More climbing: The Tetons

Okay, let me just get this out of the way: We borrowed a canoe, we were all psyched to use it, but then I called the rangers and they said Jackson Lake was still frozen. So we didn't bring the canoe. Instead, we went through the annoying minutiae that comes with every backpacking trip, deciding what to take and what too big and what's too heavy and what's absolutely essential and what we should leave home (poor Snoopy!), because we'd being hiking and bushwhacking to the base of Mount Moran.

But when we got there, it turned out the lake wasn't frozen at all. But now we didn't have the canoe. Plus, we learned there was still a lot of snow of the trail, and we'd be postholing the whole way to the foot of the Skillet Glacier. No fun! Then Craig looked at the mountain and decided he didn't like the way the snow looked, so we decided to do something else instead.

And maybe it was just bad vibes. We went a little ways up Cascade Canyon to check out Baxter's Pinnacle, which we set aside for the following day, and to do a little free-form rock climbing on some random cliffs on the canyon's north side. We saw a helicopter overhead - Craig thought it was some kind of scenic flight, but I told him, no, that sort of thing didn't go on in the Tetons. If you see a helicopter in the Tetons, it's always bad, and you can always read about it in the paper the next day. Later, when I was climbing, Craig saw the chopper fly by again, this time dangling something that looked like a body bags.



But we didn't worry about that. We did our fun little thing on the cliff, only mildly annoying each other when we were choosing a descent method (Craig thought it looked like rain and was in a hurry all of a sudden).



Instead of backpacking into the base of the Skillet Glacier on Mount Moran, we car camped at Spalding Bay on Jackson Lake. Well, almost. Snow blocked the final 500 or so feet, so we had to carry the stuff the rest of the way. What a beautiful night! Full moon, moon shadows, strange critters howling in the distance, colder than heck, the whole enchilada.



The next day: Baxter's Pinnacle. This was a five-pitch climb that I understood to be rated 5.6 - easy, same as Skyline Buttress in the Gallatin Canyon (below). Well, the first pitch, which Craig led, was super easy. The second pitch, which I led, was not so easy - seemingly at least 5.7. Craig, who got stuck carrying the pack with our shoes and water, had a short fall right before the belay point. But no biggie - it was a beautiful day, and we were ready for more.

Craig led the next pitch, which was a beautiful 5.6 chimney problem; after that it was easy-breezy to the massive and sttep summit pinnacle. Oh, and it rained. Pretty hard, too, but we decided to wait it out. Sure enough, the sun came out bright as ever, revealing not only a rainbow below us, but a bald eagle soaring right above the final pinnacle.

About that pinnacle: We didn't know how to get up it. The climb was supposed to be a 5.6, right? Well, there was nothing on that block of rock that looked remotely 5.6-ish. We discovered a little traverse that led to the west and north sides of the rock, so we decided to check it out... but we couldn't get up those sides, either. Oh, we tried, with Craig doing a noble job on the northwest corner. But no cigar. It was raining again, so we decided to rappel down to the base.



Later we learned that the summit block actually starts out as a 5.9, before turning back into a 5.6. The route Craig tried was a 5.8. Oh, well. Do we really need to carry the big, fat "Climber's Guide to the Teton Range" with us everywhere we go? Maybe so. I had copied down some notes from it, but I failed to discern's the climb's subtleties. We considered ourselves triumphant anyway. What the hell.



Oh, about the chopper? When we got to Jackson, we read the front-page headline: Two climbers killed on Grand Teton. We were witnessing the body recovery. They were local guys from Kelly. It happens a couple times every summer in the Tetons. I guess this year's just gotten off to an early start.

Climbing: Skyline Buttress

I figured I ought to write about a recent outing just to show you that not all my adventures end up in disaster. Last week Craig and I made an attempt to climb Skyline Buttress, a rock climb in Gallatin Canyon south of Bozeman.

The climb is rated 5.6 - not very hard, but we're still novices and this was our first major multi-pitch climb. Just getting to the base of the climb was a bit of an adventure, especially since Craig called the ol' "You go that way, I'll go this way" move, splitting us up... and then decided he'd go my way, but I was looking for him above me...

Ah, well. We made it to the base of the climb eventually.

And I don't really have much in the way of trauma and drama to report (if you want that, see below). The day was beautiful, the climbing was easy, and neither of us fell. We placed protection the way it's supposed to be placed, we learned a few things about setting directionals (using slings so the rope stays straight) and tying into anchors from others on the rock, and we watched people doing way crazier things than what we were doing. The climb was great fun, especially the chimney section and the tunnel section, which required us to pop out of a small hole in the top of the rock. We decided a better name for the climb would be "Santa's Revenge."

I suppose the end got a little spooky, when it started to sprinkle a little and I climbed a pinnacle that I decided really wasn't part of the climb. I ended up downclimbing it, with its wobbly rock, in the rain.

But other than that all was well. We made it back to our packs for sandwiches and pudding, and watched the climbers on Sparerib. Possible future climb? We'll see.

Railbike adventure, ho!

The railbike odyssey continues. I finally decided the test tracks at Wallace and L Streets in Bozeman were destroying my bike. Sure, the first couple of times it was important for me to take care of some necessary tweaking, but after repairing the thing time and time again I finally realized that I was dealing with the worst set of railroad tracks in the state of Montana.

So, onto bigger and better things. Was my bike ready? Who knows. It wasn't ready to take another beating at the test tracks, that's for sure. I had originally considered riding the abandoned line from Wilsall to Livingston, but after a bit of research I realized I'd have permission issues with some of the landowners along the rail line. I needed a place without such constrictions, preferably on National Forest or BLM land. I needed... Homestake Pass.

Here's where Montanans take a deep breath, look at me dubiously, and mutter, "Wow." Homestake Pass is the route I-90 takes over the Continental Divide to Butte, Montana. It's known for steepness and treachery.

The rails running alonside it, however, aren't steep at all. After all, it's rare that any railroad has more than a three percent grade, Homestake included. It takes a big, swooping northward turn before coming back toward the interstate, making the pass in double the distance. Plus, the rails were gorgeous compared to the test tracks: straight, gleaming, clean, and totally gap-free. If it weren't for the large sage and juniper bushes growing up between the rails, it might even be fun.

Yes. Now, the Bentley railbike was not designed for wimps. Two- or three-foot plants, I could ram through them, no problem. Those weren't the problem. It's the four- and five-foot trees that were the problem.

Of course, if you see a big tree growing up between the rails, the common sense thing to do is dismount, lift the bike off the tracks, carry it past the tree, and realign the bike back on the rails. It gets old after a while, but it's the only sensible thing to do.

Other than getting rather repetitive, that wasn't the problem. The problem was the in-between-sized trees, the three-and-a-half-foot junipers in-between the tracks, or the taller ones growing right alongside the rails. For these suckers, I had a choice: dismount and carry, or go to full-throttle ramming speed for the railbike-juniper battle royal.

Knowing me, which do you think I chose most often?

Suffice it to say (as usual), the railbike didn't fare too well. Oh, it won the occasional battle, with me emerging triumphant on the far side of the tree, bushy branches flying from my spokes. But more often than not it sent me crashing to the tracks, right on the delicate front-end guide.

A note to those of you who just can't help taking notes so you can try this at home (not recommended): My two most recent modifications to the front-end guide were smashing successes (literally). 1) Lowering the skateboard wheels with washers was something that should have been done originally, and really helped keep the guide on the tracks. 2) Replacing the guide-springs with a less-tense pair not only made it easier to align the device on the tracks, I think it helped keep the sideboards from splitting from the multiple times the bike sloughed off the tracks.

In fact, the sideboards - both of which had previously split and I had reinforced - were fine. It was the main horizontal board of the front-end guide that split. Yep, cracked right in half... but there were enough bolts in the thing for me to keep on truckin'.

And truckin' I did go. At certain points the bike rode quite nicely, just like in the pictures on the Bentley website: merrily clacking along, swaying gently as the tracks sped beneath my wheels. Then, Clunk!, as I thud inelegantly the seven inches to the rail. Thank God for that foam testicle-protector I put around the top tube. Usually it was plants knocking me off the rails, but I noticed that when the track banked left - which seemed to be most of the time - my rear wheel had a really hard time staying on the rail, even if there wasn't a weed to be found. Conversely, when the tracks were straight and level I had no problem staying afloat.


Which was exactly the case for my first trestle. Honestly, it scared the shit out of me. Sure, it was plenty wide, and if the bike came off the tracks there was little chance of plunging over the railing-less side. But just the idea of riding a hundred or more feet over a gully, staring right through the tracks at it, with no one around for miles, was a bit nerve-wracking. Suffice it to say I went slow. Really slow. Like, barely moving slow. But, as you can see from the picture, it was dead-straight and the most weed-free section of the entire trip. I made it across without incident.


The second trestle was just as long and high, but it had the added bonus of a left-leaning (!) curve at the end. I made it through the straight part with slightly more confidence than trestle number one, but, yet again, the left-leaning rail sloughed off my back wheel at the end. Fortunately I didn't plunge through the tracks to my demise.

I went a little ways farther past the second trestle before running into a whole slew of trees growing between and next to the rails. It was growing late and looking like rain. I looked at my GPS unit to figure out how far I'd gone: 2.87 miles. Yikes! I hadn't even made it beyond the big hairpin back toward the top of the pass. And I had hoped to make it to Butte.



Oh, well. I considered going further - for about a second. I was tired of lifting the bike past trees. Plus, there was the cracked board in the front. I'd be done for if I kept going.

So I turned around and headed back down. Which was great! Even though the grade was gentle, downhill was way more fun than uphill... and, now that the track was mostly right-leaning, I seemed to have no problem staying on the rails. I clacked merrily for about a mile, removing only for the really big trees, ramming through the little ones, and cruising over both trestles. Then... I don't know what happened. I must have hit a gap in the rail or something; all I know is I came to an immediate stop, my left shin ramming the outrigger pole, my front wheel bouncing off the track.

And that was pretty much that. I had split one of the wooden arms holding the front-end guide in place (I had broken this board once before, by the way). Sadly, I removed the front-end guide and outrigger from the bike. There would be no more railbiking this day.

It was raining hard now, and I wasn't dressed for it. I duct taped the contraptions to each other and tried carrying them as I pedaled down a faint trail next to the rails. But the weight-distribution was all off, and that didn't last for long. Instead, I walked the bike and the contraption the mile and a half back to my car.

So now I have a dilemma: Do I rebuild this dagblamed thing for the nth time, or do I just let it sit in the garage, rusting away? After all, there's plenty more rails that need to be explored. And I still have some more wood, and some more metal bars to reinforce things with. And, I'm still the only one in my neighborhood who has one.

Or, maybe I'll just set aside a day to ram my bike into trees and parked cars. It'll have about the same result.