Team Mammut: Whiskey Gulch

Showing posts with label Whiskey Gulch. Show all posts

Monday, March 10, 2014

Decapitated while Stuck in the Snow

After seeing Jon Scott hauling *ss through deep, heavy snow, plowing the road into the parking lot for Whiskey Gulch with his Subaru (not a truck), I felt like I had to follow his tracks. Literally.

Now I realize that's not always a good idea. This ended up leading to a 1.5-hour, 6-person evacuation job. While I was going into hardcore survival mode, I was a little confused to see the rest of the party laughing and having a good time. I guess I just have to spend a little more time in Montana and its driving conditions and get toughened up a little bit.

It was a good start to the day. Everyone climbed a lot, despite snow being everywhere, and I was able to do the first ascent of a classic, open project on the Caught in the Act Boulder. I called it "Decapitated," V11, named after the Polish metal band that we all love.

/David Sjöquist

Another day in Whiskey

It’s apparently been a long time since I did something worth posting about. I don’t know if the content in this post is much more interesting, but. Oh well.

Anyway, a lot of non-climbing stuff has happened in the last months: I was back in Sweden for the holidays and work, came back and dealt with the flu, have been doing lots of jiu-jitsu, AND I got a job, which I’m obviously super grateful for. So now I make wood floors 40+ hours a week, and this leaves me with way less time for other stuff. I guess that is how it is to have a job, especially job of this nature, physical labor that is. In other words, I turned into a weekend warrior overnight. I just need to get toughened up a little bit before I really can take advantage of the weekends.

We had another day in Whiskey Gulch a couple of weeks ago, a low-key place in the middle of nowhere, which offers some real test pieces and a bunch of “classics.”

Jeff Ho on a super cool problem which I think still is a project. A little piece of Bishop right there. Next day off, this is where I will be.

Another fun project on the same boulder which required some “gentle” power-spotting…

Have a good one/ David

Monday, March 12, 2012

Whiskey Gulch, Montana Bouldering

We got lucky today and enjoyed a guided tour of Whiskey Gulch. I'm originally from Bozeman, and been to Whiskey a handful of times back in 1999... and before I really even had properly started climbing. What a difference in the place: it now has a decently maintained road leading to it (flanked on either side by spur roads and dozens of homes) and clearly worn paths connecting the boulders - which now have chalk on them, and occasional shoe polish (if you look really hard).

In any case, I didn't remember anything about the place, climbing-wise. This day served as a great introduction to the layout of this maze-like area, filled with trees, knobs, and similar-looking boulders and rock fins.

We climbed for several hours, only stopping when we'd run out of skin. David's skin even managed to NOT bleed the entire time.

In case you were wondering, we returned to a house after climbing. Cooked dinner in a kitchen, and took a shower.

We're hoping to head back to Whiskey as soon as the weather is good. David cleaned a semi-highball near The Wave Boulder that he wants to climb when we return. I have a short list of problems I'd like to try (with fresh skin), and we both would like to spend some hours wandering the area, looking for new problems.