Wilderness

The rain in Montana this spring has been making climbing nearly impossible. The past few days Nathan Cooper and I went on a voyage to explore some unique Montana wilderness (actually a wilderness study area) located in....... Eastern Montana?. We explored the Terry Badlands located north of the Yellowstone River in Terry, Montana (a sleepy Cowboy town). We got rained on the whole time (we had to walk an additional 4 miles, one way, because the roads were to muddy), never the less, we enjoyed solitude and experienced genuine wilderness. The pictures are from the trip, we left everything as we found it, and I plan on going back.

Cheers, Loren

















Bitterroot, Montana's state flower


The Badlands in spring


Chimney rock, and yes I tried to climb it but...

Redlodge Mountain Ski Tour

The Final...count down

Sky Line Buttress

I haven't been up to much lately, very little climbing, skiing, or even schenanigans. What I have been doing is studing for finals in college, and I just finished my last one. I already had the bag packed, sitting by the door, before I even finished studying for my last test. The last test was devoted exclusivly so Steven Jay Goulds's book, The Structure of Evolutionary theory and macroevolution in the fossil record (see picture, and no it's not a misprint, it says 1002 pages). As I walked out into the light from the 3 hour long test, I squinted from the glare, not accoustemed to the sun. Then I smiled and ran home. I grabbed the prepacked bag and drove like mad to the Gallatin canyon. The hike in next to the river was nice, and helped to bring my jelly mind back to reality. I hiked up the mountain side for a bit, then stopped at a nondiscrete ledge. I was under the skyline buttress. Now this climb is nothing to write home about (or blog about), but damn it's fun! It goes at 5.6 and is roughly 5 pitches long, climbing an arete the entire way to an actual (little) summit. I won't bore you with the details (except for the snow has not quite melted off certain sections of the climb) so I'll just put some pictures of the solo here. It was awesome to get out climbing a super fun route (after a school induced hiatus), if you're ever in the Bozeman area and want a long moderate, this is the one!

Cheers, Loren


Gotta love Bozeman graffiti