Climb to the Top - Grand Tetons Summit
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Guide: Billy Haas
http://exumguides.com/billy-haas/
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Exum Mountain Guides http://exumguides.com/
Phone: 307.733.2297
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Set out from the Death Canyon Trail Head at 4am for the eclipse at 11:34 am. Hike started in the dark using Black Diamond headlamp and Leki trekking poles. The poles were great for easing pressure on the knees and the ones I used have compression springs with cork handles. (These have been all over with me including the Appalachian Trail, Glacier National Park, as well as Banff, Yoho and Assiniboine Provincial Park in Canada and even the Andes mountains of Peru.
The general approach was a modest uphill hike only getting into a nice vertical class 4 scramble at the base of the mountain. I recommend following the ridge on the right side of the mountain as it had some great exposure. This was the first time I used approach shoes and they are the way to go! I had LaSportiva shoes and they gripped unbelievable well. You could smear just about any rock with confidence and even with all the dust from the trail there was no issue (I wore them all the way from the trail head to the summit and back - Highly recommended).
Once at the summit the eclipse was awesome and I think more than any of us there expected. One thing of note was that when just about 1/5 of the sun was covered the temperature began to drop dramatically. I'm not sure exactly how much but all of use started throwing on extra layers and hats. By the time it reached "totality" we were all very cold and some were shivering.
From the peak we had a perfect view to watch Idaho "go dark" as the eclipse grew. I set my GoPro at the Grand Teton and on "time lapse" mode which was pretty cool to see it go dark.
The other amazing thing from the summit was the view during Totality - we had a sunset like lighting on the entire 360 degree horizon. So cool it's hard to explain.
We all cheered during the 2 minutes of total black out and one college student from Colorado State took a knee 1 minute into it and asked his girlfriend to marry him. (She said "yes" and a bottle of Champagne quickly appeared and got drunk.
The trek down was uneventful except that a few of the less experienced climbers kept slipping and knocking rocks down. Some of which turned into mini-landslides and I was glad to have had a Petzl helmet.
All in all a great day and back to the car/trail head by 4 in the afternoon. In time to get back to Jackson Hole for a burger at Liberty Burger. (Bacon cheese burger was the best!)