trips <-- back to index


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:



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.

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 from the 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.)

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 easy one-day
ascent/descent with a pleasantly late start:

Story and photos: Grand Teton via Upper Exum, 2024

trips <-- back to index