Chris's memories:
I had always been impressed by the mass of rock that is Mt Moran. The Black dike bulging out of its face is something I remembered from trips to the Tetons as a young child. Finally, it became time to try to climb it.
On our first attempt, the party consisted of Dad, me, Andy, Ryan, and possibly others? The plan was to hike around the lakes for the approach as dad had remembered doing when he was younger. We had not traveled very far when we learned the hard way that no one did this anymore. The trail quickly disappeared into a dense forest with deadfall everywhere. As we hiked along we had to constantly climb over and under fallen trees with full packs on. The mosquitos were thick and there was no avoiding them. What we had expected to be a simple hike became hours of struggling. As we hiked, it began to rain and did not let up. We finally made it around to the base of Mt Moran. We stopped and discussed our plans, many in the party were very wet and did not want to continue so we decided to abandon this attempt. I remember staring up at the mountain, not agreeing with the decision to walk away (although it was the right one). We hiked around the other side of the lake on the way out and this was hard but better, there was a faint trail. We met a park ranger on the way out that told us he did not know of anyone who hiked in to climb Moran.
The second attempt was just me and dad. I think it was later that same year. We canoed across the lake-a much more pleasant way to travel-and hiked up to the base camp. I was impressed by the massive wall of the Skillet glacier above us as we cut up towards the base camp. The next morning we got up early and began the approach in a foggy, dark morning. We reached the top of drizzlepus as it was just becoming light. It was very foggy and we sat on drizzlepus for quite a while hoping the fog would clear but it remained thick. I never saw the actual mountain face which was probably less than 100 feet away. Ultimately, we turned around, packed up, and hiked out.
The third attempt came several years later. The party consisted of me, dad, and Emma. Again, we used a canoe as our transport. We put all 3 of us as well as our gear in the canoe which made it ride low in the water but we made it safely, stowed the canoe in the bushes on the shore, and hiked up to base camp. The weather was beautiful throughout this trip. The next morning we arose early and started our climb. After hiking to the top of drizzlepus we rappelled down and started our climb up the CMC route. I lead the climb with Emma clipped about 30 feet from the end of the rope and dad at the end of the rope climbing simultaneously and cleaning the gear. We moved steadily upward without any real problems. It is a beautiful climb, you don't escape the exposure until you are almost to the summit. We reached the summit around noon or a little before. We ate our lunches on top and enjoyed a sunny summit. We were quite tired and were glad to take advantage of quite a few rappell sites on the way down. This went well but slowly, descending took as long as ascending had. At one point we had all rappelled down a section and I went to pull the rope only to realize I had not untied a knot in the end that was now 30 feet above me. Luckily, I was able to scramble up to it, untie it, and downclimb back to a solid ledge to pull the rope. We finally reached the base of drizzlepuss. I again led this. It consists of a number of ledges angling right then left with no good protection sites. I was tired and ready to get off the mountain and probably didn't put as much effort into placing protection as I could have. Dad noticed this and wanted to be better protected when they followed me up. I think I got a little angry about this but ultimately I got to the top and belayed dad and emma up and we packed up the rope and rack. I was very glad to have the rack off my neck, it had been pulling at my neck for about 10-12 hours that day. We hiked down to our tent, arriving there at about 6 or 7 pm. We considered staying the night but wanted to get home so we packed up and started hiking down. It is a steep decline and full packs with tired legs made us slip and slide a lot but we finally reached our canoe right as it became completely dark. While we had been hiking down, a wind had started to blow. It wasn't a big deal on the firm ground, but once we had all our gear and all 3 of us in the canoe, it became a big deal. Dad and I were paddling. We could not see the far end of the lake in the darkness, the waves were rocking our overloaded canoe more than I liked, and I was imagining having all our gear at the bottom of the Leigh lake and trying to swim a swamped canoe to shore. Luckily, this did not happen. We kept paddling and after what seemed like much too long we came to a shore. Because of the darkness, we weren't really sure where we were in relation to portage site to String lake. We talked for a while and Dad felt we should go to the right so that is what we did. This worked and we found the portage, canoed across Leigh lake, and reached the car around 11 PM. We were very relieved to be off the water. We called mom and told her we were safe (I'm sure she was still awake...I doubt she could go to sleep at that time of night while we were still on a mountain). We drove home, exhausted.
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