Climbing the CMC Route on Mt Moran

There's Moran. This year's the year we finally get up after failing last year. Finally a dry land. The downfall. And our backpacking climbing gear. I paddled the whole way. Hello it's Kristen from the future. Just a disclaimer that I lost a lot of the footage from the sawtooths and Moran and all because my phone glitched last year so the video will be a lot of Jordan's footage that he had. Also I thought it'd be fun to do a Moran vlog where we had one first failed attempt last year and then this summer during the end of the season we had a successful trip so I bunched those together to make it one big Moran vlog. Made it to Wyoming. Back to Wyoming. We're back way too close to Colorado for my liking but we are here in Jackson, Wyoming and uh just pulling up into town so we're gonna stop by the mountaineering shop see if they have any updates on conditions. We'll call the guide service to see what they have to say and uh decided we're gonna do the Grand or Mount Moran or something else we don't even think about. We'll see. All depends on snow, rain, weather, wind and uh what looks fun. So we made it across this lake. I got an incline at the tip of that mountain. That's where we're going. More views of the Grand, Tiwanat and the rest of this range. Our mountain, our first look is that behemoth. We're gonna go up we'll have more videos highlighting our route um and you know we'll cameo from this canoe that's on the side of my head as I'm driving. Here we are starting the journey. You can see the Grand. Teton is back there. Pretty cool. This is String Lake so we're getting our pack stuffed into some trash bags if we can. A little bit waterproof. We're gonna go kayak across String Lake here, head over Portage to the next lake, Leeway and then uh you know ditch the kayaks. Start hiking up to our base camp. Climb Mount Moran tomorrow. Here's Kristen and the lake and uh pretty cool. So two packs in a kayak with two people in water that's you know a couple feet deep means we keep bottoming out which is sweet you know. Exactly what you want and of course you have to wear these nice life vests even though uh it's nearly impossible to drown. On the Portage section heading with a not so light kayak to Lee Lake. Hi. Are you taking a video? I am. Made it to the second lake. Gonna paddle around this island. There's Mount Moran. I'm gonna drop the boats off over there, hike up and the top tomorrow. Okay so that second lake was much more stressful than the first. As you can hear the wind you know it's calm now but out in the lake there are full-blown waves which uh when you have two backpacks and two people in this kayak um basically it starts sinking. Okay the waves are too large and okay me being the heavier one uh I'm getting soaked so yeah basically all the waves are just soaking right up into the into the pants and all that jazz. Anyway peaceful. I don't know I'm still undecided about water sports. I can't tell if I like it or not. Maybe if we actually did them correctly for one time we'd be good. Anyway that's Mount Moran. Uh there's two horns in the picture. The right one is the east horn. The left one is the left west horn. We're gonna stash the canoe or kayak sorry right around here um when we get back tomorrow our way. Came from the far side of the lake over there. Canoe's down there heading up this uh gully with the water system here. It's very steep. Keep going up. This was steep. Steeper than I was expecting. TBH. Uh we finally just broke. The river is right over there. We've been following it all the way up. You can see the Grand that little center of the screen in the distance. So we're heading up. We're gonna straight up that ridge right there and that's where we camp behind there. These are the east and west horns. So we're gonna run the left side of the left one and that'll take you up to the actual climbing in the morning. The approach. It's taking us a couple hours longer this morning than originally planned because of some route finding issues. There's the black dike up there. We're gonna head up here. We'll pile off the back side and start climbing. So falling ice glacier. Grand Teton. It's a lot. A lot of elevation gain. Instead of a fourth class scramble turning into about like two five seven pitches which is not great. On loose crappy rock but uh we're heading up. Hopefully we'll get some good stuff soon. Alright editing me again. Um basically what happened was we started that morning at 4 a.m. We were on our approach up to the drizzle push which is the top point before you rack down and actually start your climbing and we were in the dark. We couldn't find the approach so we ended up doing a couple of pitches of really sketchy five seven slab and that just burned through a couple of our hours. By the time we got to the top of the drizzle push before you have to rack down and climb it was like 10 or 11 and we were just calculating and hoping that we weren't going to have to pack up our camp at the end of the day. Go down the mountain and canoe across the lake in pitch black um just because you know we didn't know what the descent was and we wanted to make sure we were safe so we ended up failing and the next clip is us just unpacking our bags. Really sad because we didn't accomplish our goal. Here we are. I've been waiting years for the Sinclair. You see those beautiful lights of the city of Sinclair, Wyoming. Oh man, this is the world's Sinclair gas station in Sinclair, Wyoming. This is their oil refinery. They've got Pete's Eats over here. A little stinker uh skunk on them. Oh man, I've wanted to come here, not even kidding, for probably five years. It does all around us. Wowie zowie. This is it. This is what I've been waiting for. Look at that. I was working at the left of dew. I finished my day early because I got off at three. The canoe, so now we have a canoe which is very different than last time. We had a two-person kayak um so the canoe is much deeper, bigger. It's not gonna sink when we go into the middle of Jenny Lake and it's super nice and light so got that. Jordan just booked a campsite at Signal Mountain so we don't have to sleep in my car. And I think uh gonna go pick him up from the library and then we're gonna go to the grocery store and pick up some food. Maybe pick up dinner and then head to our camp spot and just enjoy uh the beautiful. And then tomorrow the weather looks amazing um so we're not really worried about that uh and we're gonna get an early start so I think we're gonna head out make sure that we're boating by 8 a.m. So we should have plenty of time to row across, hike, and then have plenty of daylight to just kind of rest, recharge, and then hike up part of the way, have the approach to make sure that we know we've got the right approach this time. And uh it's the redemption. We're gonna hopefully get Mount Moran. Super low-key climbing, probably simul almost all of it which is fun and I can't wait. Look at that bad boy. This giant canoe. It hangs like five feet off the back. Wow, you really put a... Pre-climb. Mike slept here last night. The birds are going crazy in the background. There's Moran. This year's the year we finally get up after failing last year and uh we're about to go to the store, get some coffee, get some breakfast, and then snag a parking spot and start packing. It's never small, that's for sure, but it'll do. String Lake up to Mount Moran. We did this a year ago and failed the attempt. So we got our bags, our climbing stuff, and uh here we are. Little portage. Oh god, this is heavy. Between lakes and this canoe up to Lee Lake. We're on Lee Lake. We made it. I paddled the whole way. I'm the motor. Look at it. We made it. We're at the upper camp. We did a long, long, steep hike. Short, short, steep hike. It felt long. But it felt long. Hard on the legs, a lot of weight. We just scouted out the approach to the climb. Finally we got the right area. It's super easy. Third class. Rain. Much different than last year but um yeah it's four o'clock so we have plenty of light left just to relax at camp and make some dinner and get a bit early for tomorrow. Tron just had to get water from barely, barely a stream. He spent probably 20 minutes getting our water for tomorrow which is so nice. We are just about done with the worst and hardest part. Coming up that long, steep spree and uh we're about to go up what they call Little Pus. And then you can see this big black dike. Actually you have to wrap down and then climb a pretty big face but it doesn't look like it from here. That's where our climbing starts. Probably see in much better shape than we were last year. Sun is rising and we're almost to the top of the drizzle list so sweet. We just rappelled from up there. A little more rappel down here. First corner pitch. There's Unsold's Needle. Out on Moran. We got our Kiwi Coils on and we'll simel up to the bottom of the face and pitch out some pitches up there and head up to the top. We are making our way up to Simelon. Pretty easy climbing. Just my great gear. Where Kristen is. We are almost to the summit of Mount Moran. There's Lee Lake. We're at the third class ledges to the top. So it'll just be some scrambling and we'll be standing on the summit. And then comes the hard part. The downfall. So have to get down all this without a very forward descent. Here she comes up to the summit of Mount Moran with the Grand Teton in the background. Last year I'd say it's uh. Last bit of rappels before we go back up drizzle plus. Yeah it is 256. We've got to go all the way down there and then we've got to pack up our camp and then go down to the lake and then canoe all the way across to there. Do a small portage to String Lake and then do a nice canoe over there. And then our car is way over there. Joe to Jackson. Probably miss dinner with the boys and Adam because we'll be late. And then hopefully we'll be sleeping in a hotel tonight. We'll see. Short of the day. Camped way up there and we climbed to the summit. Now we're back to the canoes after a long hike down and uh. We were skiing up top yesterday. Hey. The canoe, the ratchet straps don't fully work so the canoe shifts in the car and slowly going to the right. Gonna impale somebody. With our canoe. We have like 10 minutes to go to Jordan so if we can make it 10 minutes we're all good and this canoe won't fall off the top of my car. You can't see the Tetons today because of the wildfires in Montana and Idaho I'm assuming. Crystal clear last year. So sad. All right here we go. Sadly welcome to wonderful Colorado. Kristen needs me to drive. This is coming to the end of the trip. We're gonna stop in Rocky Mountain Rational Park and do some climbing there and then back home for the 2021 van life summer. So there we are. A couple adventures in Colorado. I mean we don't have so many climbing, biking, hiking, backpacking, etc until we do but uh back to familiar territory.