpine rite of passage.

Fast forward to the summer of 1988 when so many fires were going on in Yellowstone that, from the Teton summits, it looked like a nuclear battlefield. Charlie Pitts and I had ventured north to the Tetons, thinking that the drought that had resulted in the Yellowstone conflagration might give us a suitable break in the weather to give the north face a go. For this attempt we actually bivied high in the valley in order to spend more daylight actually climbing than hiking into the climb. There was nary a cloud in the sky and the approach up the Teton glacier went quickly. This time we were armed with actual route knowledge and avoided a bunch of silliness looking for the right start. This was good because it allowed us to postpone our silliness until we were much higher up on the face. That silliness manifested itself when I thought I could avoid a bunch of pointless traversing around from one ledge to another by climbing straight up between the ledges in an obvious crack system. The crack system looked nice from far but it was far from nice. Once committed to it and half way up, it started to lean out and flair into a wet, slightly overhanging wide crack with round edges. This was pretty much the perfect time for the heel of one of my ancient mountaineering boots to start delaminating. After successfully grunting my way to the top of that little fright-fest I figured it was just the north Face’s way of getting back at me for whimpering so shamelessly on the hard pitch that John had led some years earlier. After that both the climbing and the route finding seemed pretty straight forward. Once on top we were rewarded with a perfect afternoon in which to watch what looked like the potential onset of nuclear winter. Once off the mountain and back at our bivy site I consumed all of the tape in our first aid kit to keep the soles of my boots attached until we had returned to the Teton Climbers Ranch. A bit off topic here, but if Providence is actually the land of milk and honey, I think I would rather go to the Teton Climbers Ranch.

Although I have climbed technically harder rock routes on mountains in Colorado and California, and climbed bigger, icier mountains in Alaska and South America, the North Face of the Grand remains the most quintessential manifestation of grand alpinism as I imagined it as a young lad growing up reading “The White Spider”. And the Teton Climbers Ranch is actually Heaven on Earth.