Mt. Owen - 1998

While I was on my mission, Chris got into real rock climbing. Before I went on my mission, I'd never seen a pair of rock shoes. The closest I'd come was reading about sticky rubber in "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills". Dad and Josh took me out to climb soon after I got home, and I stared up at the 5.9 face of Kentucky Fried Penguin up Logan Canyon and thought: "Can we even climb that?" It seems funny to think that now, but I was used to climbing with heavy boots and a 20-pound pack on my back. While I'd been on my mission, it seemed like the quality of the gear our family was using was rising. Mom says that this was a result of Dad taking her on a trip up the South--she decided that pinching pennies wasn't a good policy in mountaineering.

Soon after that, we took a trip down to Salt Lake so I could buy some new mountaineering boots. I looked at some nice boots in REI, then Dad took me to a little shop where I saw a pair of half-shank leather boots in my size for $25. They fit great, so I bought them and used the rest of my money to buy a backpack (an internal frame pack to replace my old scouting pack). Dad, Josh, and I had Mt. Owen in our sites for that summer.

We made the hike up to the camp on the moraine and settled in for the night. When our alarms woke us at 4 in the morning, rain was falling, so we went back to sleep, hoping it would pass. Later, the rain stopped. Dad had a cell phone with him, so we called and got a weather report--possible rain throughout the morning. We decided to try to climb up the ledges on the southwest side of Teewinot, instead of Owen. We didn't have the route book with us, but Dad thought he remembered the broad strokes of the route. We started up a couloir, scrambling up small ledges and an scree. We later found out that we were starting in the wrong spot to climb Teewinot, but it didn't matter. Before we made it very far, the rain returned with a vengeance. We beat a hasty retreat down to base camp, packed up, and packed out.

I think this was my first climb with Josh. It was fun to climb with him, and fun to be back in the mountains.