In July 2010, Chad Cross and I made an attempt to climb Wyoming’s tallest mountain, Gannett Peak (13,800 ft). Gannett is in one of the most remote mountain ranges in the US, the Wind River Range. We had an aggressive plan – 42+ miles of hiking in four days, with no acclimatization, and 40+ pound packs. We completed 40 miles and made it to the top of the 12,800 ft. Bonney Pass before turning back. We were about 3 hours and 1 mile from the summit. A combination of weather concerns, fatigue, a sore knee and just inexperience on snow and ice played into the decision to turn around. Living in Atlanta, we don’t get the opportunity to practice reading mountain weather or snow and ice conditions so we erred on the side of caution.
We took the Titcomb Basin route, starting at Elkhart Park outside Pinedale, WY. We spent the first night a couple of miles in on the trail, the second and third nights in Titcomb Basin and the last night at Island Lake. We hiked 2 miles the first evening. On the first full day we hiked sixteen miles to Titcomb Basin. On the second full day we rested and hiked two miles further up the Basin to get a jump on the climb up Bonney Pass and hopefully Gannett Peak. On the third day we hiked about seven miles, including the 2,000 ft. snow climb up Bonney Pass for the attempt on Gannett. We started back to the car that afternoon, making it to Island Lake. The final day we hiked the remaining 13 miles to the car.
While we didn’t make Gannett Peak, we were very, very happy with what we did accomplish. The Wind River Range is extremely remote and rugged. We got a great view of Gannett, which isn’t visible short of the hike in. It was great recon for our next attempt (there will definitely be another). The Wind River Range is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It exceeded all my expectations.
If you’d like more details on our trip, feel free to email me.
See the pictures here…
Island Lake with the peaks of Titcomb Basin in the background
Titcomb Basin
Gannett Peak from the top of Bonney Pass
Out with the old and in with the new…
I completely overhauled my website this week. Previously, I used Google’s Blogger tool to manage content on my site. When they disabled FTP updates this spring (thus forcing everyone to move to a “blogspot” URL), I decided to look for another blogging/content management tool. WordPress seems to be the hot tool these days, so I decided to give it a try. So far so good. I miss seeing everything in one HTLM file (vs. WordPress keeping content in a database and using multiple PHP pages), but other than that, I’m happy.
Here’s what my site used to look like…I’ll miss it :) – the old Atlanta Climber
Aug 28, 2010 | Categories:Commentary | Leave A Comment »