WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel

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Let’s go!! Great job Eli

[Gritz3000]

Having just spent a couple weeks in the Wind River Range, much respect for your accomplishment. The remoteness and ruggedness of Wyoming’s mountain ranges are no joke. Congrats man!

[Eli Boardman]

Thanks again everybody! I'm always grateful to the 14ers community for giving me a large part of my motivation to start down this path.

Very cool, congrats Eli! Hope to get out to those peaks at some point and I'm sure your guidebook will be much used (thank you).

Thanks, I hope you enjoy the peaks! Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Congrats Eli! That’s a very impressive time getting all those peaks.
Thanks for the cool summit register on Miriam, we enjoyed reading the history of that peak!

It was fun chasing you around different summit registers--looks like you got a lot of the best ones!

wow. eli. this is f***ing awesome!

for all the attention some other fkts get, this one is overlooked. a massive effort in some gorgeous and very difficult mountains. love the 1st quote as well.

did you carry your gun up franks again for those grizzlies?

can we get some photos of the sketchiness on koven?

Thanks haha, this was nowhere near the level of most fkts though--I simply can't imagine the strength to do some of the big 14ers fkts, with so much faster vertical/mileage requirements than the WY 13ers!

I did indeed carry the AK to the summit of Francs, and was quite glad to have it; we passed a mother bear with two cubs just above the route and had to return that way after dark. Supposedly the Forest Service did a study on the Francs Peak locale and found that 70+ grizzlies congregate on that one mountain. Usually I just carry bear spray, but when I know there's a really high chance of being in close proximity to grizzlies (especially solo and after dark), the AK just gives a much better margin of safety--even missing most shots, a mag dump of 7.62 mm lead should be enough to stop just about anything unarmored.

I was too sketched out to take pictures during the worst part of Koven, but here's a few that give at least an idea. I still think the east face route is a good choice to reach the summit in late June or early July when it's mostly a moderate snow climb, but once the face is melted out I wouldn't recommend it to anyone--much better to climb harder but more solid rock closer to the south ridge.

Most of the east face ascent consisted of a near-vertical chimney filled with chair-sized overhanging chockstones, many of which seemed loose. The steepest parts were broken up by ledges covered several feet deep with steep sand. Looking down from the top-out of the chimney I came up, most of the route is obscured but you can see some of the loose blocks:

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Here's an overview of the upper south ridge, which was much easier and more solid than any of the other rock I encountered. The last bit of the east face route can be seen topping out just left of center:

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And finally, here's a view back over most of the east face taken during my descent of the south ridge (the much preferable route this time of year). I came up somewhere near the top edge of this photo, but I was usually in a deeply inset chimney system that is mostly obscured here:

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[Eli Boardman]

While I'm uploading photos, here are a few more-cheerful moments to offset the horror of Koven's melted-out east face.

Sunset on Henderson, shortly after climbing the obvious ridge, while ascending to American Legion on day 3:

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Riding the knife edge on the descent of Spearhead on day 4; the good rock quality was such a relief compared to many of the peaks:

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Sunset on Harrower while descending from Jackson on day 5:

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[Eli Boardman]

Fresh snow on the hike out from Wind River Peak:

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Just a wee bit of exposure at the entrance to the Double Chimney on the Grand Teton's Owen Spalding route:

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Finished! Back at the Blazer after climbing Francs:

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[Teresa Gergen]

Mad respect, Eli. Impressed with every aspect of what you've just done - including turning back the first two tries when you knew you should. It was amazing to watch your InReach each day.

[seano]

Congrats! Looking forward to the TR for your choices of northern Winds linkups, what worked well and what didn't.

[Eli Boardman]

Mad respect, Eli. Impressed with every aspect of what you've just done - including turning back the first two tries when you knew you should. It was amazing to watch your InReach each day.

Thanks so much, Teresa. Your climbs with Sarah were the driving cause of my entire infatuation with the Wyoming 13ers, and I was honored to have you following along. Oh, and your rope came in handy for the raps on the Grand--no fixed ropes this late in the season! I'm stoked to get back in the Winds next summer for Brown Cliffs and Nebraska Point.

Congrats! Looking forward to the TR for your choices of northern Winds linkups, what worked well and what didn't.

Thanks Sean! Your self-supported time is crazy--I can't imagine doing the northern Winds that fast without support at camp!

In terms of linkups, I repeated your route (in reverse) from Sacagawea to Fremont and appreciated the beta; it's a cool line and not something I would have had the confidence to dive into without knowing that it goes. I also used your gully route to get down from the Koven-Sachem col into the Minor Glacier basin--thanks for the beta on those routes. The downclimb of Warren towards Turret was steeper and harder than I expected, but maybe I stayed in the chimney too long; I did find a very reasonable, mostly 4th-class route up Turret from that side though. My only particularly novel linkup was climbing Bow from the north via a scree slope leading from the Stroud Glacier moraine to the ridge south of Brimstone; this allowed a neat loop from Titcomb over Twins-->Split-->Whitecap-->Bow-->Henderson-->American Legion. Other than that, I pretty much followed similar routes as you, though I broke up some of the days differently. The glacier sections on Woodrow Wilson and Twins were much icier than I've ever seen in photos before--ugly gray glacier ice most of the time, and even a horrible section of black water ice on Twins.

What a ride!

[seano]

Thanks Sean! Your self-supported time is crazy--I can't imagine doing the northern Winds that fast without support at camp!

I couldn't have done it supported, because I wasn't sure where "camp" would be most nights.

Going in with the topos, Eric Gilbertson's recent early-season trip report, and Kelsey's and Bonney's aging route descriptions (the Bonney guide is a gem!), I wasn't sure what would be feasible late-season, or how long it would take me. I had roughly grouped the peaks into link-ups, and knew I had to make Fremont to Febbas work to put up a respectable time, but the routes between Sphinx and Bastion were mostly a question mark. Descending the ridge off Fremont was a matter of "either this goes, or I lose a day;" same for the north side of American Legion. Going high from Wilson to Pinnacle Ridge was a last-minute call based on the broken state of the lower glacier.

The improvisation, terrain-reading, and problem-solving were a big part of what made it so fun for me. Combined with the magnificent scenery, exertion, and solitude, it was a memorable, almost meditative experience. We don't get many opportunities to venture into the (relative) unknown these days.

The glacier sections on Woodrow Wilson and Twins were much icier than I've ever seen in photos before--ugly gray glacier ice most of the time, and even a horrible section of black water ice on Twins.

That's one downside of going into the northern Rockies late in the year -- you see just how badly the glaciers have retreated. Hiking up toward Gannett from Febbas, crossing endless moraine, looking at the sad state of the Gooseneck route, and breathing smoke from California, was one of the worst parts of the trip.

[Boggy B]

Well done! And what an adventure. Solo mission behind enemy lines with only an AK to fend off the grizzly apocalypse? Move over, Sharknado!

[Eli Boardman]

Well done! And what an adventure. Solo mission behind enemy lines with only an AK to fend off the grizzly apocalypse? Move over, Sharknado!

Haha thanks. I must admit, some lines from Apocalypse Now did keep rattling around in my head...

"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another." ~ Col. Willard

I can't say I see myself doing something like this again. It was my mission, I got it done, but whew, not again. I'm looking forward to doing some casual peakbagging in a more relaxed headspace, probably working on the Tahoe-Ogul peak list next.

The improvisation, terrain-reading, and problem-solving were a big part of what made it so fun for me. Combined with the magnificent scenery, exertion, and solitude, it was a memorable, almost meditative experience. We don't get many opportunities to venture into the (relative) unknown these days.

Agreed--figuring out all the possible combinations is half the fun. The obscurity is rapidly changing though. Back when I did it in 2020, the best-available beta was Sarah's trip reports (HERE), and since her group climbed Koven, Turret, and Henderson by especially difficult routes, there wasn't even a single picture on the internet of the less-technical routes on those peaks until I posted pictures from the 2020 13ers quest. Some of the peaks didn't have any trip reports at all, even from Sarah, such as Helen and Sacagawea. I can only imagine the uncertainty that Sarah and Teresa faced when trying to climb multiple of these peaks at once with only Bonney and Kelsey for beta.

When I did Woodrow Wilson in 2020, there wasn't any first-hand beta publicly available for routes other than the south couloir--after sketching my way up over the iced-over chockstone in the south couloir, I decided to rappel north into unknown territory and rediscovered that route onto the upper lobe of the Dinwoody Glacier. By now, my north couloir descent route has become recognized as the easiest way up Woodrow Wilson and seems to be emerging as somewhat of a "standard route." With your contribution of beta for the west couloir and my recent descent of that route, all three major couloirs of Woodrow Wilson are finally "on the map." Of course, on this latest trip, I found an ancient, completely rusted-out tin can on the plateau by the north couloir--a reminder that in the eyes of climbers 50-80 years ago, we are all newcomers. The days of hemp ropes and cooking bacon on a wood fire during a climbing trip seem just as far away as the last ice age.

Ahh, it's fun to reminisce though, even just over the past few years. I spent many late nights over the years 2015-2020 memorizing every word of Sarah's trip reports and studying the photos to see if they captured some previously unrecognized angle of the mountain that might afford a ropeless ascent. The WY 13ers are still one of the most obscure peakbagging lists in the continental US, but times are changing. On Henderson Peak, only 43 parties have recorded ascents since 1936--but 10 of those parties climbed the peak in the last 3 years.

Gone are the days of wondering whether a 13er is class 5 or class 2 by the easiest route--just walk into the Great Outdoor Shop or Wild Iris and thumb through the 13ers guidebook. I suppose I could be credited (or blamed, depending on your perspective) as much as anyone for contributing to the increasing popularity of the Wyoming 13ers. Truthfully, the purpose of my guidebook has largely to do with preserving a bit of mystery--someone was bound to write one eventually, and I'd rather offer a baseline of consolidated but sparse beta rather than see a 14ers.com-style step-by-step guide emerge. But it's still interesting to note how, over the past couple years, the paradigm has shifted from "can I figure out a way to the top" to "what are the most efficient linkups."

I've been photographing every page of the historical summit registers and transcribing them to digital records that will be publicly available, and it's interesting to note some trends. Just out of curiosity, I did a little data visualization on the popularity of Henderson Peak (since it has such a complete register). The number of cumulative ascents by separate parties fits an exponential growth model with R^2 = 0.96, which is respectable. For those interested:

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[RobLowe]

Well done, Eli! Really hard to comprehend given just how much more difficult these approaches and summit blocks are versus CO peaks.