Renny Jackson – Selfless Service at 14,000 Feet

“Call Renny!” was long a standard request when mountain climbers became trapped or injured in Grand Teton National Park. 

Well into his 60s, alpinist and now-retired United States National Park Service lead climbing ranger and helicopter rescue expert Reynold “Renny” Jackson saved numerous lives over his career, but he remains characteristically modest. He spent more than three decades as a ranger with the NPS, about 25 of them in the short-haul search and rescue (SAR) program.

Under his leadership, Jackson’s regional SAR operations earned international acclaim, and he received multiple Department of the Interior Valor Awards. This award recognizes exceptional acts of service and heroism on the part of department staff who have put their own lives on the line during critical rescue operations.

By the time NPS regulations forced him to retire in 2010 at age 57, he had been involved in numerous memorable rescues, including a particularly harrowing one on Friction Pitch, the Upper Exum Ridge on Grand Teton, in 2003.

In 2011 PBS’ Wyoming Chronicle interviewed Jackson, whom a reporter called “the dean of Grand Teton’s rescue rangers.” Jackson recalled what happened in that mass casualty event on Friction Pitch.

Grand Teton, rising to nearly 14,000 feet, offers stunning beauty and a challenging ascent. It also holds an array of dangers, and many a visitor to the park has died trying to make the climb. Those who come down do so with a renewed appreciation for the power of the natural world and the professionalism and selflessness of the local Jenny Lake Climbing Rangers.

On that day in 2003, a group of climbers had been overtaken by a storm on the upper part of the climb. A bolt of lightning struck, killing one woman in a split second. Her husband was seriously injured. Another climber hung upside down in his harness, and several others lay scattered over the area, unconscious, after being blasted off the rock face.

Jackson and his team arrived in two specially equipped helicopters, joined by a medical helicopter. Their plan also included transporting several members of their team up to the mountain in case the helicopter short-haul operation didn’t work.

From their receipt of the distress call until darkness fell—when they could not by law continue to fly—they worked for six hours as the storm raged. Jackson directed operations from the air, hovering for more than three hours and making two refueling stops. Characteristically, he credited not himself but the professionalism of the pilots working with him for helping carry everyone through.

It was paramount to stay calm and focused in the moment, and those who know Jackson have noted that this is something he, by both temperament and training, is skilled at doing. In fact, while his rescue on the Friction Pitch was particularly complex and dangerous, it was one of dozens of such rescues his elite ranger team performed every year.

Jackson’s thoughts at the time stayed squarely on the mission. When he needed to, he would every so often step back mentally, reflecting that he was connected to a larger system, all working on behalf of each individual whose life was being saved. He and his team brought 12 people safely back down the mountain that day, ferrying their last rescue only 20 minutes before darkness enveloped them.

Leading through team-building

On the occasion of his retirement, friends and loved ones who paid public tribute to Jackson highlighted the traits that he consistently showed on the job, in leading family mountain-climbing expeditions, and in helping his kids learn to live in a world of challenges. He has always been methodical, prepared, truthful, and straightforward, and works to bring out those character traits in others. 

His rescue team on Friction Pitch consisted of people he knew well, many of whom he had hired and trained. When first confronted with the need to start a rescue operation, he and his team (who had 150 years of collective experience) strategized as an organic whole. Each member of the team was able to offer insights and experiences that made the entire plan more effective.

This esprit-de-corps informed his other leadership decisions, including encouraging his rescue team to do as much climbing together as possible. This meant that each of them knew each other’s strengths and challenges and built lifelong bonds of trust and respect that kept the team unified and working at peak intelligence and strength. 

A lifetime in the mountains

The year he retired, Jackson was as fit and able a climber and rescuer as any of the many far younger members of his team. He regularly participated in danger-fraught helicopter and climbing rescues. Admirers remember that he came to know the 50 miles of the Teton Mountain Range better than almost anyone else. His predecessor noted that Jackson was still easily capable of climbing up Grand Teton in a single day. 

Jackson spent his youth close to Salt Lake City, Utah, and early on he developed a love for climbing, hiking, and exploring. In his mid-teens, he took a climbing class with a local mountaineering organization, where he impressed others with his tenacity, even when he was not making much progress in the sport. He would practice meticulously with the group, learning the moves that keep every mountain-climber safe: the boot-axe belay, body rappels, and team-arrest and self-arrest techniques. 

After a few years, Jackson traveled to Grand Teton National Park with the club to make the climb up the legendary mountain. That journey gave him a passion that would become his life’s work. Jackson soon climbed in Yosemite Valley and other noted locations, now rapidly gaining in skill, before earning a position as a seasonal climbing ranger in the Grand Tetons in his early 20s. In the beginning, he had no aspirations to stay very long in the job, but he ended up building his life and career around Grand Teton and Denali National Parks.

Jackson has made multiple climbs up the forbidding El Capitan in Yosemite. He has climbed Mount Everest, and in the mid-1980s made the first ascent of the north face of Lhotse in the Himalayas. He also made the first wintertime ascent of Mount Moran’s direct south buttress and the Northwest Chimney of Grand Teton.

He helped create the Department of the Interior’s standard short-haul handbook and co-authored the now-revered A Climber’s Guide to the Teton Range. When climbing in the Grand Tetons, the legendary mountain climber Alex Lowe made a point of seeking out Jackson as a companion.

Even after retirement, Jackson started his own consulting firm, Teton Rescue Consulting, and has since worked with Denali National Park to provide guidance and strategy on the same type of rescue work in which he developed extensive expertise.

Asked once by an interviewer to reflect on any spiritual aspects the mountains have for him, Jackson was not sure. Raised Catholic but not a church-goer, he paused to reflect, then said that what he does feel in the mountains is a deep sense of renewal from simply climbing and being in that environment.

Retired in the summer of 2010, Jackson found himself “going crazy” knowing the rangers were called to effect a rescue even larger than the one at Friction Pitch. All he wanted was to be on the mountain with his team to help.