Wind Mountain: great early season climb

The view of the Rocky Mountain Peak complex from our lunch perch

Our goal was to climb Wind Mountain in the distance 

Gordon Whirry on the Wind Mountain summit cap

The South Fork of the Teton where we parked was running exceptionally clear

The stats

A climb of Wind Mountain (elevation: 6,917 feet) has become an early season mainstay climb.
The beauty of this relatively short summit between the forks of the Teton River in the Rocky Mountain Front is that it is not only a tuneup, but offers fantastic views of the Bob Marshall Wilderness country without a lot of effort.
Our climb Wednesday took off on the wrong foot, but as we were quickly reminded, sometimes a misdirection can open  whole new world of scenery.
The jumping off point for this off-trail climb is about a mile west of the Forest Service boundary.  You pick a spot and start up.
We didn't consult a map and we started way off course one drainage west of the best spot to go up.
Lucky for us, that route took us up the far west ridge of the large scree fields and we wound up just below an unscaleable promentory rock that is visible from most points of the Wind Mountain climb, but about 400 feet above the desired saddle from which to climb the peak.
The beauty of our mistake were the great view of Wind Mountain to the east.
We were also thrilled by the Rocky-Baldy complex of mountains, as well as the Ear Mountain ridges directly south.
There was lots of snow at about 7,500 feet on east facing slopes.  We had little snow patches on our walk.  No snow on the climb.
On this ridge we could also see into the main Teton drainage and Choteau Mountain and Mount Wright.
After a leisurely lunch, we descended steeply to the saddle directly below Wind and started up.
This is not a difficult climb from the saddle, but the route can be tricky and involves scrambling up a steep rock slide and maneuvering around a rock wall while doing a "veggie belay" with the small trees.
The top of the mountain is very narrow and it feels good to sit down on it rather than stand.
The views in all directions are outstanding, even to the Great Plains and its Island Ranges to the East.
Given the many alpine flowers I've experienced recently on hikes and climbs I was disappointed by the lack of floral display, although we did come on a couple patches of glacier lilies.