Atop the Tetons: Mount Moran offers solitude, spectacular scenery
The Tetons are probably the most striking mountain range in the Lower 48, and all eyes focus on the crown jewel – Grand Teton. At 13,775 feet, Grand is the one that draws the crowds, but there’s another Teton not far away that also commands admiration and respect.
Mount Moran bestrides the northern end of the Tetons like a colossus. At 12,605 feet, it’s the fourth highest peak in Grand Teton National Park but, due to its isolation, Moran stands out more than any other peak in the range. Massive and bulky, Mount Moran is physically bigger than Grand Teton – and far more complex.
An old friend and I were there recently, hauling our weary bones up to a camp at 10,000 feet, climbing the classic Chicago Mountaineering Club route the next day, then descending to the valley floor on the third day. It was the latest in a long string of Teton climbs and, given our collective age of 125 years, it may have been the sweetest summit yet.
Our original plan was to climb the full Exum Ridge on the Grand Teton, but that option was off the table as the weather gods were offering a mere two-and-a-half days of dry conditions. Fortunately, I had a canoe on the roof of my truck, so we recalibrated our ambitions and charted a course for Mount Moran.
It proved to be a wise decision.
A good start
Rising from the northwestern shore of Leigh Lake, Mount Moran is pretty difficult to reach by land. Would-be visitors can arrive the hard way, by bushwhacking down a long-abandoned trail, or they can arrive the easy way by paddling a boat across a pleasant lake. Not surprisingly, most visitors prefer to arrive by boat.
The sky was blue and the sun was shining when my pal Hugh Safford, a fire and vegetation ecologist at UC Davis, and I eased our canoe into String Lake. There were plenty of other boats on the water and the mood was festive and light.
The crowds thinned considerably after the short, easy portage from String Lake to Leigh Lake. After about an hour of paddling, we’d put Leigh Lake behind us and arrived at the Trail of Despair.
No, that’s not its actual name, but any trail that relentlessly climbs 3,100 vertical feet deserves a foreboding name. We stashed the canoe near the water’s edge, then shouldered our packs and began trudging upward.
The trail ran along a stream that drains the Falling Ice Glacier on Moran, up a barely discernable path that is steep, straight, and covered with loose scree lying at the angle of repose. The day was hot, my heart was pounding, and every few steps brought a crisis of balance as stones rolled underfoot.
“Is this the day I keel over with a heart attack?” I asked myself. The deeper question was even simpler: “Am I really up to this?”
Glad that’s over
After losing a little blood and a lot of sweat, I finally wheezed into camp a little more than 2 hours after departing Leigh Lake. Hugh, five years my junior, had already arrived and picked out a tent site at 10,000 feet. It was a commanding aerie, on a thinly forested ridge, just below an impressive tower known as the West Horn.
Our arrival was greeted with wild acclaim by the local ground squirrel population, which was eager to match wits with our food storage system. The campsite was in a grove of white bark pine trees and immediately to our north was the Falling Ice Glacier, which lies in a cirque framed by the mountain’s East Horn and West Horn. It was an absolutely spectacular setting.
We had the place to ourselves for about an hour, until two Exum Mountain Guides appeared with two clients. They pitched their tents about 100 feet uphill from ours and announced they, too, would be climbing the CMC the next day.
Both guides hailed from Jackson, as did the women they were guiding, so they were the locals. After dinner, Hugh and I wandered up to their camp to socialize, swap stories, and share suggestions for the day ahead.
Unlike Grand Teton, which is a-swarm with climbers during the summer months, the summit of Mount Moran receives relatively few visitors. The six of us in camp that night, plus two other guys we encountered the next day, were the only folks on Moran during our visit.
Now and then, being No. 2 pays handsome dividends.
Dawn’s early light
The guides and their clients were up and away before dawn the next morning, and Hugh and I weren’t far behind. We worked our way under and around the West Horn, ascending another 1,600 vertical feet, until we arrived atop a tower with the improbable name of Drizzlepuss. From there, we rappelled into the notch between Drizzlepuss and the southeast face of Moran and finally came to grips with the CMC route.
The route, first climbed in 1941 by Tetons legend Paul Petzoldt and three others from the Chicago Mountaineering Club, isn’t terribly committing, nor is it very difficult. For those of you scoring at home, it is classed as a Grade II and the crux difficulty is a mere 5.5 on the Yosemite rating scale.
The most noteworthy feature of the CMC route is the Black Dike, a 120-foot-wide swath of basalt that appears as a dark, vertical stripe running down the southeast face of Moran. Near the top, the Black Dike juts proudly from the face like a big, jaunty nose; the basalt streak continues, plainly visible from the summit, for another seven miles to the west.
The Black Dike is a useful landmark on the CMC, because the climbing route runs parallel to and left of the dark basalt.
The first two or three pitches from the base of Drizzlepuss are fairly polished and open, framed at the bottom by a long and abrupt drop to the Falling Ice Glacier. Though the climbing is easy, it is a bad place for trouble and cautious parties deploy a rope on the lower reaches of the CMC.
The deafening sound of rockfall occasionally filled the air, but we never saw any avalanches. Still, the sound was an edgy reminder that things can go bad awfully fast in the mountains.
After three or four pitches, the angle eased off and the southeast face became more broken and easier to scale. At that point, we stashed the rope and our climbing gear, then scrambled to the top.
It was a welcome contrast from the last time Hugh and I were on Moran. Back in 1995, we climbed the Direct South Buttress – a seriously committing route that took us all day to complete. The upshot was an unplanned bivvy at 10,000 feet and, to this day, it is the only time I’ve ever been benighted in the wild.
A remarkable summit
There were no ugly surprises this time around and we had the top to ourselves. Given its massive bulk, it’s hardly surprising that Moran’s summit is pretty spacious; estimates range as high as 15 acres. The summit is littered with broken blocks of sandstone, and there’s a surprising amount of life up there.
Black rosy finches flit to and fro, gobbling up unwary insects. The birds, considered the preeminent alpine species of the Lower 48, are beautiful to behold – with ebony heads giving way to salmon-colored bellies and wings. Elsewhere, glossy brown marmots spread themselves on ledges and dozed in the sun.
To the south, the skyline was dominated by the Cathedral Group of the Tetons – Grand Teton, Mount Owen, and Teewinot. To the north was Yellowstone National Park, and to the east lay a succession of limpid blue lakes speckled with islands. Blacktail Butte was plainly visible on the valley floor and the buzzing tourist beehive of Jackson was somewhere to the southeast.
From our vantage, the world was painted in broad swathes of simple colors: blue sky overhead, green forests on the mountain slopes, and vast sweeps of polished gray rock. It was a great place to feel humble and small.
Like all summits in the Tetons, the top of Mount Moran is an exhilarating spot – but it was no place to linger as clouds were building over farm fields to the west in Idaho. We were exactly halfway through our adventure, so it was time for an error-free retreat to camp.
The first 500 or so feet of downclimbing was pretty straightforward and we collected the rope and the rest of our cached gear without incident. Having only one 70-meter rope, we were a bit anxious about the rappels leading to the notch between Drizzlepuss and the southeast face. Turns out, the rappel anchors were spaced close enough for us to rap with a single rope; overall, the descent was easier than expected.
The most challenging climbing on the entire route was the final 50 meters back to the top of Drizzlepuss. From there, it was all downhill to Leigh Lake – all 4,700 vertical feet’s worth. The incessant pounding on that retreat left my quadriceps screaming for days afterwards; it took a full week for sensation to return to the toes on my right foot.
Another successful outing
While the CMC route is child’s play for experienced climbers, it is still a serious undertaking on a significant mountain. Hugh and I have climbed many of the big Alpine rock faces in the Tetons, and we are confident – but we’re not cocky. As befits men in their 60s, we know our biggest peaks are probably behind us, but we’re still game for adventure that’s commensurate with our abilities.
That’s why we keep returning to the Tetons. Sure, there’s Grand Teton – and maybe we’ll climb the full Exum Ridge someday – but there are plenty of other worthwhile climbs for those willing to look beyond the Grand.
The CMC on Mount Moran is one of those oft-overlooked, yet absolutely worthy routes. There are many, many others in the Tetons.