MOOSE, Wyo. — On Aug. 11, 1898, four members of a party sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Club (RMC), formerly the Rocky Mountain Climbers Club, successfully summited the Grand Teton in what became known as the first documented ascent.
However, according to the National Park Service (NPS), this first ascent was contested by claims of an earlier summit on both July 29, 1872, and Sept. 10, 1893. Reynold G. Jackson, an NPS ranger for over 25 years and an internationally recognized mountaineer and SAR specialist, wrote about the history of Grand Teton first ascents for the NPS and dubbed this “the greatest of all American mountaineering controversies.”
According to Jackson, the first unconfirmed ascent of the Grand was executed by Nathaniel Langford and James Stevenson, two members of a 14 member expedition who claimed they reached the Grand Teton summit via an ice cliff from the Upper Saddle on July 29, 1872. However, Jackson argues that the description given by Langford to a reporter at the time only proves the two men reached the Upper Saddle and the Enclosure.
Jackson confirms there was no evidence of prior human passage found during later summits of this unsubstantiated first ascent, like cairns or anything left behind on the peak. No photographic evidence exists from that 1872 climb either.
“Of course, Langford and Stevenson may not have had enough time to do much of anything except to find their way safely down off the peak,” Jackson wrote. “It may be safe to say that we will never know if they actually made the climb, but it is clear to this author that a concise, objective presentation of the facts concerning their attempt has yet to be made.”
In 1893, another unsubstantiated ascent might have been made by Captain Charles Kieffer and two other men; in an 1899 letter from Kieffer to William O. Owen, who was part of the first documented Grand Teton ascent a year prior, Kieffer described his climb and provided an accompanying drawing where his route appears to be the Exum Ridge, later named after Glenn Exum’s solo ascent without ropes in 1931.
But while Kieffer’s military records do show he was stationed at Fort Yellowstone during the summer of 1893, which would have given him the opportunity to in fact make the climb, Jackson suggests more evidence is needed to confirm the achievement actually happened.
In 1898, the first photographic evidence of a Grand Teton summit is what corroborates Franklin Spalding, William O. Owen, Frank Petersen and John Shive successfully made it to the top of the peak. According to Jackson, there was also evidence of their ascent from a cairn and their names chiseled in a summit boulder.
“In 1872 Langford and Stevenson may have climbed the Grand Teton, in 1893 Kieffer, Newell and Rhyan may have climbed it and in 1898 Spalding, Owen, Petersen and Shive definitely did succeed in reaching the summit,” Jackson wrote about the controversy.
While the details may be disputed, the fact that summiting the iconic peak was something that became possible is the heart of the lasting impact. For Brenton Reagan, lead guide with Exum Mountain Guides, his introduction to Exum when he was 14-years-old was so powerful that he’s been a guide with the company for 25 years.
Reagan points to the uniquely American style of climbing the Grand Teton as one thing that makes the experience so powerful. Exum and Paul Petzoldt designed a way to guide the Grand so that clients would learn skills they could use themselves on the climb, as opposed to the more Swiss way of guiding that Exum and Petzoldt witnessed where the guides didn’t teach clients techniques to ascend themselves.
“That’s a huge core of how we still guide it,” Reagan told Buckrail. He says he’s adopted one of Exum’s guiding techniques where, when he’s leading his clients on the last hundred feet of the climb, he stops and lets the person in the back take the lead to the top.
According to Reagan, the power of participating in the experience is most obvious when people who have summited the Grand Teton come back decades later with their kids to climb it. In fact, his own mom was the one who introduced him to the world of climbing the Grand after she climbed it with Exum twice.
Reagan says what seems to be one of the biggest motivators for people is just hearing that summiting the Grand is possible. He notes one client in 2022 even used climbing the Grand as a goalpost in recovering from an injury.
“It’s quite western, it’s quite American, the freedom that we have up there, and that means a lot to people,” Reagan says.
