Wyoming

The 2017 Great American Solar Eclipse passed directly over the Grand Teton, so I had no choice but to return to Wyoming to see it! I climbed the Direct Exum Ridge with Jeff and Virginia on the day of the eclipse and watched totality from the summit, and spent another week exploring Yellowstone and the rest of the Grand Teton National Park with Cassondra. 

When you look out of the window when your plane is landing and you see this, you know it's going to be a great trip!

First light! We started up the Grand at 1AM from the Climbers Ranch in order to give us the best shot at summiting for totality. The light in the sky is Venus, and headlamps are visible heading up the Grand.

Getting to the base of the route. We chose the Direct Exum for the eclipse climb, since its one of the classic lines in North America, would give good views of the sun from the entire route, and wouldn't have the crowds of the standard routes. It turned out we had the entire ridge to ourselves!

Steep climbing on the Lower Exum!

Summit! We topped out minutes before totality!

Watching totality! The entire horizon looked like a sunset. Before and after totality we could see the shadow of the moon moving across the landscape. Incredible!

Best view on Earth of the Solar Eclipse!

No summit is complete without a summit beer!

Garnet Canyon on the hike down. We made it back before sunset, just in time for happy hour!

Visiting Yellowstone. The wildlife hangs out right on the side of the road!

Trout! It was this big: <-----------------> 

Hot Springs in Yellowstone. No Diving.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone with Cassondra

Yellowstone is gorges!

Grand Teton Brewing! The perfect end to the trip!