Ever since we moved up to Montana our climbing seems to have taken a back seat for multiple reasons. We got spoiled living in Denver where we had so much variety and so much quality rock close by to climb. I had been reading about Rattler Gulch in the Montana Climbing guidebook and figure it was worth a shot. It is about an hour north of us and the book described the area as limestone fins. I love climbing on limestone so we decided to dust off the climbing gear, load up the dogs and head out for an adventure.
We found the cliffs easily enough and then it took a while to find the climbs. There are only about 40 climbs listed with no crag hosting more than 6 climbs - so the search was on for bolts...we finally found the wall that had some moderates and headed up. It was a super sketch approach through a really steep talus field that did not have much of a trail - the trail that did exist was super eroded and you had to watch your step. We finally made it up to the crag and then tried to settle in.
The problem was that the slope of the talus field continued through the crag so there was no place to sit down and take a load off....the dogs could not get settled or even lie down because it was really steep. Erin belayed me as I headed up the first climb. It took a while to get into the flow - partially because of the particular climb we chose and partially because it had been a while since being roped up. The climb itself was very uninspiring with some very hollow sounding rock that did not sounded super healthy.
After getting back down, I belayed the wifer and fought off the attack of the annoying flies (and there were many)...the belay/swat dance continued as the wifer made it up and by the time she got back down we had resolved that the climbing was poor, it was hot, the dogs were not having fun, we were not having fun swatting at all the bugs so we decided to wrap it up. Before we threw in the towel, we did check out the other crags to see if the quality of the rock was any better. There was one wall that looks like it will be worth a return but the rest of the walls don't warrant a return trip.
It was still good to get out though and see some new terrain....plus, we needed to take a day off from riding as we were going to explore new CDT trail the next day (Sunday).
Pix of Rattler Gulch area:
If you look carefully, you can see the car in the lower left and just how steep the approach was heading up.
We found the cliffs easily enough and then it took a while to find the climbs. There are only about 40 climbs listed with no crag hosting more than 6 climbs - so the search was on for bolts...we finally found the wall that had some moderates and headed up. It was a super sketch approach through a really steep talus field that did not have much of a trail - the trail that did exist was super eroded and you had to watch your step. We finally made it up to the crag and then tried to settle in.
The problem was that the slope of the talus field continued through the crag so there was no place to sit down and take a load off....the dogs could not get settled or even lie down because it was really steep. Erin belayed me as I headed up the first climb. It took a while to get into the flow - partially because of the particular climb we chose and partially because it had been a while since being roped up. The climb itself was very uninspiring with some very hollow sounding rock that did not sounded super healthy.
After getting back down, I belayed the wifer and fought off the attack of the annoying flies (and there were many)...the belay/swat dance continued as the wifer made it up and by the time she got back down we had resolved that the climbing was poor, it was hot, the dogs were not having fun, we were not having fun swatting at all the bugs so we decided to wrap it up. Before we threw in the towel, we did check out the other crags to see if the quality of the rock was any better. There was one wall that looks like it will be worth a return but the rest of the walls don't warrant a return trip.
It was still good to get out though and see some new terrain....plus, we needed to take a day off from riding as we were going to explore new CDT trail the next day (Sunday).
Pix of Rattler Gulch area:
Have you checked out Hellgate yet? Very nice.
ReplyDeleteIndian Creek by Townsend has some limestone, but can't vouch for the quality (I vaguely recall that the approaches are not epic, the stone is good and the routes not super long).
Need to check out Hellgate fo' shua....starting to feel like the winter clock is ticking quickly and we are running out of nice weather - probably paranoia but time to get a tick list of things to do before weather rolls in! How is the camping up there?
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