Today was our final day of preparation for our ascent of The Grand Teton. Our instruction today (courtesy of Exum guide Lynne Wolfe) built substantially on the fundamentals we learned yesterday and as a result we were able to complete 2 full multi-pitch climbs, 2 practice rappels and some bouldering and down-climbing. The first climb of the day was The Book, a vertical series of 3 pitches with small ledges in between.
After completing our climb of The Book, we quickly stopped to celebrate with a lunch break and a few pictures of the surround views of the Grand Teton, Mt. Owen and Jenny Lake.
After lunch, we practiced rappelling down a stretch of rock which (as Lynne told us) is fairly close to the stretch we will rappel down after summiting The Grand.
Our final climb of the day was The Tree, a 4 pitch section of 5.5-5.7 rock that left us exhausted but happy at the progress we made during the day.
The past few days have been one of the best experiences of my life and I have no doubt that our time spent on The Grand tomorrow and Thursday will continue that trend, whether we reach the summit or not. I won’t be posting any updates tomorrow night since we’ll be spending the night at the Lower Saddle (11,650 ft.), but I do hope to blog a bit once we’ve returned from our expedition on Thursday night. Thanks to all of those (especially family) that have been following the blog this week and giving us encouragement and support throughout our time here in Jackson Hole. We’ll be thinking of you all as we start our climb tomorrow.
Click here for more photos from our trip.
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