Climbing Middle Teton

3:30am- wake up

4:30am - start hiking at Lupine Meadows trailhead

6 am - reach Garnet Canyon

7am- start up the Middle Teton

1 pm- summit Middle Teton

2pm - start the descent back to the trailhead

9:30 pm - reach the car

In between- wonder why you’re climbing a mountain, but also think it’s awesome and hard and scary and insane.

That about sums up the 17 hour adventure of summiting my first mountain.

The climb up Middle Teton is not really technical…. Kinda. It does have a Class 4 scramble at the end, and since we climbed in mid-July there was still snow and ice fields that required crossing. I would also say it required a lot of endurance, and boulder-crossing skill. Also a lot of mental capacity to be able to keep going. It’s not technical in the way that climbing the Grand Teton is, where you need rope and climbing shoes and you’re doing a 5.6-5.9 climb on an exposed mountain side 13,000 feet in the air- it’s not like that. Middle was definitely doable, it was definitely the hardest thing I’ve done in my whole life, and it definitely took 17 hours which was exhausting and really cool.

So you start up Lupine Meadows trailhead which is about 3 miles to Garnet Canyon, it’s pretty straightforward, switchbacks to the top. It took us about an hour.

Once you get to Garnet the boulder fields start and they just don’t stop. We crossed so many boulder and talus and skree fields I can’t even remember how many. Probably 5-10? Some were quick, some were slow. If you got off the “trail” then it took longer. We also crossed about 4 snow fields. They weren’t terrible except for on the way back down. There was also one that I took a boulder route up instead of the snow and that was hard too, probably a class 2 or 3 move in that, and all the snow fields were steep and exposed.

The hike from Garnet to the summit is only about 2.5/3 miles, but you’re going 6,000 ft elevation gain over the course of 6 miles, so you gain some on the switchbacks but the majority is the last 2.5/3. We didn’t track our mileage so we’re really not 100% sure how much but we think around 11 or 12. The last .5 miles is 1,000 ft elevation gain, so you’ve already done so much climbing and you’re looking at the summit staring down at you and you’re thinking, no way I make it up that. How are we not done yet? Because you’ve been climbing since 4:30am and it’s 11am. But you get up from your snack and you push on because you’ve made it this far. But wow was that hard.

Coming down isn’t much better. It took just as long getting down as it did getting up, mainly because the rock and dirt was so loose so you had to slide down or sit down or down climb. Then the snow and talus fields just took so long because you were exhausted already. But you had to keep moving because you weren’t prepared to sleep on the mountain!

But. The view from the summit and the feeling of accomplishment that still persists made all that worth it. Middle is right next to the Grand so you have this amazing view of the Grand and the valley and into Idaho and of South and the rest of the Teton range. And you are actually on top of the world, (12,800 ft) above it all. You’re above the cloud and everything is slightly hazy and you can see all the lakes and snow below you and you’re just sitting on a mountain top. It’s insane and wonderful and very terrifying because you’re thinking about how you have to go back down the mountain.

I am very happy I did that. Definitely think overnight camping one night and then summiting is the way to go, even if then you have to think about the logistics of bringing your stuff.

And that was my mountain summit!