East Face Teewinot Attempt

Looking up toward Summit

Friday morning my friend Neal and I left town at 2 am with idea of possibly skiing the Diagonal Couloir on Mt Owen. The Weather has been really unsettled and it has been hard to ski in the mountains, because it has not been freezing in the evening. As we drove to the parking lot the temperature was in the mid 40s, we decided to go for the East Face of Teewinot, because the approach was a lot closer and it was a lot easier to bail if needed. We only had to hike for about an hour before we hit snow and were able to start skinning. This was so nice to get the weight of skis and boots off the back. It is the middle of June and the snow line is still incredibly low, it makes me wonder if climbing in the Tetons is ever going to happen.


After skinning for about another hour it was time to start boot packing, the snow was incredibly punchy and we were breaking through up to our knees. It took us about and hour to get to the Worshipper and the Idol and the sun had just started rise over the mountain. We still had about 1500 feet until the summit and decide to dig a pit, there was really no solid layer. We still had some time before the sun baked the face to much so we continued on for about 10 more minutes and decided that it did not feel safe. I still had an awesome ski down at sunrise, there was a bit of an inversion so the valley was covered in clouds. We were back at the car around 830 am. I was a little bummed that my day in the Tetons was over, but psyched with my ski fairly long ski down.