The Grand Teton, WY

About a month or two before our trip, Charly brought up the idea of climbing the Grand. It was more than coincidental timing, as a few days prior the same idea had popped into my head and I had ruminated on it for awhile before forgetting about it. Since it had been on my mind, and I had already come to terms with the idea, when he brought it up, I was game. We would make a two day attempt, with it being just us in our group, and no pressure to finish. We bought a lightweight tarp that hooks into our hiking poles for a shelter, a guided atc, and a couple of foam sleeping pads that ended up being lighter weight, easier to set up, and far more comfortable than our fancy made-for-backpacking blowup ones. Before we knew it, we were 2 and a half weeks into our vacation and the time we anticipated had finally come. We practiced the systems we would use in a tree in the back yard of Charlie's parent's house the night before, and packed our bags the best we could.

The Grand isn't even an entirely huge mountain, but for someone who has only hiked one other mountain in her life, it was intimidating, to say the least. We drove the three hours to the trailhead, with a stop in Rexburg to buy a couple of bladders and some snickers bars. After filling our bladders and getting our bear canister at the visitor's center in Jackson, we started our hike with a permit to camp at the moraine, and man that hike destroyed me! It took us 5 hours to reach the moraine, and I've never felt so weak or so exhausted in my entire life. I practically dragged myself up the mountain, sometimes taking a break after only 6 steps towards the end of it. I'm not a good hiker when I have a pack on, but I've backpacked enough to know that we did bring all of the essentials and nothing else. I knew we had packed smart and there was nothing to regret that was slowing us down, just my inability to handle steep terrain after living in Florida for a year.

When we finally got to the spot we would camp at, though, I can remember taking off my pack and feeling so proud of myself for doing it. It also didn't take long while walking around without the extra weight to feel my energy coming back. We made camp, ate peanut butter sandwiches, and went to bed at 8pm. We were all snuggled in, hoping the sun would set soon, when I had a little bit of a panic attack. It took a moment or two to find a comfortable position to fall asleep in, and while I was laying there, I was thinking about Eliza and how this was my first night away from her and suddenly, all I wanted was to be home with her. The exhaustion took over and I strongly debated packing up everything and leaving right then. I did the math, though- the time it would take to pack up in the fading light, hike down, and drive three hours home, and knew it would not leave us going back to get a good nights rest or even some baby cuddles since Em would be asleep.

The entire time leading up to the trip, whenever we talked to anyone about doing the Grand, I would always play it off like we weren't gonna make it. Deep down, though, I just knew we would. For months I felt that knowing and then, after that small panic attack, for the first time, I really questioned it. I basically fell asleep telling myself we were heading back home when we woke up. Charlie didn't tell me this until we were on our way down, but after seeing me stressed out he had felt a similar way. After about five minutes, and 30 seconds spent hunched over while I tried to focus my breathing, my anxiety disappeared as soon as it came. I fell asleep under the full moon, only waking here and there throughout the night to look out from our shelter and be able to distinguish the landscape around me from the way the moon's light illuminated the whole valley, and got a good night's rest in. Charlie would claim that he didn't sleep a single second of the whole night, but his snoring would say otherwise.*

When 4am came, we woke up for good and looked at each other and were like, well, let's do this. We took down camp (if you could even call it that) and finished packing our bags for the second day. Basically, I carried a small bag with my essentials and a few cams, and Charly carried his things along with the rope and the rest of the protection. There were a few more sections of steep hiking, a section where we used fixed ropes to aid us in reaching the lower saddle, and hours of somewhat exposed scrambling until we reached the upper saddle. Not enough exposure on these parts to insure death... just maybe a broken back, legs, or, if you really fell wrong, even death. After we reached the upper saddle there was a bit more scrambling with more and more exposure until we roped up for the last few pitches. I am proud to say I did my first trad climb! I set protection on the Owen Chimney, and it was the perfect beginner trad climb for me. Way below my grade, easy climbing, with many places to set pro. There was a time in my life when merely the talk of trad climbing completely freaked me out, so to be able to do this, as well as do it without fear, created such a sense of accomplishment for myself.

We reached the summit right after that and barely spent enough time up there to finish eating a peanut butter sandwich and some m&m's. When we got up there and turned our phones off of airplane mode, they were flooded with voicemails and text messages about hurricane Irma which was headed in the direction of our home in Florida. It felt surreal taking care of all the voicemails- many of them were doctors cancelling appointments that wanted a call back and worried friends- while on top of a mountain. There were so many that we left most of the messages for when we were on the car ride home and began to make our way down. We made a couple of rappels off the side of the mountain and I told Charly I felt like I had lost my climber's blood, as this was the most exciting part of it all so far! I think it was more the fact that our system had me backed in two different ways, and it was the first time in literally hours that I was moving without the threat of a dangerous fall. It had the similar feeling of top roping a 5.11, where the moves are difficult yet doable, and you are just cruising up the cliff without caring about where your feet are in relation to the rope, or where your next clipping stance is, or what the consequences of falling are. It felt nice to turn my brain somewhat off and feel the safety the rope provided. I mean, the summit was alright, but with the descent still under our feet it felt like a false summit, and the view wasn't much different than what you saw the entire time ascending the mountain.

Anyway, on our scramble down we ended up getting just a little off track and down climbing some sketchier terrain that somehow prompted the question of who else we would feel comfortable with in this situation and who, if they were here, we would have felt would have needed to find a better path since they didn't our similar background in climbing. Not entirely sure why it came up then or why it is now, but it was an interesting question that prompted insightful dialogue.

After we made it off of the section of scrambling, it was pretty simple from then on there. We refilled our bladders at the lower saddle with more glacier water, repacked our bags that we left at the moraine campground, and after 14 hours of hiking the second day, made it back to our car at 7:30pm.

All in all:
Left trailhead at 2pm
Reached Moraine campground at 7pm
Left camp at 5am
Reached summit at 11am
Made it back to the cars at 7:30pm

I don't think I ate a full meal the entire time we were out there, my body just wanted small snacks at two hour intervals and occasionally most of a peanut butter sandwich. We started the hike after eating some Wendy's, though, and that was how we would finish it! Thinking about that greasy fast food totally got me through the last few hours of the hike, where for another 30 minutes I had some more anxiety about things completely unrelated to what we were doing. In the moment, my anxiety can feel life stopping. The second it passes, though, it is always in the rear view mirror, along with a healthy dose of introspection to get me through the rest of my life. I am both grateful for it, tired of it, and glad that after seeking help for it, that dealing with an anxiety attack two days in a row, or even just one day in a week or month or year is a rarity.

As we drove out of Grand Teton National park that day, it felt completely surreal that we just did that, and even more surreal that it didn't feel that bad! Everyone prepared me for this experience where I would just suffer and hate myself, but I think it got so overhyped in my mind, because even though it felt amazing to take off our shoes, get a burger, and go home to our sleeping toddler, I felt like I could have kept hiking if I had to. I definitely didn't want to keep hiking, but I wasn't in a pit of despair, either. I did feel beat and grateful to be able to sit on an actual toilet in the porta-hut at the end of the trail... and as the sun set behind us while driving out of the park, did tell Charly the famous last words: "I am never doing that again!"

As we just celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary, while talking over breadsticks and olive oil, Charly asked me how we would celebrate our 10th anniversary- the big one- and my only reply was to hike a bigger, harder mountain. We'll see how that goes.

The above photos are from my film camera taken on the first day. The second day, and the photos are below, were taken on our phones.