Considering Backcountry Beta: Part 1

Beta for certain lines can be elusive—a fabled photograph on a long-defunct blog, or a deeply kept secret revealed only through close friendship, or someone with too many beers in them.

Or, you might just stumble upon it on the side of a Quickie Mart or public transit bus.

Here in the Tetons, beta feels stuck fifteen years in the past. If you’re chasing a line, your resources are limited to a small collection of blogs of varying quality—the late Steve Romeo’s TetonAT and Brandon Wanthal’s 10,000 Too Far being the most prominent, and in my opinion, the most useful. Without a modern guidebook, beta spreads mostly through word of mouth. Aside from a handful of routes, there are few true “secrets” left, but the scarcity of published knowledge—mostly online—adds to the mystique.