Prospectors Mountain, Northeast Face, Tetons. Eager to test the dimensions of a weekend trip to the Tetons from Moab, Utah, Bob Degles and I commenced the journey late one Friday and arrived at the White Grass Ranger Station early the following morning. We hiked to Phelps Lake—over rolling country beneath Engelmann spruce, aspen and cottonwoods, past plush undergrowth laden with penstemon, paintbrush and lupine. Still early in the afternoon we crossed the Death Canyon Creek on a sinking, slippery log, breathed a sigh of relief and selected a bivouac beneath the imposing walls at the canyon entrance. Above lay an improbable route to Prospectors Mountain (11,241 feet). Not sure of the problems on this unknown wall, but feeling that a 3000-foot climb of this sort should be only a day’s effort, we were on our way by the faint light of five A.M. We singled out a line of weakness between the two prominent couloirs on the northeast of Prospectors Mountain, south and east of the Apocalypse Arête just within the entrance to Death Canyon. The ascent on the lower wall was characterized by F9 brush, devils club, overhanging trees and mossy chimneys. Higher we climbed out of the vertical jungle onto clean but often rotten gneisses and crystalline rock, badly fractured and loose. The angle sustained at 80° to 85° for much of the rock. Blank and overhanging areas were all passed free by traversing a few feet left or right. On the upper portion of our citadel guarding the gateway to Death Canyon, we climbed left of the large triangular-shaped wall clearly discerned from the canyon floor. Ascent was primarily chimneys and jams, breaking away to the rounded ridge circling Prospectors. Descent via Open Canyon, down steep talus and scree, a startled moose and an endless trail back to our car terminated a memorable twelve hours. NCCS III, F8; an assortment of chocks, 3 to 4½ inch wood blocks and several long runners and bollards for the lower wall are needed.

Eric Bjørnstad