I have been going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and nearby Grand Teton National park to hike and ski for ten years. I’ve probably been there 20 times. For all of that time I’ve stood in the valley or on the top of lesser mountains and looked up at the 13,700ft Grand Teton and wondered what it would be like to climb its rocky flanks and look down from the top. When my friends Collin and Liz reached out to me last year and said they wanted to get married on the summit and wanted me to take their wedding photos, there was no hesitation. I was all in.

Getting to the top of the Grand isn’t a simple feat and involves more than just hiking. Collin and Liz are also pretty hardcore outdoors people. They are the creators of The Wild Outsiders, a website dedicated to getting people outside and enjoying the outdoors. Collin and I have also done some pretty intense adventures together, one of which you can read about here. So it was no surprise when they said they didn’t want to take the “easy” route to the top, but wanted to take a more technical, harder but more visually beautiful route called the Exum Ridge.

So in early summer I began my training by running, strengthening my core and upper body and rock climbing as much as I could. Liz and Collin hired two guides from Exum Guide service in Jackson Hole to accompany us and one of them was specifically ordained to marry Liz and Collin at the summit.

August rolled around and I found myself in Jackson Hole with Liz and Collin ready to start our climb. We met up with our guides, Wade and Brenton, for a day of training in Grand Teton National Park. Wade and Brenton spent the whole day assessing our fitness and skills and determined that we were able to make the climb.

The original plan was to climb the Grand in two days. Day one would involve hiking up to a saddle at 10,000ft and spending the night, day two would involve summiting the peak and hiking all the way back to the trailhead in the valley. At the end of the training day, it became apparent after checking the weather that our window to summit was only one day before rain and storms moved back in. The decision was made to turn our two day climb into an epic one day adventure that would involve 19 miles and over 7,000 feet of climbing. What a way to get married!

The wedding day started at 2am. I woke up and packed my bag. I usually photograph weddings with three camera bodies and four different lenses. For the climb, the need to move fast and light was extremely important, so I only packed one camera and one lens, a 16-35 along with some extra batteries and memory cards.

We met Wade and Brenton at the parking lot at 3am, had a gear check, and started our 19 mile hike in the darkness.

Just after sunrise we reached the saddle at 10,000ft. We took a short break, put on our climbing harnesses and helmets and continued on. The group was split into two sections. Liz and Collin and Wade were one team and Brenton and I were another. Liz and Collin would follow a rope length behind Brenton and I so I could always be photographing down as Liz and Collin came up.

Brenton and I made a great team. I don’t rock climb much so I was close to the limit of my technical skills on some of the pitches. The Exum Ridge route includes 18 pitches of up to 5.9 climbing. Brenton would let me know which ones were hard and I would put my camera away to focus solely on getting up safely without falling. He would let me know good spots to get shots of Liz and Collin coming up and tie me in so I could lean out over the cliff as they came up.

At 11am there was all of a sudden nowhere to climb. We’d gone as high as we could. After a short traverse we reached the true summit.

We made it! Time to get married. Liz and Collin snuck behind some rocks, stripped down and changed into wedding attire (at over three miles in the sky!) They had written their ceremony down on the side of a paper bag which they handed to Wade. I’m not sure who was more nervous, Liz and Collin or Wade who had never married anyone before. As the ceremony progressed I gingerly hopped around trying to get the best angles without falling 7000ft off the edge to my death.

Liz and Collin changed back into climbing clothes and we began the long long descent back to the parking lot.

After 9 long miles of down climbing we finally made it back to the trailhead down in the valley. 19 miles and over 7000 vertical feet of climbing was done. Liz and Collin and I met Collin’s family in Jackson Hole for a burger and then went to bed!

The next morning we woke up early, Liz and Collin dressed back up in their wedding attire and we took some of the couples shots that we were unable to get on the summit of the Grand.