First Ascent of Open Door Pinnacle, Wyoming. South of Grand Teton National Park, about 25 miles from the town of Jackson on U.S. Highway 187, a gravel road turns northeast up Granite Canyon. Eventually the road leads to a small Forest Service recreation area 10 miles from the main highway. The reserve includes a waterfall, a hot spring and several cabins. Naturally heated water from the spring supplies a concrete swimming pool. Delightful though these facilities are, the climber will likely be distracted by the imposing limestone pinnacle which rises directly back of the swimming pool. Actually the tower is a partially detached buttress of a much larger and considerably higher massif known as Open Door Peak, but because the tower juts out toward the road, it dominates the scene as the visitor approaches the recreation area. The origin of the name is immediately obvious. On the western face, fronting the road, is a deep recess, rectangular in shape and of majestic proportions, which strikingly resembles a doorway. On July 31, 1955, Roald Fryxell and the writer, starting from the hot spring, climbed up the brushy slope leading to the tower and found that its walls were indeed as sheer as they had appeared from below. The most likely route appeared to start from the col between the tower and the principal mass of the mountain. To avoid the exceedingly rotten cliff below the col, we circled far to the left up onto the adjacent mountain and descended to the col from above. The last 60 feet of this descent was over rock even more shattered and disintegrating than the cliff we had just abandoned, but at least we had the security of a rope. We gingerly rappelled down and found the col itself reasonably stable. From here, after a respite for lunch, we started up the wall of the tower. The rock turned out to be rather more secure than we had expected, though by no means up to Teton standards. After 95 feet of high-angle cliff where we used five pitons, we reached a broad talus bench, from which it was a scramble of 80 feet or so to the top. There was no cairn, nor could we find any evidence of a previous ascent. After an hour on top we climbed down to the talus bench where we attached a sling loop to a solidly rooted tree. A 95-foot rappel brought us to the col, from which we dropped down 40 feet to the scree slopes by means of a second rappel. Three smaller pinnacles nearby proved interesting enough to climb. None offered any difficulty. The highest of these is more or less the twin of the Open Door, though it has no ‘’doorway.” Presumably it has been climbed many times. The route from the back side is obvious.

Fred D. Ayres