Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Day Two, Mount Cowen

My posting of our adventures on Mount Cowen was interrupted by something quite coincidental, four of us that took part in The Alpine Triple Crown were on the Alpine Rescue team sent to rescue an injured climber on Mount Cowen Sunday night. The operation started on Sunday night at 7 pm and continued until noon on Monday when we were flown off of Cowen after successfully assisting with the helicopter evacuation of an injured climber who had fallen on the route we had climbed Thursday. I am now back at my computer and can continue with our account of Mount Cowen on Thursday the 14th. for more details of the incident, visit http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2008/08/19/news/000rescue.txt


After leaving the trail head of Granite Peak, we drove to Livingston and had our second dinner of the night at Yellowstone Pizza, stocked up on odds and ends at Albertsons and drove to the Cowen trail head, arriving at approx. 10:30pm. 4o mins. later everyone else caught up with us and we were all asleep by 11:30pm.


After sleeping through our alarms set for 3:00am, we woke up at 4:45am and quickly got our packs ready for our day. Due to exhaustion from the previous day, three members of the team would not be joining us. Travis, Tom Carter, and Logan King, slept in while Joe Wagner, Ross Lynn and myself took off up the trail at a stout pace at 5:00am. By 7am, Ross and Joe had taken off ahead of me and I was lagging behind due to sharp pain in my left knee. I slowly made my way towards Elbow lake. I eventually caught up with the other two after deciding i was going to turn back. After a quick pep talk and a large dose of Ibuprofen, Ross convinced me to keep going. We concluded that it was tendinitis of the IT band, which is extremely painful but shouldn't have any long term complications if i climbed through the pain. We continued on, at a somewhat slower pace and made it to the lake three hours after leaving the trail head. From there we started the scramble up towards the summit, 3,oooft above us. Mount Cowen is made up of a number of pinnacles and towers and is referred to as a cirque. As we made our way up into the cirque of rock towers, towards the highest one, we passed stepping waterfalls, large boulder fields, steep mountain side meadows of wildflowers, and finally reached the top of the first large ledge that put us into the center of the cirque, directly at the base of Cowen and next to a frozen, glaciated lake. After seeing the lake and the surrounding terrain we knew that this was going to be the most difficult part of the climb. In order to stay on our route to the summit, we would have to cross a 200ft section of glacial ice and snow on a steep slope. If we fell during the traverse, we would slide the 400ft down into the frozen lake. We would be doing this in tennis shoes, without any ice climbing gear.


It was a tense 20 minutes, but all three of us successfully crossed the snow field and were back on route moving towards the summit, up the approach gully where the rescue took place three days later. We moved safely up the gully and while Joe and Ross climbed the South Ridge, I climbed the West Face, which was slightly easier terrain and safer with my painful knee.


We reached the summit five hours after leaving the trail head, the exact time it had taken me a year earlier, without an injured knee. We spent twenty minutes alone on the summit with a beautiful view and after a quick snack of electrolyte pills, gu, and water, started our descent.



We took a significant amount of time descending as we were being very careful down climbing the loose and dangerous gully. After getting clear of the gully and safely crossing the snow field again, we took off down and out of the cirque, passing the lake and steadily making our way back towards the trail head.

On our way out, we met Brandon and Casey, on their way up the mountain. We stopped for a few short minutes to describe the route to them and chat and then continued out.



We were back at the trail head by mid afternoon and after a quick meal of spaghetti cooked up by the girls, we loaded up in our convoy, stopped for dinner number two in Gardiner and headed to the boiling river for an hour of hot water. It felt amazing. By 7:00pm we were back on the road and all of the climbers were sound asleep as Molly and the girls drove through the park, watching the sun set and a beautiful full moon rise in front of us.

By 11:30 pm, our first car had arrived at the campsite across the valley from the Grand Teton and we were asleep at midnight, with only two hours of sleep ahead of us before we would awake for our attempt of our final mountain.