Our hike to Gannett began in the town of Crowheart, Wyoming where we stopped to meet our Shoshone Tribal Guide from The Wind River Indian Reservation and pay for our permits to be on Tribal Land. His role was just to drive us to and pick us up from the Cold Spring Trailhead. While costly, this saves 16 miles of hiking round trip by crossing tribal land. Even with this arrangement the hike would still be 32 miles round trip and the summit would require some glacier travel and climbing on snow. Our party included Sam and his girlfriend Genevieve (our porter), and Woody Connette another client of Sam's that I had met in Bozeman a few days ago. Woody and I travelled from Jackson Hole Wyoming where we spent two nights enjoying the view of the Tetons before meeting Sam for our drive to Crowheart. Woody had just finished a climb up Granite Peak guided by Sam less than a week before.
The first day was a six mile hike turning onto the Ink Wells Trail and crossing the Scenic Pass at about 11,000 feet. We were taking our time as we carried packs over 40 lbs. A lightning storm threatened while we were still high on the Pass. It provided just the motivation I needed to pick up the pace and get our tents set up before the rain began. When we reached camp near Echo Lake Sam cooked. I ate up quickly with my mosquito net hat on and went to bed.
The next day we hiked another 9 miles to settle along a river not far from the Dinwoody Glacier. The hike was along verdant bogs, through a long beautiful canyon and involved several stream crossings. Sam advised us to unbuckle our chest and waist belts when we crossed so we could quickly shed our pack if we fell into the fast running streams. The weather again seemed iffy when we settled down for the night, but we set a 5:00 am wake up time. When we woke we were ready to go. We ate a hearty breakfast and shouldered our summit packs with headlamps lit. The weather seemed to be holding off and the day dawned quickly. It wasn't long before we reached a boulder field and then at the snowfield where we put our crampons on. Traversing deep packed snow and staying away from giant lakes of snow melt we reached the base of the Gooseneck Couloir and began to kick steps. The weather was still threatening so Sam set a 10:30 turnaround time and pushed our pace heading for the ridge above the Gooseneck Pinnacle. This route requires about a 3000 foot gain from the beginning of the snowfields to the summit over about two miles. I was struggling but feeling confident I would make it. But, after climbing some time on the rocky ridge toward the summit ridge I suddenly had a spasm and cramped up tightly in both legs. This had happened to me before, on the Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire. I knew if I drank some electrolytes and ate something I'd recover and be able to summit, but the weather seemed to be closing in and Sam felt that a long pause was not possible or we would exceed our 10:30 turnaround time. It took a few minutes for me to realize it would not be safe for me to proceed with the rest of the team. The climb to the summit ridge involved another short steep snowfield with some significant exposure, cramping up there would not be good so I offered to sit it out on the rocky ridge high above the Gooseneck Pinnacle at about 13,300 feet and just short of reaching the summit ridge. It was incredibly disappointing and this kind of failure always leads to some serious soul searching. So I sat on my spectacular perch and watched my climbing partners as they plodded to the summit. I tried to enjoy the ethereal beauty instead of beating myself up. It was such spectacular scenery and I seldom had an hour to just sit on a ridge so high in the mountains. I reached for the cell phone in my pocket. It wasn't there? It later became clear that I'd dropped it on our climb up the Couloir....Damn it was a disappointing morning. As I waited for the team to summit and return the weather began to turn and some clouds began to drop in on us. I was getting a little worried about what I would do if we had a white out and they couldn't find their way back to me, but as promise, I was not moving from my spot until they did. Fortunately they weather held until they returned and we started down. As it turned out Sam had made an excellent call. Before we got down the mountain it had begun to snow on top and shortly after making camp the rain came down in buckets for several hours. I was strong and well rested on the descent which was fortunate because I had to self arrest to stop the fall of one of my climbing partners on a critical section traversing back to the Gooseneck Couloir.
The final day of our trip dawned and was beautiful and sunny, we marched the full 16 miles back to the Cold Spring Trailhead and camped to meet up with our driver to take us out.
