It’s amazing to me when I consider the various speed records that exist in the outdoors, specifically those of climbing mountains.
A couple that immediately come to mind are Pemba Dorje Sherpa with the fastest Everest climb of 8 hours and 10 minutes followed by Rolando Garibotti with his Grand Traverse record from 2000 that stands at six hours, 49 minutes! (The Grand Traverse is a 9 peak, 14 mile, 12K vertical enchainment of the high peaks in the Tetons that includes the Grand Teton)
Then there’s photographer, skier, climber and adventurer Jimmy Chin, who is also sponsored by The North Face
. This past week he managed to climb and ski the three Tetons (Grand, Middle and South) in a record 10 hours and 55 minutes car-to-car!
If you’ve ever summited the Grand Teton, Middle Teton or South Teton, you’ll know just how amazing this feat is. Heck, it took me and a climbing partner 14 hours to climb the Grand Teton car-to-car.
Granted, skiing down is a lot faster than walking/rappelling but HUGE props to you Mr. Chin. Nice work!
—Get the details of his record including a map showing the route at TetonAT.com
–photo of Jimmy courtesy of The North Face
July 2, 2008 - 1:01 pm - posted by Brig Graff
WOW. I wonder how much prep time it took to choose the routes & how he chose last week as the ideal time to go for it.
July 2, 2008 - 1:04 pm - posted by Kendall Card
Since this was his 12 time skiing from the summit of the Grand I’m sure he knew the route well. There are 4 ski routes to descend the Grand, 2 of which go to south which he would need to take in order to get back to the saddle to then head up the Middle Teton.
My guess is that he was just sitting around wondering what ski objective to do next and figured, “huh, I bet there’s enough snow to link the three Teton’s” and sent it solo.
July 2, 2008 - 1:14 pm - posted by Brig Graff
siiiiick.