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Grand Teton Summit via Owen Spalding

August 17 2023


Hiking up the valley.  
This is my amazing guide Morgan:




An unidentified climber on a notable lateral 
section.  We sailed right through it unroped.
And you could too.  It's 2000' straight down:




The 2 minute 44 second video below contains
highlights from our Owen-Spalding route as 
climbed and filmed by a different climbing party:




Me on the summit:




Saving some down-climbing.  Morgan took this photo
of me with her telescopic lens.  The photo is 
deceptive:  The rappel is a combination of vertical
and overhanging.  At this instant, I've just made
contact with the face of the wall at the end of an 
overhang section:




Here is a 1981 climber beginning the above rappel:




When we returned to the saddle after summiting,
Morgan gave me half her sandwich, which I'm 
holding in my hand while munching:



I long ago learned that neither mountain hiking
nor mountain climbing can be enjoyable if one
doesn't arrive in the mountains in excellent
condition.  Thus, I always train for at least
two months prior to heading out west.  The 
training is part of the fun.

From 2007 (when the online summit registry began) 
through 2023, 99.4 percent of guided climbs to 
the summit of the Grand Teton were two-day climbs.

(To find me in the summit registry, you need to
choose "Grand Teton-1 day" along with my name
of course.  You can leave the month and year
blank ("any").)

The standard start time for a one-day ascent/descent 
of the Grand is midnight.  Morgan kindly let me sleep
in (or I kindly let her sleep in) and we started our 
one-day ascent/descent (trailhead to trailhead) at 
4:00 A.M.

It was a very easy day of hiking, climbing and
descending back to the trailhead.  We spent 
nearly four hours during the day "goofing off".

(Fifteen minutes at Spalding Falls on the 
way up and on the way down; an hour at the 
saddle on the way up and on the way down; 
a half-hour at the summit; about a half-hour
of staying put on various pitches due to 
route-sharing with other climbing parties.)

Throughout the entire day, I felt like I had never 
left the trailhead.  There was no perceptible increase 
in my heartrate or breathing, which is as it should be.

Roger Luebeck
roger@rogcad.com


I returned the following year (2024) to summit the
Grand via the upper Exum ridge -- the more exposed
and difficult route.  It was another identically easy 
one-day ascent/descent with a pleasantly late start:

Story and photos: Grand Teton via Upper Exum, 2024

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