Gannet has been a looming goal that has haunted me for years, so when my friend Chase announced that his plan was to hit every point in the Rockies this summer we decided to link up to tackle it. Our original plan was to take the Glacier Route, but with the snow bridge below the bergshrund completely melted out this late in the year, we did some additional research and eventually decided the Tourist Creek route was our best option.

Making the long haul from Colorado to Pinedale the night before, we met up with a couple other friends and headed out from the Green River Lakes TH at 5:30 AM on Friday 9/2. After hiking roughly 12 beautiful miles in along the High Line Trail we took off our boots and forded the Green River towards the Tourist Creek drainage. This was the end of the trail and the start of the real adventure.


Tourist Creek.....*shiver*. It is a hellish approach anyway you spin it, but with 40-50 lbs of hiking gear strapped to our backs I began to have serious doubts whether I would even be able make it close to our intended basecamp underneath Mt Solitude. First, a bushwhack up the lower drainage through thick blowdown and boulders.


I moved like cool molasses though this mess, and less than a mile in I collapsed on the rocks to rest for a while, Chase joining me. It was around 11:30 AM, and the other two member of our party went on ahead of us at this point. We did not see them again for the rest of our trip, and they subsequently had their own adventure. As for us, the memories of ascending a few thousand vertical feet of boulder fields to reach camp over the next 6.5 hours have mostly been repressed, but here are a couple pictures that sum it up pretty well:


At some point, we came across a couple ultra runners that had managed this feat in one day and were on their way back from the summit. "Do we need ice axes and crampons?", Chase asked. "Nope", they replied. With utter delight we pulled these items out of our bags and stashed them under a rock right where we stood, desperate to drop any unnecessary weight we could. We reached our camp under Mt Solitude at around 6:15 PM, cooked up our dinner and crashed. Easily the most physically exhausting "hike" to base camp of my life.


5 AM came fast, but by 6 we were on our way again with our day packs, which felt weightless after the onslaught of the previous day. We crossed into the upper valley above Scott Lake in the early dawn light, staying high as possible along the northern wall as we made our way to the shores of Skinny Lake. Gannet finally showed its face in the distance.


We were finally moving at a good pace, right past Skinny Lake and to the base of another lovely boulder field. Without the packs we blazed upward and carefully crossed Minor Glacier towards the base of the beast.


Here is where things got real. The plan was to take the Class 3 Couloir, but let's just say that not all beta you read is created equal. We soon realized the Southern Couloir was a bit spicier than Class 3.

It is important for me to emphasize here that the easier, class 3 route is via the Northern Couloir, and this is the route you should take unless you are comfortable with exposure and low class 5 climbing (see map below). For reference, I found the Southern couloir was more technical in spots than both the Maroon Bells and Little Bear-Blanca traverses. If you tried you could probably keep it class 4, but it would take careful and calculated route finding.

We stayed cool, calm and collected, taking our time up towards the saddle. Thankfully it was manageable for our experience level, and despite not being our intended path it ended up being a lot of fun!

Once we arrived at the saddle, we met a climber who we saw earlier entering the bottom of the Northern Couloir while we were roughly halfway up the Southern one. This guy moved like a jet plane. Turns out he was none other than Eli Boardman, previous holder of the Wyoming 13ers FKT, (fastest known time) among other records, and he was out to reclaim his 13er record. Eli is the real deal, so I have to shout him out. Follow him on instagram at Eli.Boardman. We chatted with Eli as we began the final push from the saddle along the side of the Gannet Glacier headwall, and made the summit right around noon on Saturday, September 3.


We spent about an hour on the summit taking it all in, taking pictures, and had a victory beer (necessary weight compared to the ice axes and crampons obviously). Someone had left a cardboard sign up there that simply said "Wyoming", which we found absolutely hilarious.

From the summit we descended back down the Class 3 couloir (much easier), back across the glacier, down the boulder fields, across the high lake passages, and back to camp, coming across multiple lost/off route hikers along the way. Yikes. We stayed one more night at our camp, eating a couple dinners each. Chase can tell you firsthand that its a bad idea to inhale 75 grams of protein on an empty, shrunken stomach. The next morning we packed up and headed back down the Tourist Creek drainage around 7 AM. After ensuing that hell a second time, we had a celebratory swim in the Green River, then we began our long hike out along towards the Green River Lakes TH. Though my gps stopped recording after taking a dip in the river on the way out (water proof my a$$), we did the math from the previous tracks and ended up at roughly 41 miles and 8,000 feet of gain. We got to the car around 5:30 PM on Sunday, headed to Pinedale, and had ourselves a feast at Wind River Brewing. Chase ordered 3 dinners for himself. We decided that this trip was worthy of being called an "Expedition". Denali is still out there, and for now she will haunt my dreams.

Due to the nature of our route as described above, I am not making the GPX track publicly available. If you would like access to it, or would like to discuss this route, please send me a message. Please also feel free to join the new "Wind River Mountains Uncensored" Facebook group, where you won't be shamed for "being a damn Coloradan", for posting useful info, or for trying to obtain beta on routes and locations in the Wind River Range. Cheers. Photo credits- Dan and Chase