Cody Peak Scramble

In the early fall of 2020, between the first two COVID case spikes in the US, I was lucky enough to be able to visit family in Jackson, Wyoming. The wife and I piled our two girls (1 and 3 at the time) into the car and made the two-day drive from the Bay Area to Jackson Hole.

Parenting is hard. And nothing hammers that fact home like the experience of having two additional adults suddenly available to take on a share of the child care. Finding myself in one of my favorite places on Earth and without the guilt of burdening my wife with solo-parenting, the time was ripe for adventure.

Over the last few years, I've been working to build my skills and experience in off trail hiking and scrambling. A safe, manageable objective for me was Cody Peak, a ~10,700 foot peak at the southern tip of Grand Teton National Park.

An added bonus of the peak is that you can make use of the Jackson Hole ski mountain tram, turning a full day excursion into something doable in an afternoon. With COVID, the tram was shut down but I was still able to ride the gondola up and save 3,000' of elevation gain. From there it was a relatively easy couple miles under the tram and towards Cody Bowl until the fun began.

The scrambling was rather tame, easy class-3. I opted to take a route with a little more climbing for fun but was never concerned about a fall -- I'd bring an adventurous friend with no experience here. The gravely slopes actually felt sketchier as I was always a little worried about my feet slipping out from under me.

After gaining the ridge it was easy walking over some larger but sturdier stones to the summit of Cody Peak. I did some exploring and ate some snacks at the summit before turning around and heading home. The next challenge is to extend the route and continue south from the peak until the ridgeline meets up with a trail and descends to Fish Creek Road.