Great Expectations

The zipper on the tent is confusing me. It’s the same zipper technology found on every single tent I’ve ever used in my entire life, but I can’t figure it out. I spend a solid three minutes pulling the zipper heads up and down the rainfly before it clicks in my head and I remember how zippers work. I’m making poor decisions, which happens to me at high altitudes. The elevation makes me an idiot.

My tent is at 11,200 feet, on the east side of Grand Teton, the 13,775-foot high point of the national park of the same name. I’ve just arrived at Jackson Hole Mountain Guides’ (JHMG) High Camp, with a small group of climbers on a three-day summit bid of the Grand, but there’s been talk around camp that we might not have the opportunity. It’s September and winter has come early to Wyoming and the Tetons, turning an otherwise straightforward summit bid into a potentially sketchy endeavor.