Pinedale, Wyoming. Tuesday, June 25, 2024
[This blog post title will only make sense to fans of the bizarro movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show]
34 feet. 34 measly feet. That’s how much higher Gannett Peak was than the Grand Teton. But it meant I had to climb it. It’s a five day hike and requires some pretty intense ice climbing.
It took me four tries, although the first two weren’t even really tries. In 1989 we went hiking in the Wind River Range, I was only 35 then and figured we could do it without any experience. I did buy a rope and some crampons, and we got close to where the actual climbing began, but my friends weren’t into it and nothing came of it. We did Fremont Peak instead, the third highest in Wyoming.
We had proposed to do it along with Granite Peak in 2004, but after the tribulations on Granite, we decided not to take an even riskier hike. So we never even started.
At the Highpointers Convention in 2016, where a bunch of us succeeded on Granite Peak, there was another guided climb up Gannett the week afterwards. Everybody but me made it. My rented crampon fell off on a steep ice slope; I was immobilized with fear, balancing on one crampon while the guide came down and reattached the other. I was slower than the rest of the group anyway, but that episode delayed me enough that the guide turned me around on the summit ridge, with worrisome clouds approaching, about a mile short of the top.
Already disappointed, I was further demoralized when the successful summiteers passed me on the way down. I didn’t get back to camp myself until midnight, having to negotiate a treacherous scree slope, with one guide patiently helping me, in the dark. Hiking back out took two additional days; I tried not to act too glum around the other celebrants, even at the “victory dinner” back in Pinedale.
Demoralized, but not daunted. After all, I had been successful on Granite Peak the week before. I decided the best thing to do in the future was to hire a private guide, so that my slowness did not affect the rest of the climbers. The patient guide on the scree slope was Eddie Schoen, he was so kind and competent that I hired him privately the next year, 2017. Gannett was the last of the really hard highpoints (Hood notwithstanding) and I figured I’d better get it done sooner rather than later.
Eddie proposed a different approach. Most of the climbs leave from Pinedale, but that route entails going over an icy scree slope, Bonney Pass, 1200 feet up-and-down on Summit Day, which is difficult enough without that hurdle. It was the reason I didn’t get back until after midnight.
Bonney Pass can be bypassed by an eastern approach, from the town of Crowheart, but that is on the Shoshone reservation, and requires a permit fee, and a 20 mile ATV ride to the trailhead, by a member of the Nation. The hike is still quite challenging, you have to go over Scenic Pass, a hurdle in its own right, but you do that on the first day, not summit day. The entire climb still takes five days.
I dug up a couple of photos of that climb. It does have the advantage of giving you a view of Gannett Peak, not visible on the other approach until you are right there.
I didn’t take many photos, I got these off the web. That tower is called Gooseneck, and the bergschrund was the most challenging part of the climb.
I zoomed in on the left background, and identified the aforementioned Fremont Peak, the third highest in Wyoming, and Bonney Pass, the hurdle on the approach from Pinedale.
OK, so I climbed it. But I climbed it from the east side, through Crowheart, and I can’t exactly cross Native lands and bike that super rough ATV track to the trailhead. How can I say I climbed this one from the sea?
Well the track of the two climbs converge on Summit day, after the Pinedale route gets over Bonney Pass. I did get to the summit ridge on that earlier attempt. So if I go to the Pinedale trailhead, I can plausibly claim to have sea-to-summited in three stages. Circuitous, sure; roundabout, absolutely; but it’s simply an extension of the “parking lots” two-step I’ve been doing all along. OK?
Well, nobody really cares except for me, and I’m happy.
OK, so all that remains is for me to bike up to the Pinedale trailhead today. Should be easy, just a 2,400 foot ascent, 16 miles each way. I left my bags with my Warmshowers hosts, and it wasn’t too hard. But Gannett wasn’t done messing with me. My navigation software assured me it was paved all the way, but the last 4 miles was “under construction” and turned out to be the roughest dirt road, with nonstop washboarding, I have encountered so far. I had to walk about half of it, and drink every drop of water I was carrying. I thought I remembered a water tap at the trailhead, but no such luck. Just a sign, that doesn’t even acknowledge that the Pole Creek Trail is the first part of the Gannett climb.
Then, as a final gift from Gannett, I discovered my fancy Oakley photochromatic sunglasses, which I hang securely from my handlebars on sweaty uphill climbs, had rattled off from the washboarding. I found them 4 miles back. They had been run over and were in pieces, but salvageable. Scratched up, but usable. I’ll have to order another pair to be shipped ahead to Denver, but these will suffice in the interim.
The road was long but I ran it, Gannett. I am so done with you.
Distance 33 miles, 2,378 total. Time 6 hours with stops. Elevation gain 2,400 feet
©️ 2024Scott Luria
The Ends of the Earth 