Adam Fabrikant on Teewinot Mountain, the final peak of the Enduro Traverse. Immediately right is the north face of the Grand Teton; the snowy northeast side of Mt. Owen is at far right. Waaayyy in the distance, (B) marks the top of Buck Mountain, the first of the seven summits of the traverse. Photo: Michael Gardner.
In the evening of April 22, 2024, Teton guides Adam Fabrikant, Michael Gardner, and Brendan O’Neill started skinning up Death Canyon in Wyoming’s Teton Range, aiming for Buck Mountain, near the south end of the range. A little over 20 hours and seven peaks later, they skied off Teewinot Mountain and back to the valley floor to complete the Enduro Traverse—an unprecedented ski mountaineering adventure.
Adam’s story about the Enduro will be in AAJ 2025. We’re offering a condensed version here. You can read an extended story—replete with Adam’s history of Teton link-ups—at the AAJ website.
The Enduro Traverse linked Buck Mountain (far left) and Mt. Wister, continued over the South, Middle, and Grand Tetons (center), then finished over Mt. Owen and Teewinot Mountain (far right). Photo: Michael Gardner.
A 20-Hour Tour of the Tetons Skyline
In 1963, John Evans, Richard Long, and Allen Steck completed the Grand Traverse, a summertime traverse of ten Teton Range summits, from Nez Perce to Teewinot (the opposite direction of how this now-classic traverse is usually done today). In the 1965 AAJ, Steck wrote, “Any route or time of day is acceptable, however, only be sure to finish within 24 hours.” For the Enduro ski traverse of the Tetons that I envisioned, sub-24 hours was our sole metric, as Steck had laid it out for us.
For some years, I’ve been exploring Teton link-ups on skis with various partners, culminating with a day of skiing the Grand Teton, Mt. Owen, and Teewinot Mountain by some of their most technical routes. Sam Hennessey, Brendan O’Neill, and I pulled off this fine adventure in March 2023.
To me it seemed logical to bring all of our experiences together in a much longer traverse—to see how far we could go in under 24 hours. In the Alaska Range, I have enjoyed moving under the midnight sun for 24, 30, hell, even 64 hours—why not see how this would work back home? It gets darker in Wyoming in the spring than in Alaska, but we have headlamps.
The idea of the Enduro Traverse was to enchain the Teton skyline from Buck Mountain in the south to Teewinot, crossing over Mt. Wister, South Teton, Middle Teton, Grand Teton, and Mt. Owen along the way.
Michael Gardner heading up Death Canyon toward Buck Mountain, the first peak of the Enduro Traverse. Starting the tour at 6 p.m. on a warm April evening, the team opted for a "night naked" style, planning to travel throughout the night and carry only the bare minimum of clothing and equipment. Photo: Adam Fabrikant.
At 6 p.m. on April 22, with the day’s heat still in the air, Michael Gardner, Brendan O’Neill, and I started skinning up Death Canyon in wet, sloppy snow. Under an endless sunset, we climbed the east ridge of Buck Mountain (11,938’) and clicked in on top for our first descent at 9:15 p.m. (A full moon allowed us to complete all the climbs sans headlamps, but we did use the lamps for our descents.) We skied down Buck’s hyper-classic east face and used a piece of terrain called the Buckshot to drop into the South Fork of Avalanche Canyon.
The next climb was the South Headwall of Mt. Wister (11,490’), which flows into the upper east ridge. We reached Wister’s summit at 10:53 p.m. This was the lowest peak in our traverse, yet it packed a punch. The northeast face offered up some proper steep skiing—it felt engaging via headlamp—and deposited the three of us in the North Fork of Avalanche Canyon.
Our next ascent took us up the South Teton’s Amora Vida Couloir (much more fun to descend than ascend), and here we encountered our least efficient travel of the day, with heinous breakable crust and soggy snow engulfing our entire legs. From the top of the South Teton (12,514’), the descent by the Northwest Chute was fast and uneventful.
Now in Garnet Canyon’s South Fork, we began our climb up the Middle Teton’s Southwest Couloir, where efficient cramponing put us on the summit rather quickly. The descent down the east face into the Middle Teton Glacier route was harrowing on the refrozen undulating snow left by skiers who had descended in the warm days before us. But we were not there for the ski quality, rather the continuous movement.
From the North Fork of Garnet Canyon, we made quick work of the Ford-Stettner route, topping out the Grand Teton (13,770’) at 6 a.m., 12 hours into our journey. The sun was beginning to rise above the horizon, and it felt great to embrace its warmth again.
Skiing the upper east side of Mt. Owen, peak six of the tour, on the morning of April 23. Photo: Michael Gardner.
With a long block of daylight ahead, the three of us were confident as we descended the Ford-Stettner, with some thoughtful downclimbing in the Chevy Couloir, which is normally rappelled. (To save weight, we did not carry a rope and chose lines that would go without one.) We made our way into the Dike Snowfield and down to Glacier Gulch, where we donned crampons once again and slogged up the Koven Couloir, feeling the heat, as we carried minimal water. We continued up the east ridge and the Koven Chimney to the true summit of Owen (12,928’). After some downclimbing, we were sliding again, down Owen’s east ridge and into the Diagonal. From the Owen-Teewinot cirque, we began our final ascent, with rather benign climbing up the Northwest Couloir to the summit of Teewinot Mountain (12,325’).
After skiing Teewinot’s east face, we finished at the Taggart Lake trailhead in early afternoon, 20 hours and 12 minutes after starting, well within Steck’s 24-hour metric. In all, the Enduro Traverse covered 24 miles and roughly 19,000 to 20,000 feet of vertical gain. (GPS apps often don’t agree in the Tetons’ steep terrain.) A memorable day of walking across the Tetons’ skyline.
Michael Gardner snapped this selfie from the summit of Mt. Owen.
This would prove to be my last day in the high peaks with Michael Gardner, as he would lose his life in October 2024 on Jannu East in Nepal. I am grateful he happened to be home to join us for the day, as we etched our way across the slopes in the twilight. The Tetons were always Mike’s home mountains, and winter and summer he would use his creativity to draw new lines, whether on rock, ice, or snow. His inspiration lives on among the high crags of the range.
IFMGA guide Adam Fabrikant has been contributing to the AAJ since 2021, when he wrote about two first descents on Mt. Owen. In July 2024, he and longtime ski partners Billy Haas and Brendan O’Neill climbed and skied two 8,000-meter peaks, Gasherbrum I and II, in Pakistan.
Powered By:
The Line is the newsletter of the American Alpine Journal (AAJ), powered by Arc’teryx and emailed to more than 80,000 climbers each month. Find the archive of past editions here. Got a potential story for the AAJ? Email us: [email protected].
