Gannett Peak (13,804'), Wyoming



Peter Bakwin set the FKT on August 1, 2009: 12h39m29s car-to-car, 7h00m car-to-summit.

Gannett Peak from the west Gannett Peak (13,804') is the highest peak in Wyoming. Lying deep within the Wind River Range, it is surely one of the most difficult of the 50 state high points due to long approaches and tough climbing.

Most often, Gannett is approached from the south via the Titcomb Basin / Bonney Pass route (40 miles round trip), or from the northeast, via the Glacier Trail (50 miles round trip). Though the Glacier Trail route is longer, it allows for a shorter summit day for most parties.

Gannett is seldom climbed in a single day. An early speed record was by the legendary Chris Reveley, who posted 17h48m round trip via Bonney Pass. I have confirmation of this from Reveley, but so far have not been able to get details, and don't know the date of his trip. He climbed from Elkhart Park via Dinwoody Pass.

Buzz Burrell and I wanted to climb Gannett in a day, but we didn't relish the long approaches of the usual routes. Looking at a map of the area, we determined that an approach via the Highline Trail from Green River Lakes would be shorter, probably about 36 miles round trip. Two drainages allow access to the Gannett's west face from this direction, Tourist Creek and Wells Creek. Wells Creek is the most direct, but the map clearly shows several contours coming together near 10,200' in the drainage, a feature known ominously as "The Cleft". Throwing caution to the wind, Burrell & I gave Wells Creek a shot on August 8, 2004. We found a wonderful, challenging, beautiful route, with a crux pitch in the Cleft that required some exposed 5.6 rock climbing. After floundering around in the Cleft, and enjoying a blue-bird day, we reached the summit in 9h40m, and completed the round trip in 18h15m, not quite matching Reveley's record. Our trip report and photos are here.

Perhaps inspired by our trip, Dave Anderson did a speed ascent of Gannett in September 2006 via the Green River Lakes approach (probably Wells Creek), making the summit in 8h20m, as reported on climbing.com. I do not know Anderson's round trip time.

I was unaware of Anderson's trip until July 31, 2009, exactly one day before I was planning another speed ascent of Gannett, this time via the Tourist Creek route (in order to avoid the difficult pitch in the Cleft of Wells Creek). In one of the many strange twists that sometimes occurs with these speed record things, on that day someone posted to a summitpost thread about Gannett as follows: "Just thought you guys might like to know. The current speed record for Gannette (sic) is 8 hrs and 20 min by Dave Anderson from Green River Lakes Entrance. And thats CAR to CAR. 17 hrs should be nice and comfortable! ha ha right?" I was following the thread on my iPhone, and was not able to research it further that afternoon. When I got home, I quickly found that the 8h20m was car-to-summit, not car-to-car. But, at the time the posting kind of threw me as 8h20m car-to-car would be an exceptionally fast time for any route on Gannett. Nevertheless, on August 1, 2009, I went ahead with my climb, and achieved the true FKT for Gannett of 12h39m29s car-to-car (7h00m car-to-summit), via the Tourist Creek route. The summitpost Tourist Creek route description is based on my trip.

My splits were as follows (elapsed time starting at Green River Lakes at 4:22 a.m.):
Start at Green River Lakes0:00
bridge over Green River2:02
Tourist / Wells divide4:35
lower edge of Minor Glacier5:45
summit7:00
lower edge of Minor Glacier7:51*
Tourist / Wells divide8:54
bridge over Green River10:57
Green River Lakes trail head12:39
*Includes 10 min. spent on summit.