Owen Spalding Route - 07/2016
I first starting living in southeastern Idaho in September of 2009 to go to college. I lived just outside of a tiny town called Tetonia with a population of 248. There were beautiful creeks and rivers, hills and plateaus, forests and farms. But best of all from every angle you can see the Grand Teton, Middle Teton, South Teton, and Mt. Moran. It was absolutely gorgeous and I was determined to climb them all one day. I ended up living in differents areas of the state such as Idaho Falls, Boise, Burley, and I even spent a summer in Yellowstone where I climbed up a 3rd class route up middle teton.
Eventually it was July of 2016, I had a newborn baby girl and had plans to move to Los Angeles to live permanently. I'm writing this in January of 2020 and I have not been back to Idaho since then. I had told myself that after staring at this beast of a peak for 7 years, I needed to climb it by whatever means necessary. I had waited until the last minute and was desperate.
I reached out to my good friend, Sam Perkins, who led me on an unroped quest up the Owen Spalding. It's the most classic route up the Grand Teton taking the path of least resistance which still has a surprising amount of resistance going at 5.4 with lots of exposure. We decided to tackle the peak in a "car to car" style so we can travel light and fast. I was not very experienced with alpine climbing yet but I had guessed it would take 15 hours but set a goal to do it in 12.
We woke up at 3:30am and hit the trail fast! Sam did cross country running in high school, continued to run long distances after school, and has climbed the Grand Teton something like 20 times. I was mountain fit from doing Mt. Borah and a few other peaks in the Lemhi range beforehand, so I did OK at keeping up. We blew through most of the hiking and filled up water at the lower saddle at 6:30am. This is where most parties decided to camp for a night or two so it felt nice to hike past the sleeping groups with our lightweight packs.
We continued on going through the "eye" and then the upper saddle before reaching the technical section of the route. This is where Sam's expertise came into play as he was very familiar with the route and went off of memory instead of a topo. I'm not going to lie, it felt really cool to say we were "locals" and pointed to the flat farmland to the west as we repeatedly said "we're from right there" to the groups that we chatted with.
The first pitch is the most memorable alpine pitches for me as the exposure level goes from 0 to 100 real quick. You can sit down and eat a bar and then stand up, take a couple steps along the "belly crawl" and find about 2,000' of air beneath you towards Valhalla Canyon. It was scary, but I felt more in awe than frightened. Looking back at that experience years later, this was my time experiencing mass exposure and what got me hooked and eventually led me to setting goals for routes purely based on the exposure levels.
On a completely different note, about a week ago, an Exum Guide had fallen from about 100' up from where we standing hitting the ground and then bouncing off and falling into Valhalla canyon. His body was later found about 3,000' below from his falling point. It made the scene feel eerie and as we hiking through, I thought I saw blood on the rocks but I didn't stop to look carefully or think about it too much. Frankly, I was in denial and tried to blot it out of my mind.
Sam and I had huge smiles on our faces as we're moving through the pitches and climbing over and under boulders, stemming up icy chimneys, and carefully balancing on sloping ledges moving slow so we can "take it all in" organically.
After taking a few summit pictures and enjoying the view, we headed down. Most people complete a rappel but since we didn't bring ropes or harnesses, we downclimbed the same way we came up which went surprisingly quick and wasn't too difficult.
As we finish the descent of the climb and are at the upper saddle, a woman came up to us and asked where the Owen Spalding route started. We happily pointed in the right direction and encouraged them to have fun and enjoy. The man she was with was quiet and looked familiar. At first I thought maybe he was in one of my classes at school. Just then Cedar Wright and his wife hike up right behind them and we start talking about the route and the beautiful area and we chat for a few minutes. As we were chatting, I had realized that the first individual who looked familiar was Renan Ozturk! Wow, what a crowd! Instead of acknowledging their status, Same and I both mutually decide (without speaking to eachother) to not mention it and just had a good old fashioned chat. Later I had learned that Renan Ozturk got married the next day. After all, they did seem very "chill" for being at 13,500'.
After that experience, Sam and I raced down the mountain as fast as we safely could stopping at the meadows for a bar. Coming from a background or backpacking in the sierras and always wandering and taking my time each day, I naturally took off my shoes and socks and walked through the creek exploring and climbing on the rocks. Sam was looking at me confused (and probably kind of frustrated) thinking why I was just hanging out. We compromised and took a 10-minutes break, then sprinted down the trail getting back to the car at 3:30. It could have been sooner, but being a beautiful Saturday in the summer, the lower sections of the trail were congested with day hikers. Sam felt annoyed, but I was having a good time nonetheless.
Below left is me after climbing middle teton in 9/2013. Below right is me after climbing grand teton in 7/2016. They're almost in the same spot, but have similar backgrounds.
We rewarded our 12 hour car to car efforts with a big juicy bison burger in Jackson Hole. Fortunately, we were both in mountain shape and neither of us were very sore or tired.
All smiles from a great day in the alpine!!
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