Gannet Peak Via Wells Creek // Summit or Die

it's three in the morning here at the green river lakes trail head in wyoming where i will be attempting to climb ganet peak for the second time i was here just a week ago with matt on a failed attempt to climb gannett on that attempt we went up towards creek and got turned around by time and just we weren't prepared to do that much boulder hopping now i'm with chase and aaron so i swapped out my friend for two friends and we're gonna go up wells creek this time and i've got chase and aaron both great strong runners but chase especially because he can actually climb we're going to be running today with ropes and some climbing gear in an attempt to do wells creek and there's a 100 foot section that requires that climbing gear and we're hoping that we can get past it and summit gan today but today we'll be running on the green lakes river trail for 10 miles then breaking off and heading north across the river and up wells creek hopefully to the summit of gannett peak and then returning the same way should be about 20 miles of boulder hopping and scrambling and 20 miles of smooth flat trail it's cold and i'm really hoping that it warms up to like 80 degrees by the time i have to cross that river [Music] we're at the bottom of wells creek the whole river crossing was much ado about nothing but i think that what's going to happen here is that i i've fallen for the grass it's always greener type of a thing and that tourist creek and wells creek probably have the same amount of boulder hobby because we're already encountering boulders and so now now we have boulder hopping plus some climbing it'll be interesting to compare the two but we're going to start our way up the mountain and it's been slow going with these heavy bags we're making pretty good progress the mosquitoes are out though and that could make the day a very itchy one [Music] [Music] [Applause] this is the whole reason we hauled two small ropes and a bunch of climbing gear up this tiny little section there's some old fixed ropes in place that i guess if you had to you might be willing to trust with your life but we're gonna throw in our harnesses and chase is gonna leave this and hopefully do it safely and we'll all get up quickly and without any [Music] on surprises [Music] we just finished with that 100 foot trucks move let me just say this i'm glad we brought a rope i'm glad we uh brought some protection i wish we had helmets i know some of you gonna comment on that don't worry we felt their absence but i'm also glad that chase came because he led that whole thing and to me it did not feel like a 5 6 it felt like a much more difficult climb pretty sure that i got invited on this because i have a climbing background but consistent with the channel i'm a mediocre amateur climber so we're debating whether or not to bring ropes or a free solo or to bring you know something in between and uh we're glad we brought ropes some cam some nuts i was a lot spicier than i thought i think we would have been turned around if we would have just stuck with the free solo plan so bringing the ropes paid off but it was a blast makes it so much more fun actually doing some technical stuff on these long runs but now we're headed up the last bit of um wells creek we're almost to mini bug lake which sounds ridiculous saying that name of that lake but that's the name of the lake [Music] we just passed the place where matt and i turned around and while i don't feel physically any better than i did with matt i definitely feel mentally better matt and i got too late of a start in the day our time's actually coming up wells versus coming up tourist the difference is only 30 to 45 minutes so that climbing really slowed us down if you didn't have to do that climb you could fly up to gannett but we've just passed scott's lake or we're about to pass it and from here on we got the glacier and then we'll head up lookers left and then do the ridge walk feels so good to be here this time during the day turning around last time was a bitter pill to swallow but i felt like it was a necessary one i think matt and i were prepared for the day we had throwing on our crampons we're going to walk up this snow which looks like it's 40 or plus degrees here up higher and then pop onto some loose rock and then the ridge and hopefully we'll have enough strength to get back because once you get to the summit that's only halfway and sometimes downhill could be so much worse we are at the minor glacier and we kind of covered a lot of it which is behind me it's just an amazing place ice covered lake below and uh now we're at the point where we are throwing on our crampons we could we carry them this whole way so i'll be down if i don't put them on [Music] and so we're probably what two thousand feet from the summit yeah not done yet but we're getting close [Music] that's faster slow going [Music] [Music] [Music] top again a peak 13 800 and depending on who you ask 4 10 or 18 feet this is this is one of the best state high points i've been on and i don't know if it has to do anything with the fact that it's also one of the hardest i've had to fight for but it was worth coming back for a week later we're all excited but uh when you stop and think about the fact that we now have to retrace our steps all the way back through all of that that can seem daunting but for now let's just enjoy the moment that's what we're trying to do just enjoy this moment and it's an awesome moment i i don't recall ever being on a summit and feeling this remote at the same time my guess is we're probably at close to 20 miles total with about 7 500 feet of climbing we're actually doing pretty good we're 10 hours in to our day so we summited in about 10 hours and 20 minutes amazing journey to get up here went through flat trail a bunch of talus to some technical climbing past lakes through meadows and everything in between so i'm super stoked to be here the whole day was amazing climb the trail everything was awesome i guess there was a few long steep rock fields i could have done without if i was really going to try to be picky here i'm not entirely sure what the main route is but if you look behind me you can see some birds runs and stuff which might be the infamous bergstrom that you would have to cross as you uh if you were to come up from tipcom basin anyway now we're gonna head down and it's gonna be just as dangerous probably for the next couple hours until you get back on the trail [Music] [Music] i think [Music] we're up here at the top of the climb trying to bring up the same systems that we can fell off of it i don't know how that's working now that's jason's job we got this rappel and then hop skip and jump to the river across the river run the trail zigger's in the mouth mountain dew in the gut happy game so [Music] [Music] [Music] oh yeah still might need a helicopter probably concludes our route finding and bushwhacking for the day it's got a 12 mile gentle stroll to the trailhead parking lot trailhead we're done i feel super worked but less work than i thought i'd feel so that makes me feel good then it was like we're gonna be swimming rivers and some of the worst bushwhack ever crazy boulder hopping there's a lot of that but what a day oh i haven't had sensations like that in my legs in a long time that was a bruiser of a day for sure my strava showed 49 miles and it took about 19 hours but we did it we summited gannett peak what's funny is when i was here last week i was so disappointed but i don't think mentally i was prepared to climb it the minute i got home last week i texted aaron and chase and i said hey let's go climb gannon sure enough about seven days later we got here and we climbed it and it was as awesome as i'd imagined so now i've done taurus creek and wells creek and man they're both tough although we had a little bit of everything today good boulder hopping river crossing a little bit of time and snow some swimming running it was just a whole lot of something you

Channel: Mediocre Amateur

Views: 106,329

Keywords: Gannet peak, Wyoming highest peak, Wyoming highest point, state high point, trail running, adventure vlog, travel vlog, running vlog, mountains, steep, planet earth, wind river range, windrivers, hiking in Wyoming, hiking

Id: sv-9uRJy91A

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020