Grand Teton
Interesting facts
- Bill Briggs made the first ski descent of Grand Teton in 1971, skiing the east face by a route now named after him.
- Its topographic prominence of about 1,990 metres (6,530 ft) makes it one of the most prominent peaks in the United States.
- Members of the 1870 Washburn expedition called the peak Mount Hayden, but the French name prevailed on later maps.
- The mountain has 38 established climbing routes with 58 variations, and three of them appear in the classic book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America.
- The Enclosure, a subsidiary summit, is ringed by a man-made rock wall thought to have been built by Native Americans long before any recorded ascent.
- Stephen Koch made the first snowboard descent of the mountain in 1989.
- It is the second-highest peak in Wyoming, surpassed only by Gannett Peak in the Wind River Range.
- The Exum Ridge route is named after Glenn Exum, who later co-founded the Exum Mountain Guides climbing school.
Why it is worth it
Grand Teton is the summit of a mountain range that seems to have no approach. The Tetons rise straight out of the flat valley of Jackson Hole with almost no foothills, the peak itself reaching 4,199 m (13,775 ft) and standing between roughly 1,200 and 2,100 m above the valley floor. The reason is the Teton Fault along the base of the eastern slope: movement on it over the last six to nine million years raised the range abruptly, and that makes the Teton Range the youngest in the Rocky Mountains, carved from some of the oldest rock, gneiss whose story begins around 2.5 billion years ago.
From the valley, Grand Teton is the tallest of a cluster of spires known as the Cathedral Group, together with Mount Owen, Teewinot, Middle Teton and South Teton. Look closely at the south-east face and a dark vertical stripe crosses the paler rock: a dike of diabase, molten rock that forced its way into a crack long ago and hardened, the same feature that marks neighbouring Mount Moran. Below the north face lies the Teton Glacier, and the Exum Ridge is one of the classic climbing routes to the summit.
The name has a frank origin: the most common explanation is that French-Canadian or Iroquois members of an early expedition called the peaks "tétons", breasts, and the biggest became the Grand Teton. Who first stood on top is still argued over. Nathaniel Langford and James Stevenson claimed the summit on 29 July 1872, but many believe they reached only the lower Enclosure; the undisputed ascent was made by William Owen's party on 11 August 1898. Since 1929 the mountain has been protected within Grand Teton National Park.
Getting there
The peak rises in Grand Teton National Park in north-western Wyoming. Jackson Hole Airport (JAC), about 16 km from the mountain, stands inside the park itself, the only commercial airport in the United States located in a national park; the town of Jackson is about 11 km (7 mi) south of the airport. On the Idaho side of the range, Rexburg is about 80 km away. Park roads along the valley floor give the classic views of the east face; reaching the summit is a technical mountaineering climb.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Grand Teton is the highest mountain of the Teton Range in Grand Teton National Park at 13,775 feet (4,199 m) in Northwest Wyoming. Below its north face is Teton Glacier. The mountain is a classic destination in American mountaineering via the Owen-Spalding route, the North Ridge and North Face.
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