Caitlin
Dunlop
Russ
Beck
This
I Believe
January
27, 2016
The Grand Teton
“Rise and shine sleepy heads, we’ve got a
big mountain to climb!”, shouted Hart as he burst into the bunk tent at three
o’clock in the morning. The fact that humans were not programmed to be awake at
this hour didn’t seem to bother Hart one bit as he continued to wake us up. It
took me a moment to realize where I was and what I was doing there as I was yanked
out of Dream World by Hart’s booming voice. We had hiked all the way up to the
Lower Saddle yesterday and now it was September 9, 2013 and we were going to summit
the Grand Teton today. No big deal, it was just a 13,700-foot mountain in my
backyard that I had wanted to climb my whole life and the day had finally come.
I rolled over, my fingers fumbling to find my climbing harness and helmet, then
painfully ripped my sleeping bag off my body and started to gear up for the
climb.
I had always dreamed of what it would be
like at the top of the Grand Teton. The way that the rivers below would glimmer
in the sunlight and how tiny the airplanes would look from above. There had
always been a part deep inside of me that was terrified to climb the Grand
Teton. All the stories that I had heard of climbers slipping and tumbling to
their death off of the mountain’s ridges made my heart beat faster and
adrenaline pump through my veins. Those adventures ended with hospital visits
and funerals. But I could do this. I can do hard things.
As I stepped outside of the bunk tent on the
Lower Saddle, I looked up to see the Grand Teton shining in a thick sheet of
ice in the black morning darkness. My heart sank and dropped right between the
soles of my climbing shoes. All the stories of climbers’ dangerous ascents of an
ice-covered Grand Teton came flooding into my mind. In our training, we had
planned for the mountain to be clean and clear, not covered in this thick and
slippery ice. Hart and our other climb guides continued gearing up, and so the
rest of us followed suit, even though we were terrified.
The sun was just beginning to peek
through the wispy white clouds onto the quiet sleeping valley below us. The air
was thin and sharp, and burned as it traveled down our lungs. My hands were
cracked and bleeding through the thick layer of climbing chalk and my jaw
chattered as we rounded a corner and unclipped our harnesses from one cliff
wall to the next. I was frozen and had just spent the last four hours of my
life terrified that today would be my last.
On our way up, just about everything had
gone wrong. Because the air was much thinner towards the summit of the
mountain, many of the other climbers had altitude sickness and needed to return
to base camp. Some climbers became injured or became so cold that it wasn’t
safe to have them continue to climb. As the pack of climbers quickly narrowed
down from fifteen climbers to just the five of us, I began to panic.
“Caitie,
you can do this. You can do hard things. This is going to be worth it in the
end. All you have to do is keep on climbing. It’s all going to be okay. You can
do hard things,” I cheered
to myself as I grabbed my next rock grip and pulled up the ridge to the next
pitch.
It was almost 8:30am as the last standing
remnants of our climbing team scrambled to the Grand Teton’s summit. Each of
our exhales were accompanied by a thick cloud of smoke and all feeling was lost
from our fingers and toes. But, you should have seen the view from the top. It
was better than I could have ever imagined it. The rivers below were shining in
the morning sunlight and all the other mountains surrounding us looked like
tiny ant hills. It was perfect. A small airplane flew below us and we watched
as the world began to wake up from its deep and luxurious slumber.
“Caitie,
you did it! You are standing on the tip-top of the Grand Teton! You can do hard
things!” I gleefully whispered
to myself. Hart tossed each of us a king-size Snickers bar that was scarfed
down in a matter of seconds as we all sat on a giant boulder and chugged our
water bottles until they were empty.
Ascending the Grand Teton taught me an important
lesson. It taught me to believe in myself. It taught me that you are your own best
cheerleader and that you can do hard things even when they seem impossible.
There were many times as I summited the Grand Teton that I considered giving up
right then and there. There were too many more pitches until the top and it was
freezing outside and giving up would have just been the easiest way to get out
of all that. But then I would have never made it to the top. I believe that believing
in yourself will get you to the top of the mountain even when it’s hard, cold,
and dark outside. But trust me, all those struggles and worries are worth it
because you should see the view from the top.
