Mount Owen and the Mountain Goat

First of all, I would like to thank the boys for taking me an amazing adventure and turning me on to another awesome mountain sport. You guys were great!

Photo By Alan Ellis www.jackieandalan.com

With my new gear arriving overnight, I packed my bags and headed for the trail head. My only experience in the Tetons is hiking the Middle Teton and skiing 10,552, in which it is important to leave before sunrise. I knew I was out of my element when I was told to meet at Lupine meadows at 1:00p.m. (a nice country club start). It was hard for me to believe we were going to get to the hanging snow fields before night fall.

We bush wacked our way up to the Teton Glacier which sits between the Grand Teton and Mount Owen. There I stashed my approach shoes and strapped on my mountaineering boots and crampons. We quickly crossed the Teton Glacier and began our ascent up the Koven.

The Koven was a mix of ice and rock. We used our ice tools and crampons to negotiate the snow and to my surprise the rock. I had never climbed in crampons before. My first pitch, granted a 5.6 was incredibly intimidating. The climbing itself was mellow, the fact that I had razor blades for shoes was nerve racking. The mountain goat, Stephen, assured me that crampons were great for climbing in, just trust them. I did and we eventually made our way to our bivy site.

This is where I truly felt like a tourist. As I stood on the small ledge looking down the steep couliar, I had no idea what to do. Luckily, this was an old hat trick for Stephen. He began placing large rocks around the outside of the ledge to prevent us from rolling off the side of the bivy as we slept at night. I have to say, it was really cool. And the view from the bivy was breathtaking.

As the night descended on us, we snuggled into our sleeping bags and watched the big dipper take over the sky. Tuesday morning, we woke at 4:00am and started the stove for some warm oatmeal and instant coffee. We started our climb up the east ridge of Mount Owen at 5:00am.

We ascended a hanging snow field and traversed the east side of Mount Owen to finish the rest of the route on rock. Luckily, no crampons this time.

Not a lot of “chicken heads,” my favorite type of hand holds when I am climbing over heavy exposure, but the rock was sticking and soon enough I found myself at the top of Mount Owen.

The weather was perfect, crystal clear. There is nothing like sitting at the top of peak and feeling lucky to be alive. The only thing better is hearing the click of your bindings before you ski down.

Getting to the top is only half of the battle. Getting down is the other half. We carefully free climbed down to our bivy site and enjoyed lunch.

After lunch we didn’t get ski, but we did get use gravity and we repelled down the to the Teton Glacier.

Waiting for me on the other side of the Glacier were my approach shoes which I couldn’t wait to get my feet into. Next stop Dornan’s for beer.

Every climbing trip in the Tetons should end with a cold beer at the deck of Dornan’s. You can kick back and reflect on where you just were and what you just accomplished.