FEATURED POST
Gone With the Winds
Driving south from Green River Lakes, our exit trailhead, to Sweetwater Gap trailhead at the southern end on the range, you crest a hill just outside Pinedale, Wyoming. From the top of the hill, stretches a hundred mile vista of the Wind River mountain range: 3000 square miles of granite rock walls, alpine lakes, rivers, snowfields and glaciers. The adventure begins.
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Best Friends
January 1978, Bob McCord was breaking trail and I reluctantly followed. We aimed for a low angle ramp between steeper slopes topped with five foot cornices: wind-blown snow at the tops of ridges curled like Dairy Queen Cones. The slope steepened. We made a switchback turn. Behind me, I heard a soft crack and a […]
Gone With The Winds
Featured Photo: The Fortress from Alpine Lakes, Wind River Range, Wyoming Photo: War Bonnet and Warrior, Cirque of the Towers. Driving south from Green River Lakes, our exit trailhead, to Sweetwater Gap trailhead at the southern end on the range, you crest a hill just outside Pinedale, Wyoming. From the top of the hill, stretches […]
Grand Anniversary: One Mountain, Two Climbers, Three Generations
Photo: Grand Teton summit, Charlie and Steve Markusen, July 2019 Forty feet below the summit of the Grand Teton we paused as a gaggle of Exum guides and clients passed by us on their descent. It was 9:30 in the morning on July 27, 2019. My son Charlie and I had left Petzoldt’s Caves […]
Forever Young: Climbing the Guides Wall
“May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung May you stay forever young…” Bob Dylan My gaze drifted up, taking in the steep rock wall that was the last, and most difficult, of a six pitch rock climb called the Guides Wall in Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park. It […]
Passing the Torch
Photo: Charlie Markusen on the summit of Pingora, Wind River Range, Wyoming, July 2019 Sitting on a comfortable ledge, 400 feet below the summit of Pingora, I watched with fatherly concern as Charlie climbed the thin 5.8+ crack splitting the vertical wall of granite rock. This crux pitch of the Southeast Buttress is called the […]
Solo
Photo: Chillin’ on the summit of the South Teton 12, 519 feet with a view of the Grand Teton, Wyoming, July 2019. I stepped onto the steep snowfield, beginning a traverse to the Northwest Couloir and my goal: the summit of the South Teton. The bright, early morning sun of July 16, 2019 had touched […]
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