It's a Grand Day

It was indeed a “Grand” day as we drove along Highway 89 between Moran Junction and Schwabacher Landing and saw this group of aspens serving as a flamboyant foreground to embellish the Grand Teton, piercing the Wyoming blue sky on a near perfect day.

What photographer could ask for more? From this angle, the Grand rises to dominate the entire view and reminded us of the interesting history about this magnificent mountain.

Quite possibly, the first ascent of the Grand may have been accomplished by Native Americans, for a human built structure, known as “The Enclosure,” and located on the 2nd highest point on the peak pre-dates any Euro-American recorded ascent. One legend says that a fur trapper named Benjamin L.E. Bonneville reached the summit in 1832, but the ascent was not documented, so the first documented ascent did not occur until 1898 when William Owen, Frank Spalding, Frank Peterson and John Shive made it on August 11. Their route has since come to be regarded as the “standard Owen-Spalding route,” used by hundreds of climbers annually, like we did in 2014. However, two men of the Hayden survey team of 1872 claim to have been the first having summited on July 2. James Stevenson and Nathaniel Langford noted and mapped the saddle but failed to document the summit so their claim is still disputed to this day.

Reaching to 13,775 feet with 6,530 feet of prominence above the Jackson Hole valley, many famous names in climbing have come to be associated with the Grand. Eleanor Davis was the first woman to ascend in 1923. Other names include: Jack Durrance, Paul and Eldon Petzoldt and Glen Exum. Paul established the American School of Mountaineering in 1929, when the park was established, and later The National Outdoor Leadership School. It goes without saying that this tilted, tooth-shaped, granite spire has endeared itself to many a climber since.