Gannett Peak
— — the peak the road never reaches.
Not only on a wall.
“The highest point in Wyoming, and one of the few American summits with no road that gets you close. The walk in from Pole Creek runs more than twenty miles before the meadows open into Titcomb Basin and the granite begins. The Gannett Glacier still hangs on the north face, smaller every year, still there. Most who turn back do so at the bergschrund.
Gannett Peak, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Gannett Peak rises to 13,809 feet (4,209 m) on the Continental Divide in Wyoming's Wind River Range, the highest summit in the state and the second highest in the American Rockies north of Colorado. It sits on the boundary between Bridger-Teton and Shoshone National Forests, inside the Bridger and Fitzpatrick Wilderness areas. The peak was named in 1906 for Henry Gannett, the U.S. Geological Survey geographer who first systematically mapped the West. The closest pavement is at Elkhart Park outside Pinedale, more than twenty trail miles away.
Storms build on the Divide most summer afternoons; the granite holds cold long after the meadows below have warmed. Even in July the high cirques can carry a fresh dusting, and the bergschrund on the Gooseneck route opens wider each season as the Gannett Glacier, once the largest in the American Rockies, recedes. The U.S. Geological Survey has tracked roughly a forty percent loss in glacier area across the Wind Rivers since the 1960s. The air is thin enough at the summit that most climbers turn for the col before noon.
There is no short way in. The standard approach leaves Elkhart Park near Pinedale and follows the Pole Creek and Seneca Lake trails roughly twenty-two miles to Titcomb Basin, where most parties camp before the Gooseneck Glacier and the final ridge. A wilderness permit is not required for day use, but groups are capped at fifteen and campsites must sit two hundred feet from any water. Most summit attempts run five to seven days round-trip; July through early September is the working season.