I'd always meant to visit Montana -- my mother apparently spent some time up there, and in my mind the place always held a special mystery. I've also been salivating at pictures of Hyalite ice in Winter Dance since 2005.

Thursday, March 8th I flew into Bozeman and met Steve, who was wrapping up a work-related visit. The area had received quite a bit of new snow earlier in the week, and temps seemed to be warming.

We decided to get an early start the next day, and went to check out the Unnamed Wall. Most of this area gets a lot of sun, but Elevator Shaft is north-facing and shady. Most of the other ice we saw there was getting a beating from the sun.




The route was in good shape, though immensely stepped-out. I took the first lead and found the fairly short steep part like climbing a ladder. The lower-angled upper ramp was mostly snow-covered with a couple of steep steps. I headed up to the bolts and brought up Steve. We rapped off and Steve had a go too. It was a nice warmup, and we snacked in the sun. It had to be 50F. We looked across the canyon, and theorized what we were looking at.


What to do next ? I'd seen the Genesis area while driving in, so we hiked back to the parking lot and headed up the approach to Genesis I. It was in fat shape and still in the shade. Steve decided to take on a WI4+/5 line to the right which did not seem to have had much traffic.



Short, but sweet ! I decided to lead a more stepped-out WI3/4 line in the middle, which had some fun-looking moves.


Steve took this video of me topping out on his iPhone.

[Click to View YouTube Video]

Yes, this is what an incomplete tetraplegic looks like ice climbing. Now you know :)

By now it was late afternoon, the ice was looking drippy and we decided to go find a burrito joint in Bozeman before my ropes got too drenched.

Saturday we decided to go have a look at the upper Mummy area. We hiked up the main trail past Fat Chance / Thin Chance and made our way to Mummy II. I was amazed at how much the rock on this part of the canyon looked like the volcanic breccia at Pinnacles National Monument.


I again took the first lead. The upper part had taken a beating from the sun, so I hooked carefully and made my way to the bolts. I rapped off, pulled the ropes and Steve led it too.

Just across the way, The Scepter was in fat, late-season conditions.



It was now towards lunchtime, and the day was just as warm as yesterday. The route was still in the shade, but meltw#ter was dripping down some parts. I could tell Steve wanted to lead this one (not just because I chickened out either :)


Classic route, though I got rained on while following :) Another of Steve's iPhone videos -

[Click to View YouTube Video]

We took a couple more laps on this thing before deciding it was getting way too warm and wet. The views from here were tremendous -- we could look down at the Unnamed Wall, over at the Twin Falls area .. it really gave the feeling of being up high.

Around 2:30pm while Steve was setting up his final rappel there was a rumble that I could feel, not just hear. I turned around and looked across the canyon at where I'd seen Cleopatra's Needle (WI5) just a moment before, and instead saw a huge cloud of debris -- avalanche ! We were not at a good angle to see the crown, if there was one .. Steve theorized it was a large wet-slide that started in the rocks above. Pretty scary sight.

I kept hearing booming sounds, worried that more slides were going off. Turns out it was just locals shooting guns down by the reservoir :)

Steve had a serious desire to go check out Cleopatra's Needle on Sunday, so we set out early for the Twin Falls area. We got almost to Grotto Falls and then cut right, through the woods up what looked like where someone had broken a trail.. which ended. We backtracked, followed some more "trails", postholed, did various tree / moss / choss scrambling maneuvres but eventually concluded that unless we were really misreading the approach instructions nobody had been up there since the last big snowfall.

After two hours we decided we were too late to get on Cleo's, which was probably baking in the sun by now. So we went back to the Genesis area, and hiked up to Genesis II.


I took the first lead again. It was fun, and again bore signs of being fairly popular.


We rapped off and made our way a couple hundred feet further up, looking for an elusive formation Steve had seen on the approach. Unfortunately the bottom was melted out, exposing rotten rock that would make Pinnacles choss look like Valley granite :)

Oh well, back to Genesis I. The crowd we'd seen while heading up was now dispersing, and Steve led up a stiff WI4-ish line that gave us both a good pump.


We took a few laps each on some neighboring WI5 lines, which was a LOT of fun.

Monday was our last climbing day, and we were both due out on the early Tuesday flight to DIA. It was supposed to snow a bit Sunday night, and we were not keen on breaking trail to the more remote areas after Sunday morning's debacle. So we went back to the Unnamed Wall to look at mixed routes.


The rock on the Unnamed Wall is basalt, unlike the breccia higher up on the other side of the canyon. The Thrill Is Gone looked tempting, but the ice had baked over the last few days, and we did not bring rock gear.


We passed what remained of The Itchy & Scratchy Show (WI3R) and came to Mousetrap (M4+), a new drytool route : thirteen bolts in 33m. I took the first lead again, and flailed desperately -- I hung like five times. Unlike climbing with sticky rubber rock shoes, the tiny bits of steel/rock contact you have with crampons have to be held perfectly still at times. This a real challenge when your body does involuntary things occasionally. The lead took me ~90 minutes .. kicked my butt !

Steve's lead was much smoother.


The wind was picking up, and the weather looked to be deteriorating - the forecast had called for 20-30% chance of precip, and here it was :) We headed to the cave behind Bingo World to have lunch in relative shelter. Lines of bolts stretched up the back of the cave and along the roof where they sprouted prehung quickdraws, and out to fragile pillars of ice.



This looked to be the stuff of fruit boots, radical mixed tools and sponsored mutants :) I was feeling pretty beat and the wind made it an easy choice to go get an early start on drying out our gear.

Ah, Montana. I'll be back someday.