Jack Turner grew up with an image of the Tetons engraved in his mind. As a young man, he climbed the peaks of this singular range with basic climbing gear and friends. Later in life, he led treks in India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Tibet, and Peru, but he always returned to the mountains of his youth: the Tetons. Teewinot is his ode to forty years in the mountains that he loves. this is a book about a mountain range, its climbs, its weather, and the glory of the wild. It is also about a small group of climbers-nomads who inhabit the Teton Range each summer, and who know it as intimately as it will ever be known. Teewinot is a remarkable account of what it is like to live and work in these spectacular mountains. It has something for everyone-spellbinding accounts of dangerous and deadly climbs, unbridled awe at the beauty of nature, and an extreme passion for the environmental issues facing America today. In this series of recollections, one of America's most beautiful national parks comes alive with beauty, mystery, and power. “Finely detailed descriptions of trail life make readers see the specific beauty of remote ranges...Anyone interested in difficult country and the inspiration it provides would do well to read these accounts of climbing, trekking, and thinking.” ― Outside magazine “This is simply stated, a wonderful and utterly engaging book,.” ― Jim Harrison, author of Dalva and The Road Home “Each place must find its muse. The Tetons have found theirs and his name is Jack Turner.” ― Terry Tempest Williams, author of Coyote's Canyon Jack Turner is the president of Exum Mountain Guides and School of American Mountaineering in Grand Teton National Park.  He has led treks in India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Tibet, Bhutan, and Peru. His first book was a collection of environmental essays, The Abstract Wild ; it was followed by a memoir, Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range and Travels in the Greater Yellowstone . He is a visiting scholar at the University of Utah and has been honored with a 2007 Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award. He lives in Grand Teton National Park with his wife, Dana, and their dog, Rio. Teewinot Climbing and Contemplating the Teton Range By Jack Turner St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2000 Jack Turner All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-312-28446-6 Contents Title Page, Introduction, 1. Return, 2. The Teton Range, 3. The Vicissitudes of Spring, 4. The Meadow, 5. Into the Mountains, 6. Symmetry Spire, 7. To the Lower Saddle, 8. An Ascent of the Grand Teton, 9. The End of Summer, 10. Snowshoe Canyon, 11. A Cougar and a Chase, 12. Moose Basin, 13. Early Winters, 14. Skiing to Jenny Lake, 15. Deep Winter, 16. The Open Road, Acknowledgments, Also by Jack Turner, Praise for Jack Turner and Teewinot, Selected Bibliography, Copyright Page, CHAPTER 1 Return Snow. Each year it seems winter will never end. Today is May 1, according to the Gregorian calendar, six weeks into spring, but snow lies two feet deep along the road where I am parked and it is snowing lightly, the wet flakes as big as dimes. A snow-filled clearing courses through the forest, all that is left of Cottonwood Creek this time of year. The trees beside the creek are naked—the aspen a study of silver, soft greens, and grays, the cottonwoods a dark charcoal where the trunks are wet. Pale gray alder branches are tinged with pink, and from those branches dangle small russet tassels. Willows add a smear of dull yellow beside the creek bed. To the west, lines of conifers stand cloaked in white at the base of the Teton Range; above them, miles of timbered ridges fade into clouds. East of the creek, tips of sagebrush dot a white plain beneath ghostly patches of forest, the dark green trees bleached by falling snow. Everything is subtle and austere—the lightly adorned landscape of a Wyoming winter. I've been walking around for half an hour, waiting. A few minutes before eight o'clock a ranger arrives in a Ford Bronco and stops in front of the steel gate that has barred vehicles from the interior of Grand Teton National Park since November 1. He turns off the engine and sits, also waiting. I nod and he nods back, both of us content with silence. At exactly eight o'clock he unlocks the gate and swings it off the road. I drive across Cottonwood Creek and head north, toward the cabin I call home. Snowplows have sliced walls on both side of the road. In front of me, cloud-capped ridges slope into the valley at the same angle—what geographers call the versant of a range. The ridges are stacked one behind another in many shades of gray—slate, graphite, pearl——until they merge with the snowy sky. Deprived of the sky and their summits, the mountains are magnified, mysterious. Static, Buck, Shadow, Nez Percé, Cloudveil Dome, the South, Middle, and Grand Tetons, Disappointment, Owen, Teewinot, St. John, Rockchuck, Moran, Rolling Thunder, Eagles Rest, Ranger—the heart of the range, rising so