Team Mammut: Gallatin Canyon

Showing posts with label Gallatin Canyon. Show all posts

Monday, February 9, 2015

Bouldering and Climbing in Southwest Montana

Beautiful clouds... hoping they don't produce too much rain

2014 went out in style and we had a really busy year. The following are a collection of images from the areas we spent the most time at last year:

Southwest Montana Climbers Coalition: Spring Trash Clean-up

As part of the Adopt a Highway Program, the Southwest Montana Climbers Coalition is responsible for maintaining a two-mile stretch of highway in the northern reaches of Gallatin Canyon—quite an appropriate location, as Gallatin Canyon holds much of the area’s sport and trad routes.

On Saturday, May 4 of this year, a bunch of climbers—including Bozeman Climbing Team members and their families, as well as the Junior Mountaineering Team—gathered to collect trash along between mile markers 67 and 69 of US 191.

It turned out to be a perfect day for picking up pee bottles: it was drizzly enough to make climbing impossible, but not so wet as to be miserable. After about four hours of clean-up, the crew managed to rid the road’s shoulders of nearly all trash.

Spring Climbing in Montana

Though I grew up in Bozeman, I left to attend college in New Hampshire in 2000. And because I started climbing in 1999, I had just less than one year as a (total beginner) climber in Montana before leaving.

In the years since I moved away, I’ve been back to visit Bozeman numerous times. However, in the last few years—during which David and I have primarily been “on the road” for climbing—we never climbed in Bozeman. We always figured that, when in town to visit the family, we might as well take a break from climbing, and do other stuff that is best done with access to a shower—like hiking, biking and the like.

David on Silver Surfer Suit

Bozeman Area Climbing: The Hanta Virus Cave and Natural Bridge

I haven’t properly lived in Montana since 2000. A huge portion of the climbing here has been established in the time after I moved away. So on our drive north from Vegas, we started sending text messages to climber friends here – to see if we could tag along and get some guided tours of the area’s local climbing.

Our first day back in town, we followed friend, Kevin Volkening , to the Hanta Virus Cave in Gallatin Canyon. We enjoyed a fabulous and long warm-up route, and then a suberb ass-kicking on some steep-ass “jug” hauls.

Our first sport(/roped) climbing day since November: check.

The next day, Kevin took us to Natural Bridge (south of Big Timber), where we happened to run into Kyle Vassilopoulos and friend Jonathan Scott, the area’s main developers. For me it was too cold to climb (shade + wind), so I didn’t even mess around with it. ( David and Kevin have manlier circulation than I, so they climbed a lot.) But we got a thorough area spray-down and look forward to going back.

It turns out that Montana is the perfect place to be in March... at least this year. T his freakishly warm winter is providing us with amazing sport climbing and bouldering conditions. AND WE’RE NOT CAMPING ANYMORE.

COMING HERE WAS A GOOD DECISION.