Went up a big rock yesterday with Conor. The day ended up being much colder than we anticipated due to a constant 40mph (or so) wind.
I discovered that a camera of mine I thought was broken works as long as I don’t use the zoom.
Warning: the following captions contain some climbing jargon that can be hard to decipher if you aren’t familiar with climbing-specific vocabulary.
Yesterday I met Steve at 5:30am and we drove down to Blodgett Canyon to climb the southwest face of Nez Perce Spire. Rock Climbing Montana says it is 8 pitches, 5.10. It is definitely the tallest climb I have ever done.
The pitch length and difficulty of our route varied quite a lot from the guidebook’s. However, it was freeing not knowing exactly how hard what you were climbing was or how long you should go before setting up the next belay. Big ups to Steve for leading all the hard stuff.
I had a bit of a scare on the first pitch, taking a 20 foot lead fall/slide on a slabby section (apparently there was some slack in the rope, none of my pieces popped), and was both grateful and proud of myself to be caught by a #3 stopper I had put in a fairly shallow crack. (A piece of metal a little smaller than a jellybean with some metal wire attached to it.)
The sun was out and we didn’t have any other major incidents, and were back to the car around 7:30pm.
On Tuesday my friend Steve and I did a 5-pitch climb up the Original Route on the Drip Buttress in Blodgett Canyon. It is 3 pitches of 5.9 followed by two of 5.8. We had some awesome weather for October in Montana, sunny all day and the windiest part was at the base of the climb.
It was definitely a long day, taking us about 3 hours to walk off the route once we had finished climbing and get back to the car. I am really sore now but it was well worth it.
Over the weekend I was able to go climbing with Dylan and Jason, a couple of Missoulians. We went to Blodgett Canyon, a 40 mile drive south on Highway 93. The route we did was the South Face of Shoshone Spire, listed in the Falcon Rock Climbing Montana guidebook as a 7-pitch 5.8+, described as
Probably the first multi-pitch route climbed in the canyon and still a mandatory classic.
The climb is all traditional style, with no bolts anywhere. It was definitely the tallest climb I had ever done. A bit scary in places but still a lot of fun.
