Karla and I made a trip to Bozeman Montana, to climb in the famous Hyalite Canyon, which is a half hour drive from Bozeman’s downtown. Hyalite is known as the ice-playground of big names such as Alex Lowe, Conrad Anker, and Jack Tackle. (Wouldn’t you like to have a name like Jack Tackle?)
As we made the trip from Calgary to Bozeman, we talked about our high expectations. We’d met Conrad Anker at the Banff Film Festival a few months previously. We had watched his film in the Festival that recounted his ascent, wih Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk climbing the Shark’s Fin. That route had been the direct and final unclimbed route up Meru Central, 6,310 metres, in the Indian Himilayas. The next morning he was in the Mac Lab bistro of the Banff Centre, drinking tea and texting.
Karla and I hesitated a moment before walking over to him, but we did. We introduced ourselves, and said how much we’d enjoyed the film. I told him that he was an inspiration, since he and I were almost to the month the same age. He asked if he could join us for coffee. He had time as he waited for Canmore film-maker, Tracy Jacobs, to join him for a working meeting.
We had a great chat. He’s down to earth and charming. When I asked him if he lived close to Joe Josephson, the author of the Rockies Ice Climbing guide book, he smiled. Of course. I told him to tell Joe to hurry and get the next edition of the book out. Conrad said, “you should tell him yourself.” Then he took out his smart phone, pushed it in my face, and asked me to tell Joe to hurry up. Which I did. I ended up getting an email back from Joe saying “thanks for the kick in the ass.” Although it looks like it didn’t make any difference.
It just seems weird to contact a world-famous climber to ask for ice climbing beta, but we did anyway. As we drove Karla emailed him and asked him for the routes that we should not miss. He politely answered and wished us a great holiday. Palisade Falls, Cleoopatra’s Needle and The Thrill is Gone were top of the list. So now we had some must-dos.
Visiting Bozeman is like stepping back in time. The vehicles are older, and little old houses are kind of mixed in with coffee shops and churches in a way that suggests more flexible zoning, and lower salaries. And the people are just so downhome friendly it always seems like a somebody phoned ahead and told everybody that some important people were coming to visit.
The first morning we awoke to pouring rain. After a late start we got onto the approach to the Genisis area, getting directions from friendly climbers along the way, in the excellent top-roping area. This area is called Genesis I, and it has climbs that ranged from WI 3 to Chandaliered WI5. The top rope area used to be a single flow, until Conrad Anker began irrigating it from above, by using a downed tree to redirect some flow.
It was +6 degrees at the car, and as we walked up the steep approach toward Genisis 2 in the sun, we shed layers. Interestingly, just as we got to our climb, the wind seemed to be picking up, and I noticed my hands were freezing. Within minutes spindrift began pouring down in buckets over the climb, and we put on layer after layer of clothing. Everybody on the hill packed up and hightailed it, and we did too, as a storm blew in. By the time we got back to the car we had to clean six inches of snow off of it, and the thermometer read -12. Oh well, we had a fantastic meal in the Blackbird Café that night. It’s a fine dining restaurant, at low prices compared to back home.
The restaurants of Bozeman, including the Blackbird, are a real feature of the town. The Montana Ale Works is a micro-brewery famous for its beer, food and informal, fun atmosphere. Santa Fe Reds has excellent Mexican food, and traditional squeezed lime margaritas. Karla allowed that these were as good as hers. Because I’m writing this I can say that she is a margarita snob—it has to be squeezed lime, it can’t be that fake sugary crap that they extrude from whirling machines in places like Earls.
The next day we hit the Mummy Cooler area. On the way in we met the local guide, Sam Magro. Sam is described by locals as a bad-ass. He is featured in some pictures in the local guide book, and he has repeated Alex Lowe’s famous climb, Winter Dance, that sits, high and intimidating above the bulk of the Canyon. It’s a mere WI7, with a few M8+ pitches of mixed climbing to get to it, on lousy Hyalite Choss. But Sam didn’t tell us this–he is friendly, helpful and modest.
We climbed this day in typical Hyalite fashion: which is to say, take the short approaches, anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, then do multiple routes back to back. This is the common type of outing, since Hyalite Canyon was conveniently designed so that climbs tend to be bunched together. Karla and I had seen great pictures of Alex Lowe on Scepter, a 35 metre WI5, so we had to do that single pitch climb. It was our first climb that day, and we arrived at it’s base at the same time as some friendly climbers. From our conversation they knew how dear Scepter was to our hearts, so they let us at it. Karla lead it, pulled the rope, then I lead it as well. It was likely around minus 20C at that time of the day, and the ice was brittle and the climbing challenging. But it was a great start to the business of climbing. We’d come a long way to do a couple of these climbs and we had one of our most important ticks. We were also beginning to get a feel for Hyalite, and the local tradition of heading to an area, and climbing thoroughly. It’s not like Canmore where you generally head to one climb in a day, and so tend to stress over hitting that climb in perfect conditions, and getting it just right.
Following Scepter, we moved 30 metres right, and climbed Mummy Cooler 2, WI3-4. Mike and Nate, the two friendly climbers, had climbed it by now, and we simply switched. By this time Sam Magro was returning with his client from two climbs situated a few hundred metres further right. He said the climbing was good, and he’d made a trail to The Matrix WI4, and Feeding The Cat, WI4-. After Mummy II we hiked over and climbed Sam’s two recommendations. We got back to the car under headlamp.
We developed a tradition of starting the day with a trip to the International Coffee House. We appreciate good coffee, and these people are good at what they do. They also make stellar muffuns. You’ll see a picture here of the interior the ICH, with a basketed bicycle up high on the wall. Any place with a bicycle on the wall is okay by me. So the 2nd day in town, well coffeed, we headed for the Unnamed Wall area of Hyalite, and some mixed climbing.
We ran into Sam again, who was belaying his client on The Thrill is Gone, another famous Jack Tackle climb, (Whatta name, “Jack Tackle!” Did I say that before?) M4 Trad, WI3. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a spectacular and historic route on an inside corner that’s been climbed by people such as Mark Twight. Unfortunately, the upper ice portion was nearly detached after having been hit for a couple of hours by the strong spring sun on this day. Sam had lead it with very little gear—for his upper pieces he’d reached around the ice, and plugged them into a crack, likely by feel and a deep knowledge of the geography of the climb. We declined, and headed to MouseTrap, which he suggested.
Mousetrap is a 5.9 summer climb, Maybe M6 or so mixed climb. The moderate grade caught us a little off guard. We found it slow-going and challenging, with snow on the ledges making holds invisible, and the Hyalite rock never really providing the kind of slots we are used to from the Canadian Rockies. It took us both a long time to work up the long climb that is protected with 13 bolts. Great fun, and a good way to get to know Hyalite rock, which the locals often refer to with variations of the term, “useless crap.” As usual, I was a gentleman (hee hee) offering the lead to Karla, who went up first and cleaned off some of the snow.
Then we went for a walk, climbing a bit on the top-rope that Justin, a local, was in the process of cleaning and bolting–an M9. He talked about how until recently nobody bolted mixed routes in Hyalite. It was considered to be wimpy, and against the local ethics. Finally, Conrad Anker put in a few bolts, and the spree was on. It’s interesting to see what cleaning a route means in Hyalite. In other places with good rock, it’s mainly cleaning dirt, moss and little trees. In Hyalite it means breaking off loose rocks from 2 to 2,000 pounds. The whole place is just held together by gravity. Local climbers, apparently, don’t bother to yell “rock,” when they dislodge something, since they’d have no voices by the end of the day. People simply don’t stand underneath climbing.
We decided to spend the next day finding good coffee, food, and getting to know Bozeman. We’ve included a couple of pictures of interesting local shops. It’s a small city, and to be honest, just about every little shop has employees who could put on a seminar in customer service—the people are simply very genuine.
The next day was the big day. Cleopatras Needle is a 120 Metre WI5 that is called by some, “The classiest in Hyalite.” We saved it for the perfect day, and we did it in the sun on a bluebird afternoon. We had planned to do it and Twin Falls on the same day, but we had to wait for another party to rap down Cleopatras first before starting.
We were lucky to have the other party ahead of us, since they had showed us the way to the climb, as they motored past us on the way in. With heavy recent snow the trail was confusing. They had actually gone up to do Airborne Ranger, WI6, just to the right of Cleos, but it wasn’t quite “in” enough. Cleopatra’s Needle was in typical condition for our trip: nice, plastic vertical surfaces, but all the off-vertical surfaces were heavily lensed, or “onion-skinned.” Ice had formed over several inches of snow, making tool and foot placements insecure, and screw placement useless if you didn’t dig deep for good ice.
The WI5 pillar was in easy condition, and likely the easiest part of the climb. Above the pillar I reached a significant vertical step of delaminated ice that would not take a screw, and I’d already run out at least ten metres of onion-skin leading up to it. I was wishing I’d moved to the left, and I stood for an indecisive moment, contemplating life, and looking down at my rope, with no screws, trailing far down and over the top lip of the pillar. Just then I remembered the local guy, Mike, whom we’d met two days before and who had said, “don’t go right above Cleo’s pillar, it’s WI6 in that direction.” At that point it was better to go up than down-climb and move left.
It turned out to be committing, but moderate mixed climbing over the lip, which made it really fun. It was certainly not WI6, but spicy enough to make it a more memorable day of climbing one of the classic routes in North America.
For our final day Conrad Anker had suggested that we should not miss Palisade Falls. Well, if Conrad says you have to do something, you do it. We hiked in, and we could see why it’s a classic. The setting is spectacular. I hope the pictures do it justice. The falls is nestled between two jutting pylons of broken up, columnar volcanic rock. The broken rock columns are leaning forward, so they seem to threaten the belayer at all times.
Karla lead, and she chose the right side, which is rated as WI4+. It had been snowing on and off, lately. And Palisade Falls has a lot of water flow. Consequently, there was a thin film of ice, over several inches of lousy, half frozen snow (snice) then the solid ice. On this day the onion skin (sometimes called lensing) was so thick that particularly the leader had to swing and kick over and over to get through to decent ice ( I was so glad I was a gentleman this day and asked Karla to lead). It was miserably hard work, and Karla, who normally climbs with a light touch, kicked so hard that her big toenails turned black that evening. It brought out some cusses. To add to the ambience, it snowed wet snow, and after an hour our soft-shells were soaked through and we both shivered. But it was impossible to be miserable for long. We were in the most impressive stoney crag we’d ever beheld. A compassionate sun came out as we walked back to the vehicle, and we snapped pictures of Rocky Mountain Dippers as they darted in a cute stream. They were soaking wet, and they weren’t whining. We could take a lesson.
Hyalite’s reputation bred high hopes, but our trip exceeded them. The climbs were awesome, and the town and the local climbing community were warm and welcoming. We will go back, and we recommend others to visit Hyalite too. Choppers USA 2014 anyone?
Greg McKee and Karla Hopp
In 1998 I was fortunate to represent the SK Section on the ACC’s very first North Face Winter Leadership Course. Conrad, representing TNF as one of their athletes, joined us for the week. You’re right, Greg. He’s an incredibly nice, down to earth and humble man. . . and hilariously funny! He had us in stitches the whole week!