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Outside Magazine, March 2005
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The Purists (cont.)

One of the classic mountaineering routes in the Tetons—perhaps the classic—is the Grand Traverse, a north–south scramble along the crest of the range that takes in ten of its highest peaks and, in terms of cumulative elevation gain, surpasses 25,000 vertical feet. Parties normally take three days to do it, though in the summer of 2000, Rolando Garibotti, an Italian-born Alpinist living in Boulder, ran it in just under seven hours.

The day after our sport-climbing excursion to Lander, Beckwith and I set out to knock off the first and simplest leg of the Traverse—a quick climb of Teewinot, the 12,325-foot peak just northeast of the Grand Teton. It's more of a walk-up than an exercise in alpinism, especially since there's no snow or ice on the route. Still, it requires a hefty pull of more than 5,500 vertical feet from the parking lot near Jenny Lake.

Three hours into the climb, we come to a steep, slabby section that requires us to put our hands on the rock, and also do a bit of route finding. The top, when it finally comes, feels like a well- deserved reward. It's a beautiful, airy place—a sharp prow hung out in space, opposite the colossal north face of the Grand Teton. There's room for only one of us at a time on the tiny, exposed point of the summit itself. As Beckwith edges out to it, straddling the rock, I'm relieved to see that he, too, is feeling the exposure.

The descent is a long, thigh-crushing ordeal—just the kind of thing, Beckwith notes, that a Garibotti would do at a dead run. One of his recurrent frustrations at Alpinist, he adds, is not being able to get climbers like the publicity-shy Garibotti to write about their exploits. "He wouldn't touch it," Beckwith says, sighing. "Usually the people that really deserve to be the heroes of the world want nothing to do with it."

Toward the bottom of the mountain, Beckwith mentions another, older climber, once a regular in climbing magazines but not heard from much in recent years. "It's a pretty sad story," he says. "The guy was one of the best and really pushed the standard higher. Now he can't climb at the same level, and as a result he's kind of retreated into this shell. He's bitter, he doesn't know what to do with himself—he basically thinks his life is over."

When I tell Beckwith that it sounds like the makings of a good magazine piece, he turns and shoots me a quick glance, then continues down the trail.

"No way," he says. "It's not an Alpinist story."
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