Wyoming 13ers

The Wyoming 13ers

On the summit of Grant Teton, my final 13er (photo by Andrew)

Eric Gilbertson

July 21 – August 7, 2020

210 miles, 77,500ft gain

New Fastest Known Time: 16 days 17 hours

The Wyoming 13ers are a set of 35 13,000ft peaks in Wyoming with at least 300 ft of prominence. Most of them, 30, are in the core wind river range, with the remaining five outside. The list is a particularly difficult one to complete because most of the peaks are at least 20 miles from the nearest trailhead and four of them are technical. Most of the non-technical peaks are 3rd or 4th class, and none of them have trails to the summits.

The first known completion of the list was by Sarah Strattan and Teresa Gergen in 2015, finishing together on Black Tooth Mountain in the Absorakas. But there were no known completions between 2015-2019.

Peak locations (background map from peakbagger.com)

In early June of this year I had to cancel a planned summer international mountaineering trip due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions, so was looking for some mountains to climb in the US in the mid-June to mid-august time frame. I wanted the peaks to be within driving distance of Seattle to avoid flights and stay as flexible as possible in case coronavirus restrictions changed within the US. Outside of Washington, where I live, the mountains in Wyoming are the most remote in the lower 48 states, and thus were high priority for me to visit. I’d climbed Gannett Peak, the Wyoming highpoint, in 2008 with Matthew and Darren, and remembered seeing a bunch of amazing peaks nearby around Titcomb Basin.

I like to have a mission when visiting peaks, and found the list of Wyoming 13ers on summitpost that looked appealing. Most of the peaks looked 3rd or 4th class, but a few were 5th class. I tried doing more research and found some of the only trip reports for the technical peaks were on Sarah’s website, 13ergirl.com. Based on Sarah’s reports it sounded like it would be very inefficient to rope solo the technical peaks (at least by the routes she took), so I decided to find a partner.

Our route in the southern core winds zone showing peaks and campsites

Matt Lemke and I had been planning to climb the Snow Leopard peaks in central asia and had to cancel, and it

turned out he was also interested in climbing the Wyoming 13ers. He had been thinking about this list in years prior, so had already done a lot more research than I had, and agreed to join. I originally had just set the low bar of finding a partner to join for the handful of technical peaks, but luckily Matt would join for all 30 peaks in the core wind river area so he could finish the list that summer.

I generally like doing peaks under my own power, so planned out an itinerary of multiple backpacking trips in and out of the wind river range. But that seemed so inefficient rehiking the same trails back to the same base camps. It would be possible to haul in enough food and gear to just go in once, but that would probably require double carrying, which also seemed inefficient and difficult for the 20-mile approaches. Then I remembered last summer in Afghanistan climbing Noshaq (24,580ft, the country’s highpoint) that I’d paid locals in the village at the base to load up donkeys to bring in our 3 weeks of supplies to a base camp. Wyoming was full of people with horses and donkeys, so maybe they could help?

Our route in the northern core winds zone showing peaks and campsites

I did some research and found Mule Shoe Outfitters based in Pinedale could haul 150 pounds of gear in 15 miles for $500. That sounded like a good deal to me, especially since I could split that cost with Matt. It would make the most sense to start from the Elkhart Park trailhead then, which started just outside of Pinedale and provided the most direct access to the peaks around Titcomb basin.

To decide on the itinerary I bought the guidebook “Climbing and Hiking in the Wind River Mountains” (Kelsey) on Amazon. I then made a map of all the peaks in ppt and picked out the standard or easiest route of each peak from the guidebook. I drew a line of the route on each peak, then tried to roughly combine those lines into a bigger route. I debated about having one base camp and doing many side trips in and out, but it seemed more efficient to do a big loop, since some of the peaks (Downs and South Downs) were very far away from our entrance point.

Unfortunately it appeared difficult to cross the continental divide to make a loop. I looked at a lot of topo maps and played around on Google Earth and it appeared there was a ramp going down from Rampart that could cross the divide. I hadn’t read about anyone making this crossing, and it wasn’t in the guidebook, but if it worked it could save a lot of time. As a backup I found a second gully going from Rampart that might also work, and as an ultimate backup we could always hike back down south of Gannett and cross at Glacier Gap.

Henderson Peak with north ridge, one of my favorite routes

For timing I looked at historical satellite images of the wind river range and it seemed like most years snow didn’t melt out from the valleys until early to mid July. Snow in the valleys would really slow down progress. The current images from early June 2020 looked comparable to past years, so it seemed wise to wait til at least mid July to minimize snow cover on the approaches. This would actually work out well because I was also planning to climb the 14ers (later that would change to be the centennials) in Colorado that summer. Since Colorado is farther south it was likely to have less snow in the spring than Wyoming. So I planned to climb in Colorado from mid june to mid july, and then Wyoming starting mid July.

I made out a rough itinerary, being conservative to allow for afternoon thunderstorms shortening our days, and it looked like we could get all the wind river peaks in about 2 weeks. I added a buffer week to account for bigger weather delays and route-finding delays, so we planned on a roughly 3-week trip. The dates would be July 21 to August 10. Then I decided on one more week to get the non-winds peaks before I needed to drive back to Seattle in mid August.

Matt on Wilson Peak with titcomb basin and many 13ers in the background

For gear we made the interesting decision to bring two 30m ropes and a light rack. Most of the technical peaks appeared to just have short technical sections for which a 30m rope would be sufficient. We could always simulclimb anything a bit longer using micro traxions. Also any glacier travel we might want to rope up for could probably use just a 30m rope. However, we were concerned one peak – Koven – would have longer technical sections and we’d want to do full 30m rappels to come down. So with two 30m ropes we could take just one rope on most peaks to save weight, but could take both on Koven for the longer rappels.

One other gear decision was we each brought a pair of trail runners and a pair of hiking boots, but no rock shoes. We’d use the trail runners for the long approach and any on-trail hiking since they were less likely to give blisters on high-mileage days. We would use the hiking boots for more off-trail travel and snow travel since they were more durable, more rigid, and more waterproof. The hiking boots could also be used for rock climbing, and I’m comfortable leading up to 5.8 in hiking boots, so totally sufficient for our climbs.

Gannett, Pinnacle Ridge, and Koven viewed from Turret between storms

We each decided to bring aluminum crampons to save weight. This meant we probably couldn’t climb any steep partially-melted out snow gullies (like the south gully on Wilson) that would require either lots of transitions or climbing on rock in crampons, but they would be a lot lighter than steel crampons. Also, micro spikes were a similar weight to the aluminum crampons but not very useful on the steep snow we expected to encounter. I decided to bring a whippet to save weight over an ice axe. None of the peaks seemed technical enough that a regular ice ax was required, and I’m used to just using a whippet on big peaks like Mt Logan and Mt Fairweather to save weight.

Finally, we decided to bring Matt’s solar panel plus two small batteries to recharge our phones and cameras instead of my big battery pack.

One peak outside the winds was technical – Grand Teton. I was reluctant to rope solo Grand Teton because the peak is so crowded that people would probably get annoyed with me. Matt had already climbed Grand Teton and wasn’t interested in repeating it. I had actually already climbed it (via Upper Exum) in 2014 with Katie, but wanted to repeat it to get a tighter total finishing time for the 13ers. Luckily another partner from our canceled Snow Leopards trip – Andrew – was interested in joining. He would fly in August 10 and we could climb Grand Teton and the remaining peaks together. So it looked like I could probably finish all the 13ers in about 4 weeks at best.

Matt on Bow, his final 13er

I made a down payment with the outfitter, bought some extra gear like a third Ursack and some climbing rappel tat (since I figured the peaks probably get climbed seldom enough we’d have to leave a bunch of gear for rappel anchors), and headed down to Colorado after school ended in mid June.

By July 19 I’d finished climbing the Colorado Centennials, setting a new self-supported Fastest Known Time of 33 days 23 hours . I had finished just barely in time to stay on schedule for Wyoming. I got back to the car in the early afternoon July 19 after climbing Longs Peak and Meeker that morning, then drove to Estes Park and started doing errands for the Wyoming trip. After polishing off a large Dominoes pizza, garlic bread, and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s I bought 3 weeks of food, did some laundry, and booked a hotel room that night.

In the middle of repacking food I fell asleep around 4pm and was woken up 12 hours later at 4am by mice rustling through my food. I guess I shouldn’t have gone with the absolute cheapest hotel in town (which will remain unnamed). I scared the mice away, tossed out the food they’d gotten into (the powdered mashed potatoes, which I don’t really like anyways), and finished up packing.

Descending Francs Peak, technically my final 13er (though I reclimbed Grand Teton the next morning to tighten my finishing time)

I soon hit the road that morning and made the 8 hour drive to Pinedale, where I met up with Matt and we made final preparations that evening and tweaks to the itinerary based on Matt’s more detailed research. I kind of wished I’d had a bit more time between Colorado and Wyoming to rest, but at least I squeezed in that one rest day. (My friends told me it wasn’t really a rest day if I was driving for 8 hours). I actually figured the Wyoming peaks would be much more restful than my last week in Colorado anyways. We planned to get full nights sleeps every night, and would only do a few peaks per day. That sounded basically like resting compared to the previous week when I’d averaged 2 hours of sleep per day and done days up to 49 miles with up to 10 centennials per day, and done lots of night climbing to avoid thunderstorms.

On the morning of July 21 we met up with the packers at the Elkhart Park trailhead and by 8:30am started our hike in.

The following is a list of the peaks I climbed in the order I climbed them, with links to trip reports for each peak:

1. Harrower Peak – July 21
2. Knife Point Mountain – July 22
3. Brown Cliffs North – July 22
4. Jackson Peak – July 22
5. Fremont Peak – July 22
6. American Legion Peak – July 23
7. Henderson Peak – July 23
8. The Sphinx – July 24
9. Twin Peaks East – July 24
10. Mt Sacagawea – July 25
11. Mt Helen – July 25
12. Spearhead Pinnacle – July 26
13. Mt Warren – July 26
14. Gannett Peak – July 27
15. Turret Peak – July 29
16. Sunbeam Peak – July 29
17. Mt Febbas – July 29
18. Pinnacle Ridge – July 30
19. Mt Woodrow Wilson – July 30
20. Mt Koven – July 31
21. Flagstone Southeast Peak – July 31
22. Flagstone Peak – July 31
Pedestal Peak – July 31
23. Klondike Peak – Aug 1
24. South Downs Mtn – Aug 1
25. Downs Mtn – Aug 1
26. Bastion Peak – Aug 1
27. Desolation Peak – Aug 1
Twin Peaks West – Aug 2
28. Split Mtn – Aug 2
29. Mt Whitecap – Aug 2
30. Bow Mtn – Aug 3
31. Wind River Peak – Aug 4
32. Black Tooth Mtn – Aug 5
33. Cloud Peak – Aug 5
34. Francs Peak – Aug 6
35. Grand Teton Aug 7

We managed to offload 3 weeks of food per person and all the climbing and camping gear to the packers, and were able to hike in with just small day packs. This was totally the best way to climb these peaks, I thought. We were helping support the local economy in Pinedale and making the trip much more fun for us.

From Elkhart Park with hiked up the Polecreek trail for about four hours until we reached the agreed-upon dropoff point, the trail intersection just north of Island Lake. Originally I hadn’t been sure how the gear drop would work – would we hike with the packers or before them or after them? – but we had all our food in bear-proof and varment-proof ursacks, so weren’t too concerned. We ended up hiking in before the packers, and waited at the intersection until they arrived.

After they unloaded the gear we thanked them and brought the gear a bit farther in to a campsite. We each set up our tents, packed up small day packs, and started towards our first peak – Harrower.

Harrower was listed in my guidebook as 4th class, but we didn’t really know what this meant. In my experience every climber has their own interpretation of what 4th class means in terms of exposure and technical difficulty of moves, and we hadn’t yet calibrated what this guidebooks interpretation was. We knew 3rd class was definitely easy scrambling and 5th class was definitely roped climbing, but 4th class was just somewhere in between.

So we ended up bringing one 30m rope and the rack just in case Wyoming 4th turned out to be technical climbing.

Matt led the way, having done more research on all the routes and having the beta fresh in his mind. (I had been pretty occupied with beta for the Centennials in Colorado up until the day before the Wyoming trip). We walked along the south edge of Lake 10813, across a few snowfields, and gained the col between Elephant Head and Harrower. From there we started up the southwest ridge of Harrower. The route started with some 4th class moves on solid rock, then mellowed out to mostly 3rd class for a majority of the ridge.

Near the summit the route returned to fun 4th class on more solid rock until we reached the top at 5:30pm. This is the time my clock officially started for the FKT attempt of the 13ers. Interestingly there was a huge aluminum milk carton probably 50 years old that served as the summit register. With this summit, as with most, we found on average only one sign in or so per year.

One other person – Eli – had signed in a few days earlier and was I think the only sign in of the year. We would see Eli’s sign in on most other peaks with registers, and Matt told me he heard Eli was also working on finishing the 13ers this summer.

After climbing all the 4th class without feeling the need for gear we agreed we’d not bring ropes on future routes listed as 4th class in our guidebook. Wyoming 4th class was actually very fun, though I was probably comparing it to Washington 4th class which can feel very sketchy. Luckily there were no storms forecast that afternoon, and we soon downclimbed the route and returned to camp.

We left camp around 7am planning to tag a bunch more 13ers nearby. We hiked up the Indian Pass trail to just below the pass around 11,500ft, then dropped over a saddle and cramponed up the Harrower Glacier to the col just south of Knife Point. From there we traversed climbers right until we found a good scree gully to ascend all the way to the ridge crest. Then it was an easy 3rd class scramble to the summit.

The final summit block was a bit exposed and we went and tagged it one at a time. There was no register on Knife Point, but there was a big old ram horn somebody had hauled up!

It was a fun descent down the east side of knife point glissading down snowfields. I was in trail runners that had gotten mostly destroyed by the Colorado Centennials after starting out brand new a month earlier, but they still retained a bit of water resistance and kept my feet mostly dry. We crossed a broad plateau heading northeast and then a short and fun 3rd class scramble up to the brown cliff plateau. From there it was an easy hike to the summit, the southern of two bumps sticking out. I tagged the northern bump too just in case, since they looked of similar elevation.

There was no summit register, and I bet this is a very seldom-climbed peak, but I did leave a small cairn on the summit.

To return we dropped down to the Knife Point Glacier and traversed back over to Indian Pass. Even though it was technically named a glacier, there were no crevasses and no need to rope up. In general the glaciers in Wyoming are very small and benign by Washington standards, and the only thing to watch out for is an occasional bergschrund. We saw some fresh footprints and we guessed these were probably from Eli, who I think had signed in on Harrower a few days earlier and we guessed he’d bagged these peaks on the same trip.

From Indian pass we considered scrambling up the southeast face to gain Jackson, but it was questionable whether the route would go. This was what I call the 80-20 decision, which I encounter all the time in the mountains on non-standard routes with little beta. This is when a potential shortcut is under consideration and it has a 20% chance of saving a little bit of time and an 80% chance of costing a lot of time because it doesn’t work. Most times I’ll skip it and go with the standard route with less uncertainty, but sometimes I’ll take a chance on the shortcut.

In this case we were hoping to tag on Freemont at the end of the day as a bonus peak, so didn’t want to risk a costly delay by getting cliffed out, so skipped the shortcut.

We descended down to the west and then found a descent class 2/3 gully to scramble up on the south side of Jackson. I believe this was at least close to the guidebook route. The gully gained the broad saddle east of the peak, and from the saddle we hiked up talus and snow to the summit by 2:30pm. We stopped to admire the excellent view of glaciers to the east and many jagged peaks up to the north.

Freemont Peak was next, and it would have been nice to just follow the ridge from Jackson to Freemont, but that ridge looked very technical and uninviting. We ended up descending approximately the way we came back to the trail. We then followed the trail back down to 11,200ft, then cut up to the saddle just south of Freemont. Freemont peak is definitely one of the few 13ers that gets climbed regularly each summer, as evidenced by the climbers trail going up to the saddle and all the cairns leading up from there. I think this is because Freemont is the second tallest peak in the winds, is one of the closest 13ers to the Elkhart Park trailhead, has a straightforward class 2 route up it, and has excellent views.

We followed the cairns up the broad south slope through slabs and up some talus to reach the summit around 6:30pm. The summit was a ridge with unclear highest point, so I went and tagged a bunch of points. It turned into a cliff above the Freemont Glacier to the north, and I was careful not to get too close. As I was scrambling around the zipper on my chest pocket broke and my phone fell out! It dropped in between cracks in boulders and very well could have been lost forever, but I somehow managed to extract it and store it in a different pocket.

Freemont had another old milk carton summit register with many sign ins already this year. We added our names and then headed down for our last night camping in Camp 1.

We were a bit ahead of schedule after tagging Freemont Peak the previous evening, so next item on the agenda was to move camp to Upper Titcomb Lake. This would be our toughest move because we hadn’t yet eaten down much of the 40 pounds of food we each started with. The forecast was for afternoon storms, so we expected to just accomplish a camp move that day and probably not get in any peaks. We slept in til 7am and then packed up and started moving.

Neither of our packs were quite big enough to carry all the food and gear we needed to move. I ended up having a bunch of items tied on the outside swinging around and Matt actually carried a few bags in his hands. It was slow going but we managed to move our gear the three miles up to the north end of Upper Titcomb Lake, and found a scenic spot to set up our tents. On the way we passed a small tent city and many other assorted tents. We later learned all those parties were climbing Gannett Peak, which is by far the most popular peak in the Winds as the highest peak in Wyoming.

That morning clouds had come in early and we slowly dissipating now. We figured the early clouds may have slowed down the afternoon heating and could limit the chance of afternoon storms. So around noon we decided to continue making progress on peaks. From camp we hiked up a grassy gully to Summer Ice Lake, which was still half covered in ice, and made our way towards American Legion and Henderson Peaks.

Early in the planning stages for this trip I had been a bit intimidated by Henderson Peak. The only report I found online was Sarah T’s report of climbing the southeast ridge, which sounded like lots of 5th class climbing. However, the guidebook mentioned the north ridge was 4th class and classic (presumably meaning fun with solid rock). Based on our fun 4th class route up Harrower this sounded like the way to go and shouldn’t require ropes.

We cramponed up a steep snow slope to the col between the peaks and then decided which one to do first. A brief rain squall had just passed, and we decided to give the 4th class rock time to dry. So we went up the easier American Legion Peak first. We got partway up and another rain squall passed, which we rode out under some overhanging boulders. After that it looked like the skies were clearing for the rest of the day, so we finished the 3rd class scramble to the summit.

We soon returned to the col, and by then the skies were sunny and clear. It looked like we had made the right call on the order of the peaks. We then started up the north ridge of Henderson. We started on the right side of the ridge, then followed the ridge proper. The ridge was mostly solid and fun 3rd and 4th class rock. Up higher we traversed on the left side of the ridge, then cut over to the right and climbed up some looser gullies. Near the summit we had to cross a brief but exposed snow slope, and I was happy to have brought my ice ax.

The summit register went back to the 1930s, but still didn’t have too many ascents. Luckily the weather held out and we had a fun scramble back. The guidebook mentioned a few short 5th class moves over good ledges, but I don’t recall anything I’d call 5th class. We boot skied and hiked back to camp, arriving before dark. That day officially put us a day ahead of schedule, which meant I could eat a bit more food for dinner without feeling bad.

Over the next few days few followed a similar routine of leaving camp at first light at 5:30am and getting back by early afternoon to be off the summits before thunderstorms came in. This morning we headed up valley, then left below Bobs Towers and up to the snowfield below Wilson and the Sphinx. It was tempting to try to climb Wilson from this side via the south gully route, since it would be easy to combine with the Sphinx. But on the approach we’d seen the gully was half melted out. Of the few reports I’ve seen of the south gully they all say it’s sketchy, especially when partially melted out. With our aluminum crampons we’d likely have to make many precarious transitions on that route, so decided to instead climb wilson from the north side, which sounded less sketchy.

We still needed to climb the Sphinx, though, so we cramponed up to the Wilson-Sphinx col. From there we scrambled up a 4th class route on the northwest ridge to the summit. There I got an excellent view of Gannett Peak and the big dinwoody glacier below. I’d been there before in 2008 and probably only casually glanced over at the Sphinx, never seriously considering climbing it. I’m glad I made up an excuse to come back to that area.

To descend I found a less-exposed 3rd class way a bit farther to the south side of the ridge. We then cramponed down and wrapped around to the Twin Peaks. The snow was starting to soften in the sun by now, which would be nice for Twin Peak. Unfortunately for the Twin Peaks I hadn’t done research in advance as thoroughly as I would have liked. The problem is the peaks are very similar heights. It’s generally accepted that East Twin is the taller of the two, but it’s not clear whether this has been definitively proven.

The USGS quad has a survey mark of 13185 on East Twin but none on west twin. Peakbagger lists West twin as 25ft lower at 13160ft. However, List of John lists it as only 5ft lower. The guidebook says the peaks are of similar height. SRTM data actually shows west twin as about 40ft taller, but SRTM has errors up to 50ft, so this is not definitive. The most definitive way to tell which is taller would be to bring a surveyer’s sight level and take measurements from each peak of the other peak. I own one of these, but didn’t think to bring it because I wasn’t aware of the uncertainty in advance.

So, this day we actually ended up just climbing the East Peak, since that is the accepted highpoint of the two. We cramponed steeply up to just below the col between the peaks, then scrambled up 4th class rock to the col and made an easy talus hike to the summit. Surprisingly, the East peak has a summit register going back to 1925 and had seen over 20 ascents already this year! They appeared to be from different, non-affiliated parties on different dates. I’m still surprised why that peak, out of all the other cool peaks in the area, is so popular.

We descended back down, skipped the west peak, even though it would have been an easy 10-minute climb, and retraced our route back to camp. Interestingly I would later check my phone on a summit and Eli found my instagram page and mentioned the controversy over west twin. I agreed it looked about the same height, so Matt and I made plans to tag it on our hike out just in case. [I would later measure west twin 4 ft taller on my GPS, but the measurements were taken on different days so I still am not confident saying which one is taller without somebody taking a sight level up there].

We made it back to camp around 1:30pm, and after a quick snack retreated to our tents as afternoon storms rolled through. I took a nap for a few hours as my tent got pelted with rain and hail, then took a break to cook some dinner before going back to sleep. This concept of an afternoon nap felt great after my experience in Colorado with very little sleep. I felt like I was finally catching up after that trip.

As usual we left camp at first light, and this time headed up the east side of Titcomb basin. We planned to climb Sacagawea and Helen, and brought the ropes and rack since we’d read the north ridge of Sacagawea had some short 5th class climbing. We scrambled up scree and talus slopes to the col north of Sacagawea and started scoping out the route. It looked easy enough, but the rock was interspersed with icy snow ledges that promised to make for sketchy transitions in our aluminum crampons.

The east ridge of Sacagawea was supposed to be 4th class, though, so we cramponed down the Sacagawea Glacier and scrambled up to the east ridge. We then hiked up snow slopes, then ditched our snow and rock gear at the edge of the snow and continued up easy talus. We eventually reached what turned out to be a false summit, and then met the 4th class rock. We had to downclimb and then traverse some exposed but solid rock with good hand and foot holds, until we reached another false summit. From there came the crux – a short chasm jump to a small angled boulder with 1,000ft+ exposure.

Matt made the jump first, and confirmed there was a summit register on the other side, so I reluctantly followed. I think the guidebook author must have considered the false summit to be the true summit, since that moved seemed kind of stiff for 4th class. The return was sketchier, since I had to make some delicate moves on small ledges to climb back up from the chasm. But from there it was straightforward scrambling back to our stashed gear. Interestingly we met another climber – Herman – coming over from Freemont Peak. He was planning to do a big loop from Jackson up to Helen, across to Ladd, and back. He was free soloing right along the ridge the whole way!

We retraced our route back to the Sacagawea Glacier and then traversed along the Freemont Glacier to the base of Helen. There were a bunch of couloirs leading up to our planned route on the east ridge, and we took the one second from the left. Once on the ridge we did some fun 3rd class scrambling all the way to the summit. After a few minutes Herman met us again on the summit. He had followed the ridge crest up and over some impressive sharks fins the looked very steep and technical. He then continued north, dropping back to Titcomb basin on his loop.

We downclimbed the east ridge and returned to the col north of Sacagawea, then dropped back down to camp by early afternoon. As before rain and storms started around 2pm, and I took a nap for a few hours riding them out. I was thrilled not to be up on a summit for that.

We left camp again at sunrise with plans to climb the north ridge of Spearhead and the standard East ridge of Warren. Our guidebook said Spearhead was a short 5th class climb from the col to its north, but we couldn’t find any more beta than that. So we brought one 30m rope and planned to simulclimb if necessary. Then Warren was supposedly 4th class from Elsie Col.

From camp we hiked north towards Bonney Pass, then cut right to crampon up an icy snow gully to the Helen-Spearhead col. From there we traversed north on the Helen Glacier and climbed up to the col just north of spearhead. We ditched crampons at the col and then scrambled up the north ridge of Spearhead until the rock started getting steep. There we roped up and Matt took the first lead. He placed a few pieces and then we simulclimbed until he got a good anchor. In general the rock was solid and the climbing easy except for one exposed part where I was forced to follow the rope up a corner instead of going left over an easier face.

The crux was just below a rap anchor, and I think it was 5.3. From there it was a fun knife edge climb past an old piton, and I soon met Matt at an anchor. I took the next lead over easier terrain and finally tagged the summit on a boulder balanced on the ridge. The register was placed in 2015 by Sarah T, and we were the first ones to sign it in the past 5 years! To descend we simul down-climbed back to the rap anchor. I backed it up so we were rapping on three pieces of webbing. The 30m rope just barely reached a good ledge below with a bit of diagonal rappelling.

We then simul down-climbed back to the packs and put the rock gear away.

From spearhead we had been eyeing what looked like an easy scramble up the southwest face of Warren. Our intended route to get to the east ridge would involve losing a lot of elevation on the Helen Glacier, then climbing back up to Elsie col, then losing a lot of elevation again on the descent. But if we could go directly up the southwest face that would save a lot of time and effort. Our guidebook said one party had reported descending the west ridge at 4th class, but we had no documentation of the southwest face being climbed or descended.

It looked easy enough, though, so we dropped back down to the helen glacier and started scrambling. We brought the rope and rack just in case, since the route was unknown. It turned out to be easy talus and scree the whole way, with one short snow crossing and a small bit of scrambling. I would rate it class 2/3. The summit had a register and had seen a few more summits than other peaks around the area. We spent a while admiring the views in all directions. We were now done with all the peaks to the south of us, and could focus next on the peaks surrounding the Dinwoody Glacier.

We downclimbed back to the Helen Glacier then crossed back over the col south of Speahead and descended to Titcomb basin. On the summit we’d gotten phone service and the updated forecast was for clear weather all afternoon. So we decided to take advantage of that and move camp that evening. Moving in the late afternoon and evening had the advantage that the snow going up to Bonney Pass would have softened up making for a safer climb up and over with our huge packs.

We cached our climbing gear at the base of the gully then hiked back to camp and packed up. By now I could fit everything except the rope and climbing gear inside my pack. We slowly made our way up the valley, passing a few Gannett climbers on their way down. Back at our cache we just put on our harnesses with rock gear to avoid putting them in the pack. We alternated kicking steps up the steep snow and eventually slowly made our way to Bonney Pass.

There we passed a group of eight more climbers coming back from Gannett. They hadn’t made the summit, though, and it wasn’t clear why except that perhaps some of them were kids and not super experienced. We talked to one of the climbers and he was super impressed we were climbing all the 13ers. He did say one guy in the group had made the summit later in the day, so we assumed the route conditions were ok.

From the pass we got an excellent view of the sun setting on Gannett Peak. I had camped at this pass in 2008 with Darren and Matthew, but it didn’t really make sense for our objective of climbing a bunch of 13ers and not just climbing Gannett. So we dropped back down to the gentle snow slope north of the pass and then hiked down the snow to the base of the Dinwoody Glacier at a few small tarns.

There we found some good sandy patches and, with a small bit of construction, created some good tentsites. It had been one of the more tiring days so far, especially with the camp move, so we decided to do a slightly easy day the next day. Of all the objectives around the easiest one turned out to be Gannett. It would be just a standard snow climb and scramble with no ropes and no routefinding issues. There wasn’t much elevation gain and I’d already done it so there’d be no surprises. Hopefully it might count as a half rest day if we got back early.

We slept in a bit longer than usual and left camp around 6am. There were already a bunch of other parties going up the mountain – a group of 12 or so from the Dinwoody side and a handful more coming over from Bonney Pass. It was amazing how popular this one peak was – getting over 20 ascents per day! – while the peaks next to it averaged just one ascent every year or two based on the registers.

We hiked up the snow from camp, then crossed some scree and started passing other groups. We scrambled up some rock on the ridge below Gooseneck Pinnacle, then followed a boot track in the snow onto the Gooseneck Glacier. We passed a guide short-roping his client, and then caught up to a group of 12 people at the bergschrund. They had a fixed rope set up to the ridge and were jugging up it one by one.

But the snow wasn’t really that steep, and the bergschrund was half closed off with excellent bridges. So we just went to the side of them and kicked steps up to the ridge. I looked up at Gooseneck Pinnacle and kind of wished we’d hauled the rock gear up so we could tag it, but alas we had left it back in camp. The ridge was melted out down low with easy hiking, but up higher it got snowier. So we just switched back to crampons and followed the well-established boot track all the way to the summit.

We got there around 8am and it turns out we were the first ones up that day. I guess we had passed all the other parties en route. There was a big summit register, but it was just a jumbled mess of wet and disorganized papers inside. I guess that’s what you get on popular peaks. I’d hoped to find my sign in from 2008, but there was no chance in that register.

We admired the views for a long time – about 30 minutes – since we didn’t have any other plans for the day other than resting. We tried to get a view of Koven to the north, but it was blocked by the north ridge of Gannett. Interestingly, Gannett was one of the few peaks we didn’t get cell service on to check the weather forecast, even though we got service on most surrounding peaks.

Around 8:30am the guide and client arrived, and we packed up and headed down to let them have the summit to themselves. We passed the big group of 12 people from Central Wyoming College, and then passed a younger climber and his father. It turned out it was Eli, and he was almost done with the 13ers. He said he’d probably finish the upcoming weekend, well ahead of either of us. We wished him luck and continued down to camp by around 10:30am.

After a brief rest we contemplated going up and tagging Turret, the next peak on our list. But that wouldn’t actually save too much time since we’d just have to go back again to tag the peaks next to it. We also wanted to be off the peaks by 1pm that day to avoid storms, and kind of wanted a half rest day. So we ended up resting and napping. It did end up storming that afternoon, as expected, and I used the opportunity to catch up on some more sleep.

Katie had been texting me the weather forecast on the inreach and that was especially useful today when we couldn’t find service on any summit. The forecast was a 90% chance of rain and storms all day the next day with a widespread precipitation event. This type of event sounded pretty abnormal from the typical clear mornings and afternoon thunderstorms. So we planned to just sleep in until the rain ended the next day, and perhaps just take a full rest day if it never cleared up.

That night it started raining around 3am and basically didn’t stop for the next 20 hours. I finally got to take my third official full rest day of the summer. I’m quite certain I completely caught up on sleep from Colorado by then, because I tried hard to sleep all day and finally couldn’t actually fall asleep.

There were a few short 30-minute breaks in the weather, but in general it just rained and drizzled all day. Up until then we had figured we were two days ahead of schedule, and the rest day moved us back to one day ahead of schedule. That was still great, given we’d built in a handful of buffer days on top of our schedule anyways.

The next morning started out with gloomy weather again, but the drizzle stopped late morning and we thought we could still squeeze some peaks in. The plan was a loop to hit Turret, Sunbeam, and Febbas. I was a bit intimidated by Turret from reading Sarah T’s report. She had climbed up the southwest ridge and it sound very technical. However, our guidebook said the north ridge was 4th class, so we decided to try that route.

We hiked up the Dinwoody Glacier directly from camp and then scrambled difficult loose talus up to Backpackers Pass. From there we scrambled up to the north ridge of Turret and crossed over to the south side. The rocks were all still damp from the morning and as we got higher the rocks got steeper and sketchier. Some were lichen covered and especially slippery when wet. At one point we couldn’t find a safe route higher, and could hardly see at all in the dense low clouds enveloping us. So we bailed and retreated to the pass.

We really didn’t want to take another rest day, mostly because that would mean hiking back up to Backpackers Pass, which wasn’t extremely pleasant. It seemed like there was a chance the sun could come out and dry the rock and burn off the clouds, though, so we decided to wait around at the pass. We ended up waiting for around three hours, eating and killing time, until finally enough sunny patches had materialized and enough clouds burned off that we decided to try again.

This time we tried a different gully gaining the north ridge a bit higher. Matt led the way and at one point made an exposed move over a gap that I didn’t want to follow. So I down climbed and returned to our earlier route. This time the rock was dry enough that it wasn’t as sketchy. I traversed across some exposed slabs with good footholds, then made the crux move up a step that involved a solid hand jam, and soon reached 3rd class terrain. I’m not sure if we were on route, but this seemed to push the boundary of 4th class. It did seem like the easiest way up the north ridge, though, so maybe it was the normal route.

Above that crux the route was pretty straightforward 3rd class scrambling either on the ridge or below it on the south side. We topped out at 12:30pm at a big cairn and signed in the register. For some reason there were a dozen pencils and pen in the register! Some other peaks had none, so we brought a few down to redistribute. I didn’t want to stay long, though, since the route would get considerably sketchier downclimbing if it started raining. We both downclimbed the route I had ascended, carefully downclimbing and traversing after the crux back to 3rd class terrain and back to the col.

The rock remained dry the whole time, and I was relieved to be back below the crux. From the col we had a fun 4th class scramble on solid rock up the south ridge to Sunbeam peak. On the summit we could see storm clouds rolling in quickly from the west, and we headed down quickly. We made it to Blaurock Pass when it started raining and snowing, and we found shelter under a slight overhang on the east side of the saddle.

The storm was fast but powerful, and we heard a few lightning strikes not too far away. Within an hour the skies were sunny again, and we made the quick scramble up the south ridge to Mount Febbas. From the summit we saw more storms rolling in. We had originally considered returning back over Sunbeam, but it made much more sense to get down quickly by dropping directly down to Dinwoody Creek. We descended north from the summit along the broad plateau to a small saddle below Pt 12700, then descended a steep scree gully facing south. From there we hiked and traversed grassy slopes to Dinwoody Creek and then made it back to camp before the next storm.

Looking back, Turret was one of the more difficult 13ers, and I surprised we were able to squeeze it in between storms on probably the second-worst weather day of the whole trip. We were nearing the time when we’d need to move camp again, and were still well ahead of schedule, so decided to eat double rations for dinner that night to help lighten the load for the move.

Our last two peaks from the Dinwoody camp were supposedly both 5th class. Pinnacle was supposed to have a short 5th class section on top, but our route up Wilson could potentially have a longer technical section if the north couloir was melted out. So we brought both 30m ropes and the full rack. We noticed the glacier going directly up between Pinnacle and Wilson was melted down to bare ice, which would be tough in our aluminum crampons. But the next glacier north, up to Glacier Pass, looked much more reasonable and could still be used to access both peaks.

We left camp at sunrise and hiked up the easy snow slopes to the east ridge of Pinnacle. From there we climbed up a bit steeper snow to the col just north of the southern pinnacle on the ridge. We’d concluded this one must be the tallest of the bunch based on our views from other nearby peaks. We left crampons there, crossed over to the west side, and scrambled up 4th class rock to gain a west-trending ridge. The summit was a big boulder balanced on the ridge, and it was only big enough to summit one at a time. It seemed 4th class still though, so we left the rock gear in our packs and took turns going over to tag the summit.

We saw a slung chockstone on the ridge, but the route was easy enough that we downclimbed instead. From the col we plunge stepped down the snow and traversed over to Wilson. We hiked up to the highest snow at 13,200ft, then packed up the snow gear and scrambled west down into the north couloir.

The couloir was almost completely melted out, and we scrambled up partway. But a few pesky snowpatches higher up must have been melting and refreezing, since there was a thin layer of clear ice on much of the rock. The route was steep enough that we decided to rope up, given the difficult-to-see ice patches all over the place. I built and anchor and belayed Matt to the very end of the rope, which put him at the col below the summit. I then climbed up to the col and led up the short low 5th class step above the col, and then we scrambled 3rd class terrain to the summit.

We took a long break there, since there were no obvious storms and we had made good time that morning. We got amazing views back to Titcomb basin and down to the Mammoth glacier to our west. I partook in my favorite summit snack – welches gummy fruits.

To descend we simul down-climbed to the col, then did a full 30m rappel back to the bottom of the icy part. It was definitely a good call to bring both 30m ropes for the couloir. I suspect, though, if we had come a month earlier it would probably be an easy snow climb to the col, so the routes on these peaks tend to be very conditions-dependent.

We easily hiked back down the snow to camp by early afternoon and took a break. The next peak on our list was Koven, which with suspected would be the crux peak of all the 13ers. On Wilson we’d seen the latest weather forecast was for clear skies the rest of the day, so we decided to move camp that afternoon.

We ate more food to lighten the load, then packed up and hiked up the pass near West Sentinel to gain the Gannett Glacier. I think we were following the official high route now, and we saw occasional footprints in the scree and snow where other climbers had recently been. Around the corner we got our first good look at Koven, and it was intimidating. It looked like a jagged shark fin jutting out of the sea of snow that was the Gannett Glacier. From afar the face looked impossibly steep, but we knew rock faces generally look less steep when you got closer.

Our intended route would be the south ridge, and this, too looked difficult from afar. We continued hiking until we reached a dry flattish area at the saddle below Pt 12025. This seemed like a good staging area for a climb of Koven, and we didn’t have to sleep on snow. I think we are some of the few people to ever camp there, though, since no spots were actually completely level. With a half hour of work, though, we leveled out some spots and set up camp.

Today was the day we predicted would be the crux of the trip. Our guidebook was pretty terse for Mt Koven, except that the south ridge was 5.5. The only online trip report for Mt Koven had been from Sarah T on the north ridge, which she said was 5.7 and a handful of pitches, some tricky. So this would be some adventure climbing on one of the most remote 13ers on the list.

We left camp at sunrise and headed directly up the snowslopes to our west. We then traversed on the Gannett Glacier south to Mt Koven and walked below it’s East Face. Of course, the face was much less steep than it looked from a distance. There were a few snow fingers that started up the face and probably went all the way to the ridge a month earlier. Those would surely provided the easiest access to the summit early season, but were not an option for us in late July.

We continued over to near the Koven-Sachem col, then ditched our snow gear and continued scrambling up. From what we’d seen the upper face looked completely snow free. Matt led the way across ledges, staying roughly on the upper east face but never getting too close to the steep, serrated ridge. We did a lot of 3rd class scrambling, but every once in a while would make an exposed 4th class move.

Eventually we reached the edge of the melted out snow gullies and encountered some slippery exposed and loose rock. We got the rope out there and Matt led up and around the rock a full rope length. When I got to him I took the extra gear and led another pitch of low 5th class climbing up to just below the ridge. Matt took the next pitch, where he climbed 15ft up to the ridge, then crossed to the other side where the terrain turned back to 3rd and 4th class.

Finally, I led a final short pitch weaving back onto the east side and up to a rap anchor. We left the rope there and made a short 3rd class scramble to the summit. I got service on the summit and quickly backed up a handful of pictures on instagram. It was nice to be periodically backing up pictures on summits when I got service so I wouldn’t worry as much about dropping my phone again.

The register only had two sign ins in the past four years, and we added our names. I think our route was easier than the north ridge, but still involved the most roped pitches of any of the 13ers.

To descend we down-climbed to the rap anchor, then I added some more tat and an old locker I’d found on Turret and we made a diagonal rappel down to a lower saddle. From there we scrambled around the west face on 4th class terrain and then made a full 30m rappel down the east face. I was happy we’d brought both ropes for these longer rappels. We met up with our ascent route on the ledges and scrambled the 4th class terrain until we got to one particularly exposed move over an overhanging face. We built a final rap anchor there and made a fun free-hanging rappel down to 3rd class terrain.

We were soon back to the snow, and I breathed a sigh of relief that we were past the crux. The remaining peaks were mostly class 3 or class 2, so shouldn’t be too difficult. We followed our tracks back to camp, and were soon packed up. From the saddle we moved camp farther north, following the high route through more snow and talus up the the flat area just north of Bastion Peak. (Note: the high route is not a trail, it is just a route climbers tend to take, so is still all off-trail travel).

There were a few good grassy areas up high, and this would turn out to be our highest camp, at about 12,100ft. The afternoon weather was supposed to be clear, so we decided to keep tagging more peaks. From camp we hiked up snow slopes to the west, then scrambled up talus and up the east ridge to Flagstone Southeast. This peak officially has 280ft of prominence, but this is within the error measurements of a 300ft prominence, so it is included in the official list of 35 WY 13ers.

From the summit we dropped down to the north and climbed a snowslope to the Flagstone-Pedestal col. Then from there we hiked easy class 2 slopes to the Flagstone summit. The register was pretty wet, so I spent 15 minutes drying it out in the sun and putting it more carefully under some rocks.

Matt decided to head back to camp but I decided to tag Pedestal Peak. Pedestal is not on the official list of 35 peaks, but it has at least 260ft of prominence based on the topo map. So if it’s saddle is actually very close to the lowest contour and it’s summit actually very close to the highest contour, since the contours are at 20ft intervals in theory it might just barely have 300ft of prominence. So some climbers say you should climb it just to be sure.

I had my GPS recording a track, though, so I could measure the exact prominence, which I don’t think has been done before. I hiked up, then made the interesting scramble up the appropriate-looking pedestal-shaped rock at the summit. The rock is overhanging on all sides but one, so it could almost be a very difficult climb, but is actually quite easy. I measured Pedestal to have a prominence of 266ft, so well below the 300ft required for list inclusion. Thus, I recommend the list of 35 peaks be left without adding Pedestal as a 36th peak.

I descended back to the pass, then down the snow slope. Instead of returning exactly the way we’d come I instead dropped down to a lake below the grasshopper glacier, then traversed snow slopes and hiked back to camp.

There were a handful of 13ers still north of camp, and Matt had already climbed two of these – South Downs and Downs – on a previous trip years earlier. But he was nice enough to let me still go tag them instead of needing to come back on a separate trip. The plan was I would start early to tag both while he slept in and just tagged Klondike. Then we would reconvene and make a plan based on how much daylight was left and what the weather was doing.

I left camp around 4am and hiked north up the grasshopper glacier, then west over to Klondike Peak. It was unclear which point was the tallest on Klondike so I ended up tagging all the candidate bumps. From Klondike I returned to the continental divide and then continued hiking north. I think this was also along the high route. I dropped down to a saddle near the base of the sourdough glacier, then traversed around Yukon peak and eventually hiked up the south slope talus slopes to South Downs.

I continued north over more talus and scree and made it to Downs Mountain by around 10:00am. The mountains in the northern winds are dramatically different than the peaks near Gannett. Up north all the peaks are rounded talus piles, instead of the sharp pointy and technical peaks near Gannett. Interestingly, I could see Grand Teton in the distance, and it too look very sharp and pointy.

I retraced my route back to the Grasshopper Glacier, and by then dark clouds were starting to build. It seemed like a particularly bad place to be during a storm – sticking out on a high flat glacier, so I jogged down the glacier and made it back to camp by around 1:30pm. My little side trip turned out to be around 19 miles, so it felt good taking a bit of a break.

After observing the clouds we noticed they were really only developing east of the divide, which was consistent with the last forecast discussion we’d read on Flagstone the previous day. The rest of our route would be on or west of the crest, and the weather looked pretty stable over there. We had plenty of remaining daylight and I was still feeling good, so we packed up and kept moving.

From camp we hiked up to the broad saddle between Bastion and Flagstone and hiked up the class 2 gully to the saddle just east of Bastion. It was slow going with the heavy packs but the gully was pretty easy. We dropped packs there and took a short break on the Bastion summit. We then hiked south around Rampart, an unranked 13er, and started looking for our gateway gully across the divide.

I peeked over the edge where the gully was supposed to be, and there it was! It was an easy class 2 descent, just as we’d hoped from the topo maps and google earth. I bet not too many people take this route, since I’m pretty sure we’re the first ones to do this exact peakbagging loop, but it’s a good one to use. We dropped down easily to the Rampart-Desolation col, and then strategized about our next move. We wanted to climb Desolation Peak, but the question was how. The standard route is the northwest ridge, but that was on the opposite side of the mountain. The ridge in front of us was not in the guidebook, and it looked very steep from a distance, but looked a bit less steep up close. The southeast ridge was in the guidebook, but to access it we’d have to descend a few hundred feet, then climb a steep snow slope.

We decided to go for the east ridge. It was most likely 4th class, we reasoned, so could be fun. Matt led the way, and the ridge turned out to be solid and fun 4th class rock the whole way up. In retrospect I think that was one of my favorite routes of the whole trip! I would say it was more classic than the north ridge of Henderson, and certainly deserves to be in the guidebook. But it is on the side of Desolation farthest from the standard trailhead, and so I bet very few parties ever take it.

On the way up it briefly started raining, and we waited out the squall under an overhang. It was fun watching the squall intensify after it hit the divide, and then get really dark east of the divide. It soon ended, with a rainbow forming over Gannett Peak. Luckily it was short enough that the rock was still basically dry for the remainder of the scramble. The summit of Desolation did indeed feel pretty desolate, and we spent some more time watching the rain squalls form over the summits. From that view, Koven looked a lot more difficult, sticking up very high above the lakes below. It was hard to believe we climbed up the very sharp-looking south ridge.

We soon downclimbed back to our packs, and then hiked all the way down to lake 10795 by dark. The lake was in a deep steep-walled valley that reminded me of fjords in norway, and was very scenic at sunset. Within about 2 minutes of us arriving at the lake, though, it started to rain. We quickly set up our tents on a small peninsula, then dove inside and cooked dinner in the vestibules. I think that ended up being one of our longest days in the Winds, and was the most 13ers in a day for me.

We left camp at sunrise and hiked over slabs and moraine to the toe of the Mammoth Glacier. It was time to tag Twin Peaks West, just in case it was a little bit taller than Twin Peaks East. Unfortunately by not taking a 10-minute side trip a week earlier we now resigned ourselves to a 3-hour side trip. We took turns breaking trail up the soft snow of the glacier, then kicking steps steeply up to the East-West Twin col. From the col it was a short and fun 3rd class scramble to the summit.

I recorded a GPS track up to the summit, but didn’t think to check my measurements until I was back home weeks later. Looking across the summit of East Twin looked about the same height, and I really wished I’d brought my sight level to tell the difference. Matt tried to sight a point on The Sphinx in the background and reason whether that meant East Twin was higher or lower, but I wasn’t convinced. We’d done them both, though, so it didn’t really matter to us any more. But it would be nice to help out future mountaineers if they only want to climb the higher peak.

We hiked back down almost to our packs, but traversed high and climbed another snow slope up to the col just west of Split Mountain. After a short climb up the west talus slopes we reached the summit. The weather was looking good the rest of the day, and we spent some time trying to name all the summits we saw. We’d climbed most of them!

We descended back to the col and then had a fun boot ski back to our packs. From there we crossed west below the baby glacier, then made a snow and 3rd class climb up to Stone Pillar Pass. We dropped our packs at the pass and converted to day packs. Matt had brought a day pack, but I skimped out and did not. So on these side trips my strategy was to put food in my coat pockets, then wear my climbing harness and clip my water and crampons to that.

The climb up Whitecap turned out to be some scree down low on the south side of the west ridge, then some 3rd class climbing closer to the ridge, then some fun 4th class up high on the ridge proper just before the summit. Appropriate to its name, the summit was capped in white snow.

From the top we looked across at Bow mountain, which was now Matt’s last 13er. We had harbored hopes of him finishing that day, but it looked like our side trip to Twin Peaks West had cost enough time that we might have to wait til the next morning. We downclimbed to the pass, then hiked down scree slopes to a grassy meadow to the south. Below the meadow were some talus slopes and small bit of bushwhacking down to Stonehammer Lake.

At the lake we turned south and after some tedious talus hopping finally reached a trail at Peak Lake. This was the first trail we’d encountered in over a week, and it felt like a luxury. Interestingly, we met up with two climbers camped at the lake who were also Washington Bulgers completers (those are the washington hundred highest peaks)! What are the odds four bulger completers, of which there are only about 75 total, would all bump into each other deep in the Wind River range?

We talked to them a bit about some route conditions of peaks they were climbing, like Split and Gannett, and then continued on the trail. We hiked up to Shannon Pass then dropped over the other side and set up camp at sunset in some pleasant meadows.

Our goal this day was for Matt to climb his last peak and then, perhaps equally important, to get back to Pinedale before Burger Barn closed. They closed at 8pm, which meant we had to be there by 7:30pm. It was a 20 mile hike out, so working backwards and estimating some times we decided to leave camp at 5:30am, a bit earlier than usual.

From camp we basically hiked directly up the grassy slabs and scree to the saddle just east of Brimstone Mountain. From there it was a fun 3rd class scramble and then class 2 talus hop along the ridge to the summit. Matt officially finished at 7am, becoming the 3rd person to climb all the Wyoming 13ers. It was actually a very scenic view with sunrise on the summit. We hung out for a while and I backed up some more pictures on instagram.

We made fast time back to camp, then quickly packed up and headed out. Progress was quick on the trail, and we passed a few hikers as we dropped down to Lower Jean Lake. After we got past Island Lake the trail got pretty crowded. Lots of hikers were heading in. This was peak season in the winds, with all the snow having melted in the lower valleys but no fresh snow falling yet. At one point we came upon a group of 10 people with 10 llamas moving slowly down the trail. It was difficult to pass, but we eventually got their attention and the let us by.

By Photographers Point the crowds increased even more. There were even several teams of middle school cross country runners running around. Finally by 5pm we staggered out at the trailhead, with ample buffer time before Burger Barn closed. We quickly loaded up and drove into town. We would each polish off the triple burger challenge in addition to large milkshakes and large salads no problem.

That night I booked a hotel room at the Pinedale Lodge while Matt snuck in a quick shower and then started driving that night back to Seattle. I contemplated taking a full rest day, but I was actually feeling pretty good, especially after that big meal and a hot shower, and wanted a strong finishing time, so set my alarm for early the next morning to continue finishing off the remaining few 13ers.

Matt gave me some excellent advice for my remaining peaks, and the closest one was Wind River Peak. So I decided to drive out early in the morning and climb Wind River from the Little Sandy Lake trailhead. This route was the shortest trail mileage and least elevation gain, but required a bit of off-trail travel, and the trailhead was really only accessible to hardcore 4wd vehicles. But that meant there were 6 miles or so I could do on my mountain bike, which sounded fun.

I left the hotel around 5am and drove to the national forest boundary at the base of block and tackle hill. My mountain bike tire had ruptured during the drive to Wyoming, probably from being in front of the car exhaust, but I repaired it in the hotel parking lot the night before and it seemed in working order. I packed up a light day pack and was soon biking up the road. It got rough quick, and was soon very steep and loose, but I was able to bike up and then all the way to the trailhead.

I locked my bike to a tree at the wilderness boundary and continued on foot. I don’t think that trail gets much traffic. I went through some meadows and some cows stampeded away, mooing and acting terrified of me. Then the trail became a bit hard to follow past little sandy lake. I eventually hiked up to a gully just below Coon Lake, and then scrambled off-trail up the talus gully to the lake. I then cut cross-country past the ridge northeast of the lake and finally met back up with a trail to Tayo Lake.

On the east side of the lake I followed the gentle grass and talus south ridge all the way to the summit of Wind River Peak. The view was pretty interesting, with the Cirque of Towers on one side and vast plains on the other. I started thinking about how I would finish the peaks, and realized how there would be a pretty big hiatus in peaks between me finishing my 34th peak and Andrew flying in to finish grand teton with me. I wondered if maybe he could fly out a bit earlier.

I actually had service on the summit, so messaged Andrew. We ended up talking on the phone and he said flight change fees were waived now in the time of covid, so he just switched his flight to arrive a few days earlier. I just needed to make my way to Jackson by Thursday afternoon. Then we could either climb an acclimation peak first and then Grand Teton (Andrew was coming directly from sea level), or go directly up Grand Teton on Friday. This new plan would save quite a bit of time off my total finishing time, and it’s awesome Andrew was flexible enough to pull it off.

I returned the way I came, taking a few hours to hike back to the bike. Then it was an amazing bike ride blasting back down to the car by mid afternoon. I immediately started driving to my next destination – Black Tooth Mountain and Cloud Peak.

I did around 6 hours of driving, taking a few rest stops to fill up on McDonalds food and some gas station junk food, but I eventually arrived at the West Tensleep trailhead around midnight.

I got a short 3 hour nap in the back of the car, then was up and hiking by 3:30am. I planned to climb both Black Tooth and Cloud Peak as a big loop and wanted to be off the summits before predicted afternoon storms. It was a bit unclear to me if it would be possible to combine these peaks and keep the travel to 4th class or less. The standard route on Black Tooth was from the northeast and the standard route on Cloud Peak from the south, so it wasn’t obvious that they could easily be combined.

I’d read Sarah’s report, though, that she and Teresa had climbed Black Tooth from the Wilderness Basin to the south. They did a technical route up, but descended a nontechnical gully on the south side. So that seemed possible. But it was unclear if I could get up Cloud Peak from Wilderness Basin. If that were possible, then I could do a loop going up and down Black Tooth from Wilderness Basin, then go up Cloud from the basin and descend the standard route.

Based on topo maps it looked like the north face of cloud peak was not too steep. It was wide enough that there was very likely a way up. As a backup plan it looked like a gentle gully gained the north ridge, then the ridge might work. Absolute worst case, I was prepared to hike in and out of wilderness basin, then wrap around and hike cloud via the normal route as a long 40-mile day. That would still be more efficient than taking two days to do each peak by its standard route.

I carried my ultralight daypack with food, water, and rain jacket inside and my aluminum crampons strapped on the outside. I hiked with my whippet just in case I needed to climb any snow gullies. I had checked the daily satellite images when I had service early in the day, but the previous two weeks were cloudy directly over the peaks, so not very helpful. I guess Cloud Peak is appropriately named.

I hiked for a few hours in the dark, passing a bunch of alpine lakes, until I reached Paint Rock creek around sunrise. There were a bunch of tents set up in the meadows and people were starting to get out, presumably to climb Cloud Peak. I could see where Cloud Peak should be, but of course it was socked in the clouds. This was kind of unusual in my experience in Wyoming to have these clouds in the morning, but they were really only on this one mountain, so I figured it was a unique local phenomenon and might burn off by mid day.

I crossed Paint Rock Creek, ascended briefly on the north side, then cut west to wrap around the long west ridge of Cloud Peak. I followed fleeting game trails and walked through mostly open terrain, occasionally spotting cairns. I gradually ascended slabby terrain to cross through the pass west of point 11050, then traversed to the shore of Middle Cloud Peak Lake. I walked along the east side of this lake and the one above it, then crossed to the west side and hiked all the way to lake 11170 at the base of Wilderness Basin.

By then the clouds had finally dissipated and I got excellent views of my potential routes. Luckily all routes looked feasible, with an obvious gully going up Black Tooth and many possible class 3 options ascending Cloud Peak. I saw some footprints in the snow that looked kind of fresh, and I later learned that Eli had been in there just the day before also climbing both peaks.

I headed up the scree and talus gully on the south side of Black Tooth and was able to follow it all the way to the Black Tooth – Woolsy col. I could avoid all snow, barely, so didn’t even need to put the crampons on. At the col I crossed over to the east face and met up with the standard route all the way to the summit. Interestingly, the gully was class 2, which sounds easier than any other route on the east side.

Black Tooth had an excellent ammo-box summit register, and I think I was about the 3rd person to sign in this year after Matt and Eli. I soon downclimbed back to wilderness basin and started traversing over to the north face of cloud peak. I originally intended to go up one of the easy 3rd class ribs or gullies I saw coming down, but then I encountered a big snowfield I’d have to cross to access them. I guess I was a bit lazy and didn’t want to put on crampons and gaiter, so instead went up an easy talus gully that gained the north ridge of cloud. The ridge eventually steepened, and I made a few 4th class moves before it mellowed out back to a talus slope. I think these moves could have been avoided by traversing a bit lower than the ridge crest, but that didn’t sound as fun to me at the time.

I then followed the broad talus slopes south to the summit, arriving exactly at noon. My original plan had been to try to get off the summits by noon, and it was surprising how precise I had timed things. It had briefly hailed on my way up, but now was clearing out a bit, so I stopped to take a break. One other hiker was on the summit with a dog, and she soon started down. I remember noting a huge cliff on the east face of Cloud that would make a fun climbing objective. Black Tooth and the other peaks along the ridge between it and Cloud looked pretty intimidating from a distance. I’ve read the other peaks are actually quite technical, and also sound like fun.

I eventually started down. There were occasional cairns to follow, but the route wasn’t super clear and I mostly just ended up finding my own way. About a dozen other climbers were making their way up, and I was surprised to have found such a popular Wyoming 13er. I would say Cloud Peak is definitely in the top 3 most popular 13ers, and is probably one of only about four 13ers that see more than one or two ascents per year (the order of popularity based on my empirical data would be Grand Teton, Cloud, Gannett, Freemont, and none of the others see much activity).

On the way down I passed a bunch of other climbers also descending. Eventually I reached the meadow below Paint Rock Creek and regained the trail. On the hike out I saw dozens more people hiking in. Many were probably going for Cloud Peak, but others were also fishing in the alpine lakes.

I made it back to the car around 4pm for a 12.5 hour trip. My GPS registered 29 miles, so not as long as Wind River Peak but still one of the longer 13er days. I quickly tossed my gear in the car, switched into flip flops, and started driving out.

Once I got cell service I briefly did a bit of research and it was about a 5 hour drive to Francs Peak, then a 6 hour drive from there to Jackson. I started doing some calculations for how my timing would work. I had originally planned to drive straight to Jackson, and that would probably be the reasonable thing to do. But it seemed perhaps feasible to sneak in Francs peak first. Then Andrew and I could climb Grand Teton immediately after he landed and that would be my final 13er. It seemed much more fitting to end on Grand Teton than Francs Peak, and if I snuck it in I’d get an even faster finishing time.

Francs Peak had two standard routes, one via a long 4wd road from the northeast that was shorter, and a 16-mile route from the south with a 2wd approach. I was nervous to try a long 4wd road without a full size spare tire, and mountain biking a 4wd road that long probably would take more time than just hiking the 16-mile route. So I decided Francs Peak would probably take me about 8 hours round trip via that route. I needed to be to Jackson by 4pm, which meant I needed to leave Francs peak by 10am, which meant I needed to start hiking at 2am. But to give some buffer time I decided to start at midnight. That all added up to another night with very little sleep.

I drove to Meeteetse, bought some food at a gas station, then continued on the road to Kirwin, an abandoned mine town. I passed many mansions on ranches along the road, and the road quality eventually deteriorated after I entered the national forest. There were three stream crossings without bridges that I was a bit nervous going through, but the forester ended up doing fine. I eventually rolled in to the Meadows Creek trailhead, cooked some pasta, and went to sleep in the back by 9:30pm.

After just two hours sleeping (more like napping) I got up at 11:30pm and was moving shortly after midnight. I’d done plenty of consecutive long days in Colorado with only 2 hours of sleep per day (that was my average for about the last week of my Centennials push), but for some reason this morning seemed more difficult. I slowly made my way up some switchbacks, then even more slowly up a very loose section of trail. Eventually I couldn’t take it any more and laid down in the middle of the trail.

I’d had some luck in Colorado with short 10-minute naps. If I was very sleep deprived they somehow seemed to leave me noticeably energized when I woke up. They were almost like eating a sugary snack. So I set my watch alarm on a 10-minute countdown, then fell asleep almost immediately in the middle of the trail. When the alarm went off 10 minutes later I got up immediately and was surprisingly alert. It was a like a step change in energy level from before the nap.

I continued up the trail for another hour, but then started feeling tired again. I again set my alarm for a 10 minute countdown, fell immediately asleep in the middle of the trail, then got up after 10 minutes and was energized again. This was the last nap-snack I would need. Eventually I popped out in a big meadow, and stumbled across an old miners cabin. The trail petered out but I continued ascending as it got colder and windier, and eventually reached the broad south ridge of Francs.

I followed the ridge north and saw a lot of evidence of the ground being dug up. I vaguely remember some reports of grizzly bear sightings on Francs, and figured they were probably digging for moths. I started periodically banging my poles together to make some noise in case there were any sleeping up there, but I didn’t see any. I eventually figured out they probably sleep down in the trees, then come up to eat moths during the day. This would actually work out perfectly – I would be above treeline mostly at night, so there was little risk of getting turned around by grizzlies like other climbers had.

After crossing a short snowfield and passing a very windy col I climbed up a more well-defined south ridge and reached the summit of Francs shortly after 5am. This meant I had officially climbed all the Wyoming 13ers, though I still planned to re-climb Grand Teton to tighten my finishing clock. The sun still hadn’t risen, so there wasn’t really much of a view. I did find shelter just east of the summit to eat a snack. Interestingly, there’s a USGS survey marker on the top, but it’s on a rock that easily moves!

After I got too cold I headed back down. I saw a great sunrise on the way, and just as I passed the snowfield I noticed one grizzly bear wandering up. That was the only one I saw, though, and perhaps I discovered the trick to avoiding grizzlies up there – just climb at night!

My route back was much easier to follow in the daylight, and I made it back to the car by 8:30am, so plenty early for my drive to Jackson. I spent a bit of time doing a duct-tape and stick repair to a plastic splash guard under the engine (the repair still held 2,000 miles later), and started driving out. Now my sleep deprivation had started catching up to me again. But I’ve found if I nibble on sugary snacks I remain very alert while driving. So for the next 6 hours I diligently nibbled through a few bags of trail mix, and made it to the Jackson Hole airport with plenty of buffer time.

I spent about an hour cleaning out and reorganizing the car, packing up my climbing gear for Grand Teton, and reading the route description for the Owen Spaulding route.

Andrew arrived on time and we drove immediately in to Jackson. We picked up some food at the Albertsons, then met up with a friend, Alex, in town who graciously let us camp out on his lawn that night.

I got a solid 6 hours of sleep that night – which felt like a lot – and we started driving at 1:30am. We got to the Lupine Meadows trailhead by 2am and were moving shortly after. It was amazing how active the parking lot was even at that hour. We leap frogged with a few groups going up, and eventually reached the lower saddle around 6am, taking almost exactly the amount of time Andrew had predicted.

There were a lot of groups camped out, and it was very cold and windy. I cursed myself for leaving my mini-puffy jacket in the car. After topping off water we started heading up.

I had previously climbed the upper exum route with Katie back in 2014 and descended from the upper saddle, but I didn’t quite remember the route as well as I thought I did. That trip was late August and it had just snowed. We had camped at the upper saddle and I think we were the only ones on the mountain that day except for two rangers. The rangers had passed us on the route and we simply followed their tracks in the snow back down.

This time, for the Owen Spaulding route, we needed to scramble up to the Upper Saddle and then start the route. We had a bit of trouble figuring out how to get there, but I ended up scrambling up a chimney then belaying Andrew up. Eventually we reached the upper saddle and got in line behind a bunch of other climbers. This time was certainly much more crowded than my previous experience. I thought a Friday would be better than a weekend, but I think this just means weekends would be extremely crowded.

For some reason one of the parties in front of us decided to do short 10m pitches, unnecessarily breaking what could have been one long traverse pitch into many smaller pitches. This slowed things down considerably and was pretty frustrating. But I reminded myself this was to be expected climbing the easiest route up a very popular peak. Eventually we finished the traverse and climbed up a chimney to the base of the Owen Chimney.

Luckily the route split at this point and I led right on the Catwalk to get around the slower parties. I belayed Andrew up, then we scrambled to the base of Sargents Chimney. We got there before the slower groups so I led directly up and belayed Andrew up. From there it was a short scramble to the summit, and we topped out just after 11am with the summit to ourselves.

This was my final Wyoming 13er, making me the 5th person to finish, setting the new FKT of 16 days 17 hours. Interestingly Matt, Eli, and I all finished within days of each other, with Matt finishing Monday, Eli Wednesday, and me Friday (well, technically Thursday with a reclimb Friday).

Soon a guide and client came up the upper exum and a big group came up from the Owen Spaulding. We didn’t want to get caught in another traffic jam going down so started our descent. We rapped Sargents Chimney, then scrambled down to the main rap anchor. We’d read that a 60m rope wouldn’t work on the main anchor, so found a second anchor up and climbers right of the main one and made two rappels down. Later, talking to a climber at the upper saddle, we learned that a 60m rope will work on the main anchor, but you have to be careful which side of a prow you go down, since once side works and one doesn’t.

From the saddle we scrambled down, then made a short rappel down a chimney (this may not be the correct descent route), then had an easy hike back to the car. On the way down we found ourselves behind two rangers, who had the unenviable job of checking whether people obviously intending to camp had in fact gotten camping permits. There were some interesting exchanges.

One guy with a big pack and a sleeping pad strapped on the outside said “I use the pad to sit on when I’m taking a break,” however he was taking a break during the exchange and not sitting on the pad. My favorite was:

Ranger: “Your packs look big. Are you planning on camping tonight?”
Climber 1: “No, we’ll just hang out until midnight at the lower saddle and start climbing then”
Ranger: “Do you have sleeping bags?”
Climber 1: “Yes, but they’re just for emergencies”
Ranger: “Do you have a tent?”
Climber 1: “No”
Climber 2:”Well….yes, but it’s just for emergencies also”

Somehow those climbers all got off the hook. I guess the rangers were just feeling generous that day.

We soon made it back to the trailhead and celebrated with burgers and blizzards at the Jackson Dairy Queen. That night we found a good place to camp in the national forest just outside Jackson. The next morning we headed north into Montana and immediately started working on the Montana 12ers, which I would finish in 6 days 23 hrs.

Wyoming 13ers

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