Featured photo: Teton Rescue Ranger Nick Armitage airlifting his “package” Steve Markusen. The rest of the rescue team (lower left corner) remain on the Exum Ridge, Grand Teton, August 8, 2014. Credit Brian Carver “What is your name? Where are you?” My eyes opened to see a chiseled face with furrowed brow. Pain stabbed my […]
Featured photo: Bob riding the world famous Slick Rock Bike Trail, Moab, Utah. The heat from the rising sun activates the sweat glands on the back of my neck; drops of sweat snake down the center of my back. It is 6 am on a clear June morning. The deep blue sky outlines the desert […]
Featured Photo: Balance traverse on the East ridge of Wolfs Tooth, Wind river Range, Wyoming. Photo Credit: Paul Gardner I balance on the balls of my feet pressing the sticky rubber soles of my climbing shoes to the narrow ledge. The heels of my shoes stick out over five hundred feet of big air. I […]
The dog days of August 1974 had found us at our local crag. Perched on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin, Taylors Falls is a narrow gorge of billion-year-old basalt, 40-foot cliffs carved 10,000 years ago by the meltwaters of retreating glaciers. The gorge hosts over a hundred trad- and sport-climbing routes. Relatively flat ground above […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
GRAND DESIGN – Non-Fiction by Steve Markusen – Author’s Note: An abbreviated version of this article was published in Rock & Ice in November of 2017. This article has been published on Dreamers website https://www.dreamerswriting.com/stories-poems/exum-ridge/ An insistent voice brought me out of the void and darkness. “What is your name? Where are you?” My eyes […]