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.
Poopy butt after "eating sh*t" on the way out from the Hanta Virus Cave
Snowy approach to t-shirt climbing
Natural Bridge, Montana
Kevin Volkening climbing on Shipwreck Rock at Natural Bridge
Same
Notice the river flowing out through the rock at Natural Bridge
Goin' home
