Alex Fischer

In the northern reaches of Grand Teton National Park, between Red Mountain and Elk Mountain, lies over 2000 vertical feet of Madison Limestone and an impressive array of karst features visible on the LIDAR. Ever since I became aware of the high quality LIDAR available for the whole park and the impressive potential it suggested for that area several years ago, I had been looking to ridgewalk (caver parlance for ‘walk around looking for caves’) there and see what the karst looks like up close. This August, I finally made it happen. I was in the western Wyoming/southern Idaho area for some other caving, and I took 3 days to do a big solo ridgewalking/backpacking trip to check out the area. Some of the LIDAR features in the area I wanted to check out The first dilemma I had to figure out was how to get to this area. There’s a reason I couldn’t find any accounts of cavers checking the area out—it is very remote and difficult to get to. There were 3 options I considered: From the east side