Climbing two obscure peaks above Wedgemount Lake - The Owls

Anyone who has hiked to Wedgemount Lake is probably familiar with the iconic surrounding peaks like Wedge, Weart, Cook, Parkhurst, and Rethel. Just out of sight behind Weart is a pair of spires called "The Owls", which resemble the ear tufts of a horned owl.

Once you've learned to recognize them, they seem to poke out and make frequent appearances.

Mount Weart in its winter coat, The Owls are visible lookers right

Zoom shot on The Owls

The Owls in their summer coat

My brother and I have been interested in this semi-obscure pair of peaks for a while and decided to go check them out a couple weeks ago. We recruited our friend so we'd have a third for the glacier travel and set off. We made the usual grunt up to Wedgemount Lake, then continued on as if doing Weart. Once on the ridge we bailed onto the upper Weart Glacier, and made out way towards the S Face of The Owls.

Typical Wedgemount Lake scenery, pretty as ever

The ever receding Wedgemount Glacier, a sad sight

Approaching The Owls

The technical crux of the day ended up being gaining the South Face of The Owls from the glacier, which was stiff 4th. As we got higher the rock quality got a bit worse, but it also got much less steep. Eventually we got into a stepped dyke that led up to the notch between the two summits. Each summit was 3rd class:

Cool stepped dyke feature leading towards the summits

One of the twin summits of The Owls, Weart glacier bellow

After checking out both summits, we reversed our steps and heading back to the ridge running down from Weart, and eventually the Wedgemount Lake trail:

Almost done with the unpleasant terrain

Descending back below Weart

After all was said and done The Owls were a bit easier than expected, but still a physically stout day. It took us a bit over 10 hours to do them car to car.