Big day! Started at 3:23 AM on the bike with my wetsuit and running gear/drybag in panniers. Absolutely brutal bike ride with 6500 feet of gain and the first real downhill coming around mile 16, fortunately the sun came up and made the last 1:30ish much more enjoyable. Not a ton to say about the ride nor is there really a trick to it, just a good old fashioned grind in the dark! Once I got to the parking lot at the west end of Tenaya Lake, I locked my bike to a tree behind the big rock about 50 ft off the pavement on the right side of the parking lot (right side upon entrance) and switched into my wetsuit, cap and goggles.
I started the first swim at 7:31 AM, dragging my drybag with running gear across the lake behind me. The water was fairly calm and felt warm (65-70F) which was a huge improvement from the Jenny Lake swim for the Jackson Picnic! I got across the lake about 10 minutes faster than expected (pleasant surprise as I am generally terrible at swimming) but lost a good bit of time in my transition as I needed to fill up my water (my drybag didn't not have enough room to include filled water bottles) and find some strategically placed foliage to avoid stripping down in front of the tourists checking out the beach. After hiding my swim gear in the woods I started off on the run towards Tenaya.
Started the run at 8:51 AM. Heading up Tenaya was no problem, I avoided putting on my climbing shoes and did not regret that decision, finding the climbing relatively easy with it only feeling a little airy towards the top. After stopping to talk with a couple climbers about the area at the summit of Tenaya, I bee-lined it for Matthes Crest. The run between was fairly straightforward, just following the path of least resistance/elevation change and keeping an eye on my GPS as I went (also refilled water at a river here). Finding the start of Matthes Crest was no problem either as I simply headed for the notch on the south end (just to the right of center on the picture of Matthes Crest attached to this report) and started up the path of least resistance once I got there. I started up Matthes Crest without changing into my climbing shoes which I realized was a mistake roughly 30 feet in, while the climbing is easy, it is still upper 5.5 feeling and very airy which made for a couple nerve-wracking moments with the required route finding. I continued on with the traverse, definitely being slowed by some route finding but making it through and deciding to put my climbing shoes on on the tower just before the south summit. I fortunately happened to run into another solo climber (unarranged for all you FKT sticklers) just before the crux who I managed to watch through the crux and a bit of the following climbing before his paced outmatched me and I fell behind. The crux itself is not too difficult, only being a few moves, but does feel like serious climbing and requires a bit of muscle (plenty of videos on youtube for anyone who wants to see). After the crux there are a good few committing and heady moves of varying difficulty but all occur around nice big solid cracks and flakes; making for solid holds. I headed off the west side with 0.1 miles of the crest to go as the climbing grade seemed elevate at that point to a level I was not quite comfortable with. An easy 5.4/5.5 down climb brought me to some slabs that allowed me to head towards Cathedral without losing too much elevation before heading through Echo Peaks. From Echo Peaks I dropped down a bit through a snow drift (bonus points for the glissade), refilled some water from a river flowing towards Budd Lake. Cathedral involved some route finding but after the exposed intensity of Matthes Crest felt like a relative breeze (also strapped on climbing shoes for this). Met a couple cool dudes at the top of Cathedral, one of which who had just done the "Tetonic", a Jackson Picnic including the Grand, Middle, and South Tetons in the run). The descent was pretty straightforward, again just following my GPS and cruising down the big rock slabs past Lower Cathedral Lake before dropping into the woods to head back to the beach at Tenaya Lake. I did just barely avoid a bear interaction thanks to a watchful beach goer who warned me off continuing down the last ~50 yards of trails before popping out onto the beach (there was a bear and cub up ahead that he could see and I could not). I did not have enough room in my drybag for bear spray but I definitely should have made room, I was very fortunate not to run into a bear at any other point during my run but others may not be so lucky.
Transitioning back to swim and hopping in the water at 5:22 PM, I faced the promised headwind. This headwind created ~6 inch tall waves for 3/4 of the length of the lake that seemed to match my lack of swimming ability well, resulting in a swim that felt more like a full-body battle. Fortunately the water still felt warm meaning I didn't have to deal with my legs seizing or feet and hands freezing (silver lining!).
I made a rapid-as-possible transition and hopped on the bike at 6:39 PM with a sopping wetsuit and "dry"bag in tow. The bike back was fortunately uneventful but those last 2300 ft of climbing felt killer! Darkness fell with about half an hour to go and made for some surprising fun. The final 16 miles of downhill back to the valley, ripping down the winding road through the tunnels with just a dim headlamp to light the way was a big highlight! I reached El Cap Bridge at 9:15 PM. One word description for the picnic: relentless!
Breakdown:
Bike 1: 3:48, 43.85 mi, 6500 ft
Transition 1: 00:20
Swim 1: 00:50, 1.1 mi
Transition 2: 0:30
Run: 8:19, 11.91 mi, 6100 ft
Transition 3: 0:12
Swim 2: 0:58, 1.03 mi, ~10 gallons lake water swallowed
Transition 4: 0:19
Bike 2: 2:36, 44.3 mi, 2300 ft
Some discrepancies in distance and elevation due to watch recording errors (suunto 9 peak used).
There is a quickish (7 min) summary video on my instagram, linked here and posted on 8/8/2024
-Van Ledger (IG)