We left Bozeman just after sunset on Tuesday night and slept on a tarp at the trailhead. My phone alarm woke us up at 2:30, and I enjoyed a hero’s breakfast of crackers, Craisins, and a double-sized Red Bull in the chilly morning darkness. Half an hour later, we were traveling down the trail under a canopy of blazing [Read More]
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Took us twice the time we thought it would, but the view was nice… There’s been a lot of action in Montana this week. Last time I checked in, I was about to embark on a three-day trip with Jason, a local climber who answered my online personal ad. Jason has been climbing ice around the country for more than a decade and moved to Montana five years ago for the same reasons that I have come now. On his suggestion, we loaded up my truck and drove three hours southeast to the Beartooths – a range Jason reveres as “very white, very tall, and very infinite.” The range occupies the area just northeast of Yellowstone and, as part of the greater Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, boasts some 900,000 acres in northern Wyoming and southern Montana. The plan was as follows: get up early on Monday morning and drive into the mountains; knock out one route that afternoon; drive to another part of the wilderness that night; catch a few hours of sleep in the truck; get up around 3:00 am on Tuesday for the 5-mile approach to that day’s route; finish the climb and get back to the car by nightfall; on Wednesday, assess [Read More] Fifteen minutes down the road, all was well. Robert Earl Keen and lemon-lime Gatorade had me in a fine frame of mind, and I was cruising down the road toward certain triumph. Yet again, however, the snow was to get the better of [Read More] |
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