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One year after I climbed the Grand Teton for the first time, I returned to climb it again, this time with my parents. On my first climb, I’d taken the Exum Ridge route (5.4-5.5). This time, we would follow the path of the first ascent along the Owen-Spalding route.
Jackson Lake from the Grand
I’ve flown into Jackson Hole, Wyoming twice now. But, no matter how many times I do it, I will never cease to be blown away by the final approach to Jackson. The small airport only takes prop planes and very small jets, and both times I was on a prop plane. If you look out the plane’s right side as you approach Jackson from the north, abruptly to the west rises the Teton mountain range, its grey and brown rocks speckled with snow patches and glaciers. Since the plane was so close to landing, even the more modest peaks of Middle Teton, Teewinot, and Mt. Owen stand about four thousand feet above your window. But between Middle Teton and Teewinot the unmistakable form of the tallest mountain in the Tetons—the aptly-named Grand Teton—carves out its place on the horizon.
The Grand Teton from Jackson Hole
Straddling the Montana-Idaho border, the Bitterroots are a remote but spectacularly beautiful mountain range in the Northern Rockies. It was among these rugged peaks that Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide in the early nineteenth century. The summer after my sophomore year in high school, I spent a month in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana on a wilderness leadership training program. The trip included an unforgettable nine day, sixty-five mile backpacking trip across the Bitterroots, much of which would turn out to be off the trail.
Hiking in the Bitterroots
The town of Skagway is nestled on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in southwestern Alaska. It is situated at the northern end of Alaska’s Inside Passage, a busy shipping lane dotted with tiny, often uninhabited isles and rimmed by countless blue-white glaciers. In 1897, gold was discovered in the Klondike region, and soon thousands of prospectors flocked to Skagway. It became a bustling mining town, complete with its own railway, port, and brand of Old West lawlessness. But within two years the gold rush subsided, and Skagway’s economy collapsed.
Today Skagway is a small town with a population of 862. The Klondike Highway, a narow two-lane ribbon of asphalt, is the only artery connecting it to the outside world. The highway runs for 110 miles, linking Skagway to the Alaskan Highway. Despite its isolated location, Skagway benefits from a lively tourism industry. It is the access point for the White Pass and Chilkoot Trails, and it is served by several glacier flying companies. But most importantly, it is a stop on all the major Alaskan cruise lines, which bring thousands of tourists north from the lower forty-eight every summer.
The summer after my freshman year of high school, I spent three weeks at the Cambridge College Program, an opportunity for high school students around the globe to live at Cambridge University and take classes from Cambridge professors. I took two courses, one in astrophysics and one in debate. The courses were fascinating, and both of my professors were extremely knowledgeable, gifted teachers. But in addition to taking these classes, I was looking forward to the opportunity to explore Europe, a contintent I had never seen before.
Cambridge is a small town that almost seems stuck in the Middle Ages. Cobbled streets and ancient buildings clash with automobiles and fast food restaurants. A covered market sells everything from food to clothes to electronics. I was living in Sidney Sussex college, which was founded in 1596 and counted Oliver Cromwell as one of its students. It was fun to explore the ancient corridors and courtyards of the English-speaking world’s second-oldest university. I had ample time to explore the town, as the university’s dining center was a long walk across Cambridge from Sidney Sussex. It was our only option for dinner food, and cooking was awful. But despite the bad food, I enjoyed walking the streets of Cambridge and soaking in the history of that ancient center of learning.
I grew up backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but for most of my childhood, I hadn’t done much backpacking anywhere else. So the summer after my eighth grade year, I spent three weeks on trip through the American southwest on a trip with nine other students my age. We met at Oakland International Airport and flew to Las Vegas, where we met our trip leaders, Courtney and Porter.
We spent almost all of the first day driving to Zion National Park in southwestern Utah. Zion’s landscape is marked by countless incredible rock formations. We spent our first day there setting up camp and doing team building activities. The next day we hiked Zion’s Narrows, a maze of slot canyons that can be explored via a trail that intermittently disappears beneath the water in the canyons. On the day after hiking the Narrows, we got up early to hike Angels Landing, a 2.5 mile hike to the top of a sheer spire that offered spectacular views of the park. Though short, the hike was incredibly steep and grueling. After forty-two switchbacks, the trail continued on a narrow ledge that dropped 1800 feet to the valley floor on each side. The Park Service provided a chain to help tourists keep their balance. Once we reached Angels Landing, however, we were more than rewarded with the dazzling views of the park around us. We ate lunch and then returned to camp.
An arch and hoodoos in Bryce Canyon
During junior high I was lucky enough to find a program through my school that took a group of students on an ecotour of Costa Rica for twelve days during the summer. I begged my parents to let me go the summer after my sixth grade year. They refused, but agreed to let me go the next year if I raised half of the money myself. During seventh grade, I worked to raise the money and eagerly anticipated my departure to Central America. Early in the summer, I closed out my bank account and paid my parents my share of the costs. I was actually going to go!
We flew through Houston to Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose. We spent the night at a cheap motel in San Jose, and early the next morning we met our guides, Michel and Tony, and piled into a small bus for a long drive to the Caribbean coast. The drive was beautiful; we traveled through cloud forests in Costa Rica’s interior and stopped every once in a while to stretch our legs and enjoy the amazing views of mountainous rainforest blanketed by clouds. We stopped at a wildlife preserve where we saw a number of animals including agoutis and toucans, and I got to hold a three-toed sloth.
Me with a three-toed sloth
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