Teton Crested

My hips move forward, weight shifting past my feet as gravity pushes me towards David’s heels. My left foot responds sluggishly. We’ve been running for seven hours and my toes fail to extricate themselves from the rock-littered path which descends through Paintbrush Canyon. My shoulders and head continue their push towards the end of the Teton Crest Trail while my lower extremities remain rooted until suddenly I am airborne, sailing horizontal down the slope. By accident or luck or a perverse sort of skill, I execute a three point landing, distributing the fall’s force across my right hand, hip, and ankle. Later, David reports that I “made a lot of sounds,” but I don’t remember them. I pause, then stand up and find myself almost unscathed — some minuscule scrapes, nothing more. We continue.

Table Mountain from the South Fork of Cascade Canyon.

The Teton Crest Trail stretches forty miles from the Phillips Canyon trailhead on Highway 22 to String Lake in the northeast corner of Grand Teton National Park. It gains 9,200 vertical feet (2,800 meters). Its high point is Paintbrush Divide (10,720′ / 3,267m), followed closely by Hurricane Pass (10,338′ / 3,151m). Amongst other features, it traverses the Death Canyon Shelf and plummets through the South Fork of Cascade Canyon.

The cliffs above Death Canyon Shelf.

Most Crest visitors — impeded by heavy packs filled with tent, sleeping bag, food, sometimes even a change of clothes — hike the route in 3-4 days. To quote Melville, “Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.” Our running vests stuffed with energy gels, two liter water bladders, iodine pills, a map, light jackets, and bear spray, David and I took off at 6:30am on August 20, 2015. I carried a SPOT GPS messenger which transmitted our location to a few family members and could alert SAR if we found ourselves in a pickle. My phone was tucked into a pocket, serving as lightweight camera.

Grand, Middle, and South Teton, and Schoolroom Glacier from Hurricane Pass.

We also carried hopes, but despite the big objective (40 miles! in the Tetons! self-supported!) our goals were modest, and for good reason. I am running the Volcanic 50 (a rugged, 32-mile circumnavigation of Mt St Helens) on September 5, and David will take on the Wasatch 100 on September 11-12. Additionally, David had run (in fact, won) the Bridger Ridge Run the previous Saturday, and was recovering slowly. We agreed that anything between eight and twelve hours would be fine, and that we should stay completely within ourselves during the run. It was totally OK to take our eyes off our footing, stop, and look around whenever we felt like it.

Wildflowers in Phillips Canyon.

Our early start afforded some excellent wildlife viewing as we trotted towards Phillips Pass. Within the first four miles, we saw five bull moose. The first was the largest, huge antlers shedding velvet as he trotted across our path fifty feet in front of us. His jowls jostled as he joined his friend downhill from us, far enough away that the digital zoom on my slowly drawn phone camera transformed him into a pixelated, blurry mess.

A bull moose near the trailhead.

As we ran, forest fires raged in California and Washington. Though hundreds of miles away, winds had carried the smoke east and south, and the mountains and valley alike were shrouded in a thick haze. The effect was not entirely unwelcome. Though less sharp and imposing, the Grand and other peaks gained a certain mystique, rising like shrouded giants out of the Wyoming plain.

A smoke-hazed view of the mountains from Hurricane Pass.

The smoke may or may not have impacted our breathing during the run. Regardless, the altitude kicked my butt. I flew from Portland, Oregon (50′) to Bozeman, Montana (5,000′) the afternoon August 17, and despite a day acclimatizing there and two days near the Tetons (7,000′), I felt completely unarmed when confronted with serious climbing above 9,000′. Slopes that I would eat for breakfast were they nestled in the Columbia River Gorge became arduous power hiking endeavors. It is strange to feel your heart pound in your ears like a bass drum at 170 beats per minute when all you are doing is hands-on-knees trudging up a 10% grade.

Mount Woodring from Paintbrush Divide.

The aforementioned fall may not have impacted me physically, but it sapped my confidence and left me tired and wobbly for the rest of our run into String Lake. While David’s feet floated over and skipped off of rocks, I felt like a stroke victim struggling to regain motor control. “David, can we slow it down a bit?” We were passing a volunteer trail crew and I wanted nothing more than to impress them with our trail running acumen, our feline grace. But I felt like I was held together with Wrigley’s spearmint gum and my head was a hum of negativity. When would this end? Would it end? Crescendos of fatigue almost overwhelmed me. How did they do this? How do you do this for sixty more miles, 25,000 more vertical feet? Who did I think I was, trampling this ground, an arrogant interloper?

I’ve not felt lower in a run, but unlike the smoke in the air, this haze lifted as we crossed the footbridge on the north side of String Lake. Backpackers gave way to day hikers and stand-up-paddleboarders. My fatigue gave way to relief. The trail gave way to pavement, and we decided to make a construction cone on the edge of the parking lot our finish line. Eight hours and thirty-nine minutes of Teton lows and mostly highs.

Teton Crested.

Acknowledgments: Special thanks to David’s Subaru, which stops just fine even when the brake pads are totally worn through. Additional thanks to Ana for gracious hospitality and letting me steal David for three days, and to Sarah for holding down the fort (and the other fort).

Dedication: This run is dedicated to Aesop, Sequoia, and Fiasco — may our fingers never wag as much as their tails.

Bonus GPS link: https://www.strava.com/activities/373715381

Bonus video of the route: https://player.vimeo.com/video/136987324?dnt=1&app_id=122963

(Sorry, Suunto, I won’t be taking 120 hours of rest.)