TMB prelude from Little River to Chamonix

Posted on July 31, 2025 by seanb724

Originally had “Day 1” vs. “prelude” and had “day 1” in quotes because this was far more than a day…

I first saw a warning about tropical storm Chantal on Friday, just as a high pressure weather system hanging on off the coast of NC/SC. Didn’t really think much about it at 1st.

By Saturday it was a real concern, as we were supposed to get Grampy’s boat from Little River to north of Holden Beach — on the water! — Sunday morning. We opted to get the jet skis out of the water Saturday afternoon and this was what Reece saw, sharing with the family with the caption “Grampy going out for a joy ride.”

And what I saw the other direction…

Over (Saturday) night, there was a ton of wind and rain keeping both Kelly and I awake, as the rain beat on the windows of the condo and the wind howled. This was probably just before that time:

Kelly woke up with a plan B: to get Grampy’s trailer by driving and hour north and then back, get the boat off the water locally, and get out of town – in cars rather than on the water. So Grampy and I drove up and grabbed the trailer, then Grampy drove the boat the couple miles on the water to the boat ramp, and I dropped Reece off to help Grampy load the boat. I had to get on the road quickly to get home to PBO and then quickly get to the airport.

I later learned that Reece and Grampy had quite the time getting the boat onto the trailer in the wind and rain and river current, which was running high due to all the over night rain. Additionally, they had a flat tire on the trailer on the way home. Reece was our ride to the airport, so things were getting tight!

I got home with the skis and Kelly came in right behind me. We had both driven through “flood waters” in the Fort Bragg area (I’d say 8-10” of water on the road in some places) and had less than an hour turn around to get ready to go to RDU. We had of course already packed, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t last minute things we had to do.

We were ready about the time Reece pulled in and we quickly loaded our bags, picked up the Evenson’s, and made it to RDU. It took a little while to check in (had to check a gear bag) and I think our rep was trying to help with the 10 hour LHR lay over, but no luck. We ended up with at least 45 minutes, maybe an hour in the lounge, before it was time to board.

Amazingly, even with the tropical storm and flooding, our flight took off on time, we landed in London on time, and now had 10 hours to kill. Somehow Kelly’s boarding pass showed “emerald” — I’m going to credit our rep that checked us in, which allowed us to get the Evensons into the BA lounge in Heathrow terminal 5, which is quite nice.

10 hours in LHR — that’s a long time. We took advantage of the lounge — Kelly showered, I think we all ate 3 meals, some of us slept.

No photos of the ladies sleeping — they found some nicer, more comfortable chairs…

There was also a point where I saw power outages in Pittsboro via some of the home automation apps (HVAC and cameras offline), so I messaged Reece. He said there was some weird beeping in the basement, and my 1st thought was “oh no!” That’s probably the water sensing alarm. I had him go down, and yep, that’s what it was. I had hoped it was just the condensation pump over flowing or the HVAC dripping, but nope, this was more than that.

About 20 years ago, the house drain pipe had been clogged by a bob cat driving near it and pushing Chatham County clay about 6 inches in. So I had Reece go find it, and sure enough, somehow it was clogged again. 😦 Reece cleared it out, and then had to deal with the water in the basement. Luckily it was caught early, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a lot of work. Towels and shop vacs and fans and some help from Grampy, and all was well.

After LHR it was on to Geneva, where we took a bus to a hotel not too far from the airport. A quick sleep, a good breakfast, a bus back to the airport, and then it was just over an hour bus ride to Chamonix, where someone got another nap in:

Our hotel:

A few shots around Chamonix:

We had crepes for lunch!

Where the UTMB race starts and finishes:

And TACOs for dinner, on TACO Tuesday!

And then it was back to the hotel and time to get some sleep before we’d start our big adventure in the morning! That would be Wednesday July 9th after leaving NC on Sunday July 6th… Sunday night in the air, Monday in LHR, Tuesday Geneva to Chamonix and an afternoon there…

Stay tuned for TMB day 2, 3, 4, 5….

Aug 2021 – Mt Massive

Posted on September 15, 2021 by seanb724

We got Jase to the start line of the Leadville 100 at 4 a.m., had coffee, met some old friends, and then headed to Mt. Massive. I was slated to pace Jase from 87-100, so had a lot of time. Why not get in another 14er? One problem was that the road to the trail head was closed, so we had a long lead in, which we jogged and walked and talked. We ended up coming down the shorter way, but we still has a 16 mile, 6000′ day! And that put me up to 32 miles and ~ 15k of climb in just 3 days! I felt pretty strong on all of this, especially the climb (even though it is slow-mo after 13,500), but was a bit slow on the way down… This was the highest I’ve been to date at 14,421′

Aug 2021 Mt. Bierstadt

Posted on September 15, 2021 by seanb724

I flew out to CO to help Jase out at Leadville, and got there a few days early to hang out with Ben and Karrie and family. Since I had a day were they were all working or at school, I headed out to Bierstadt. I hit the climb pretty hard and ran down a fair bit, but the altitude finally hit me on the last mile which is relatively flat. Had to slow way down as I was at the edge of bonking! Once I stopped I was fine, but just shows you that hitting a 14er less than 24 hours from coming from sea level is always hard. :-). I’d note that I climbed Hope Pass the 2nd day, and Mt Massive the third day, and did much better!

Not many photos as I was solo and have summited this peak a couple times already.

Strava data:

2019 – June – Mt. Bierstadt

Posted on September 15, 2021 by seanb724

Ok, almost 2 years late, but I realized I never shared anything about this 14er, and in the interest of documenting them all, as well as just having started to track (google sheet link), here’s a quick post…

Reece and I flew out to CO for the Man Maker project — a 5 night canoeing trip on the Green River in Utah — and we had a couple of days before heading that way. Reece wanted to see snow, so we originally were going to a 10k peak, but on the way (Evergreen?) decided to take a chance on Mt. Bierstadt and his first 14er (age 13 at the time). We had every intention of not summiting if it wasn’t the right day since we weren’t super prepared, but we made it up and down safely.

Reece was super strong on the way up, and I warned him that it would only get harder! But he kept pushing it, until about 13,500, where it always becomes slow motion, at least for me. We were early in the season so there was still A LOT of snow up there! And we were a bit under dressed and didn’t realize how cold it was until we got to the top. We both started shivering as soon as we stopped climbing, so only stayed a few minutes before heading down.

And that is when the altitude and the effort hit Reece! I’ll let the photos do the talking for that, but will say that I did have to carry him home some of the last mile.

Tetons Day 7: Cascade Canyon

Posted on July 2, 2018 by seanb724

Day 7 we awoke in Jackson and had a leisurely morning, before heading back into the park for Cascade Canyon. This was the busiest place we had been — some of that was due to nicer weather, but some of it was due to the popularity of this hike! We made it a little over 5 miles, to just before the Canyon forks north and south. We again had a hot lunch and chilled for a bit, before heading back down. This hike gave us a little over 50 miles of hiking and backpacking!

For dinner, we spoke to the hotel receptionist about some options, and decided on The Lift, a 15 minute walk towards the town ski slopes. I imagine during the winter this place is happening, but at this time a year, it’s away from the down town business, and is more of a locals place. We both had excellent meals.

On the walk over we saw a glass building with all kinds of colorful florescent lighting. Upon closer inspection, we discovered it was an indoor garden, growing all kinds of vegetables on rotating shelves. Pretty cool to see!

The next day we flew home. We will definitely be back to hike the Teton Crest trail some day! But we need to come in very late July or August, for that to be possible.

Tetons Day 6: Paintbrush Canyon

Posted on July 2, 2018 by seanb724

After a warm night in a hotel, we both got in short runs, and then had great breakfast at the Trapper Grill. We then headed up into Paintbrush Canyon, the canyon we had had permits to camp in the night before. In the parking lot I saw a couple coming out with all the gear and talked to them about conditions they experienced, and it pretty much rained on them all afternoon, evening, and into the night. So we felt justified that we had baled on our backpacking plans!

Paintbrush is a beautiful canyon. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but it would come down to Death or Paintbrush. They were so different. Death definitely felt more remote, and the waterfall up was amazing. Paintbrush had amazing open views of valley lakes.

We hiked up about as far as we could go — large snow field blocked the way. At that point, looking further into the canyon was like looking at winter, but all you had to do was turn around and see spring. We hiked back down a bit to an amazing camp site and set up our chairs, and cooked a hot lunch, and spoke to a few other backpackers that would be staying here this night.

When we got back to town we drove to The Bird, a burger joint about 10 minutes south of Jackson, that one of the local backpackers we had met coming out of Open Canyon had recommended. It had a fun atmosphere and was quite good.

A bit of what some of the stream crossings are like:

Tetons Day 5: Signal Mountain Lodge

Posted on June 29, 2018 by seanb724

We awoke to no rain, but we did have a decision to make. Pretty much all of our gear was wet, other than the clothes we had on. And the forecast was not looking good. Our itinerary had us heading to the car, and driving north into the main part of the park to Paintbrush Canyon, so we decided to hold off on a final call until we were in the car.

On the way down we met three guys who had been out for the night at Phelps Lake. We enjoyed talking to them, and when we reached our car at the trail head and it started to rain, we offered them a ride since their car was still almost a mile away. They squeezed in, and we got them to their car.

Once in, Kelly and I made the call to see if we could find a hotel for the night. We first tried Jenny Lake Lodge, but it was VERY EXPENSIVE! We drove up to Signal Mountain Lodge, which was more reasonable, and checked in. We had about an hour of very strong sun so I laid everything out and got it mostly dry, before the weather turned again. We looked up in to the canyons and new we had made the right decision! We enjoyed a nice meal and a warm bed. And dry clothes!

(While we certainly could have trudged on, we would have spent many hours in the tent waiting out the rain. The next day we hiked to Paintbrush and met a couple coming down how had camped, and they said they were pretty much poured on all afternoon, evening, and night!)

Tetons Day 4: Open Canyon

Posted on June 29, 2018 by seanb724

After a night of mostly rain in Death Canyon, we awoke to a break in the weather that allowed us to have breakfast and pack up the gear. I would have been tempted to stay another day/night in Death if it had just rained, even though our permits said to move out. It was an amazing spot, and Kelly and I were the only ones for what seemed like miles. No one else was in the Death Canyon camping zone!

A few minutes after we left the site with all our gear on our backs, Kelly suddenly stopped. We had scared a bear cub up a tree, less than 50 yards a way. It was really cute, and I wish I had a picture, but we were also worried as we didn’t see Mama bear. We stood very still and Kelly shook her bear bells, and after maybe 30-40 seconds, the mama appeared and ran up the hill. Baby bear came down the tree and followed. Shew!

We had to cross the same avalanche field and snow pack. What was odd is that we approached the avalanche field, we saw a pack and poles, but no one around! I yelled out, not wanting to scare anyone, and still nothing. As we passed the bag I noticed a sheath and thought either “machete” or some kind of saw. As we started to cross the field, it was apparent someone was out working trying to clear the field with a small hand saw! Eventually we met the ranger and spoke to him. His 1st question was “was anyone else up there last night,” to which we said “no.” 🙂

As we started down Death, it really started to rain and was really cold. It was a bit of a death march, in some ways. After an hour or two, I was getting really cold, but Kelly was marching along. I started thinking of the B&B’s hot tub. When we reached the fork in the trail at Phelp’s Lake, however, we did not turn back to the car. We headed up towards Open Canyon.

After a few minutes we stopped for a warm lunch of rice noodle soup and tea, and though I was shaking from cold and wet, it made me feel a lot better. And once we started up, I did warm up. I could tell Kelly was struggling, a bit. Turns out her feet were pretty much ice blocks. After a while we did come across three back packers — they were heading down and bailing — they had had a pretty aggressive plan of much higher peaks, and just didn’t have the gear.

When we found the site at Open Canyon, we set up, again just in time for a hail storm, though this one was much smaller than the night before. We did have a brief, 30 minute period of sun, where we hung up our wet clothes to dry, but alas, it got dark too soon.

The river coming down in Open Canyon:

Tetons Day 3: Death Canyon

Posted on June 28, 2018 by seanb724

Day three — time to start backpacking! But only after an awesome breakfast at the B&B. Again, to keep things simple, I’m just doing a single “tile mosaic” of all the images and will write at the top what we did, but will include videos here and there as well.

After breakfast, we headed into the park on Moose Wilson Road, a bit of a back door road into the park that passes by Teton Village, and then is 9 miles of tight and twisty road to the park. Before the park, though, we hit the turn off for Death Canyon Trail head. The 4×4 Jeep allowed us to drive the rough mile long road, through some major pot holes, to get all the way to the trail head. We did pass a lot of cars parked much earlier, but in reality, we saw a minivan make it pretty far. I personally would not have attempted that!

The trail to Death Canyon has a 1 mile lead in to a view of Phelps Lake, and then heads up the canyon.

The 1st part of the hike, we saw a fair number of day hikers, but after that, we saw a few runners and day hikers. One of the runners was wearing the same Prana shorts that I run in — something I’ve not seen before! He also had no GPS and said he wasn’t training for anything, just out running.

The hike along the “river” (all snow melt) in Death Canyon was stunning:

We reached the top, where it flattened out, and we hiked along the creek with stunning mountain peaks and snow and waterfalls on each side. We saw a few moose, and very few people. One was a runner, who was wearing Prana shorts – something I’ve only know myself to do! He had no GPS and said he wasn’t training for anything, just out for a 12-13+ mile run in an incredibly beautiful place.

We crossed a few snow packs, and even had to cross an avalanche field with down trees and snow:

After that, it was another mile or so until we found the perfect camp site. We were on a bit of a rock knoll — really a 3 sided cliff – with a small flat grassy spot on top. We set up the tent and grabbed a quick lunch, just before we got hit by a huge hail storm!

After the hail, it did rain for quite a while, but we were lucky enough to get a short window where we could cook dinner without rain.

Photo’s from the day:

Tetons days 1&2

Posted on June 28, 2018 by seanb724

Kelly and I celebrated 25 years of marriage by heading to one of our favorite places, Grand Teton National Park. While we had wanted to backpack the Crest Trail, we were too early in the season. The park ranges had told us we’d need to carry ice axes and know how to self-arrest! We opted to do some canyon backpacking instead — in one canyon, then out to the next. We still want to go back to do the entire Crest trail some day — but now know that needs to be mid to late July to (very) early September!

We flew in to Jackson Hole and had a couple nights at a fantastic Bed & Breakfast, Teton View B&B. (When we landed in Jackso, the stewardess welcomed everyone there, but gave a special welcome to “Mr. and Mrs. Butler, celebrating 25 years…”) The hosts of the B&B Franz and Carole were extremely welcoming and have a lovely set up. They were especially helpful in finalizing our hiking and backpacking plans, which we would need to alter again based on input from the rangers as well, as to where snow was, etc.

I’ll just do a single photo mosaic below but walk you through what we did. After arrival at the B&B, we headed to Teton Village and took the Bridger gondola to the top, which is free after 5 p.m. We had a drink and a bite to eat, and then headed down to eat at the Mangy Moose.

The next day, we decided to day hike Amphitheater Lake. We ended being turned back a little over 9000 feet, half mile short of the lakes, due to high snow. We didn’t need to take any chances with Kelly’s knee before we started backpacking! I did go one or two more switchbacks, but the trail wasn’t marked, and there was boot pack going in 2-3 different directions at each one, so decided it wasn’t worth it.

We headed back down and ended up at Trappers Grill at Signal Mountain Lodge, which has great deck seating and amazing views. We ordered Reece’s favorite from last time — the huge plat of Nacho’s.