Experience

"To have a great adventure, and survive, requires good judgment. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience, of course, is the result of poor judgment."
-Geoff Tabin

See this frozen waterfall? Doesn't it look nice? That's Palisades Falls in the Hyalite Canyon area south of Bozeman. Craig and I started to climb it about two weeks ago, when this picture was taken, but it had been really warm and we didn't like the looks of the ice up high, so we called it good at halfway and went home.

On Saturday we went back out; it had been a lot colder, and the falls looked a lot fatter, so we figured we were good. Craig led the first pitch, then, since there wasn't a good belay spot on the ice, I lowered him and and started from the bottom. I placed an ice screw about ten feet above his highest one, and continued climbing... but the ice was getting worse. I placed an ice screw but sensed that the ice wasn't very solid there. I told Craig I'd place another one right away.

The thing is, the ice just kept getting worse. Plus, I was getting more and more tired, and it was very hard to balance myself precariously on the toes of my crampons, hanging on with one ice tool while trying to insert a stubborn screw with my one free hand. And there wasn't a good place to put it, so I just kept going up - it's much easier to go up than down.

My pick placements got sloppier. At one point I had them hooked onto little more than snow, but my arms were so tired I couldn't fathom whacking them into something more solid. And there wasn't much that was more solid - what there was was brittle, and would send dinner plates of ice cascading below. So I balanced precariously, just resting, debating my next move, philosophizing about mortality... and I moved my left pick a little bit. Just a teensy bit, but it was enough to shift my balance, and I knew I was going to fall.

"Fall.....!" That's all I managed to get out of my mouth. I was near the top of that picture.

I was ten feet over that last, insufficient screw. It came out. I remember thinking, as I flew head first through the air, that it would be nice to stop falling. At any time, really.

I must have fallen about 40 feet, but the next screw held and eventually the rope did what it was supposed to do. It stopped me before I reached the ground, and as Craig lowered me to the ice I wondered why my glasses were covered in blood. I had the wind knocked out of me, but I had remained conscious - or at least I thought I had. But I had a deep gash on my forehead, and blood was spurting out of my nose.

I sat there, trying to stop the bleeding, Craig helping me. I didn't feel all that hurt, but I was definitely shaken up. Craig started collecting the stuff; fortunately I had no trouble standing up and walking.

We drove to Urgent Care in Bozeman; along with needing five stitches on my forehead and one on my nose, I had also broken my nose - not displaced, just a crack. What's odd is that I don't remember hitting the ice. Later, Craig guessed that when I was flying through the air upside down, one of the razor-sharp ice screws slinged around my neck had reached up and sliced me.

So, really, I'm okay. It didn't hurt at all. I think right now my back hurts more than anything, from getting torqued by the rope when it finally stopped me.

It just makes me wonder how lucky I am. There's a nice welt on my helmet from something. That could have been my head. And though my glasses don't seem to have received a scratch, I have to wonder if they saved me from being blinded.

So I sit here and wonder what it all means. Why do I climb? More to the point - why do I climb ice? It's an unknown quantity. Unlike rock, it changes. It's more risky.

Former climber and Sierra Club president David Brower once wrote, "It is not variety that is the spice of life. Variety is the meat and potatoes. Risk is the spice of life." That's all well and good, but how much risk does one person need?

Of course, compared to other mountaineers, this is nothing. A little broken nose and some stitches? It's enough to remind me that I enjoy being here, that's for sure. Is it enough to keep me off the ice? I kind of doubt it. My mom asked me to take a little break, and I assured her that that would not be a problem. But in a month or so...

I don't know what draws us to such things. It makes little sense, but the allure is strong.

Plus, now that I've got some experience, I should have good judgment, too. Right?

Ice climbing season kicks off

And, boy, does it ever - it was FREEZING! It was the annual Bozeman Ice Climbing festival in Hyalite Canyon, and the climbing part wasn't so bad, but the waiting around to climb was very, very, very cold. So cold that my camera refused to function, so I have no pictures of my own. Which is especially sad because the ice was very beautiful, and I feel I have definitely improved over my performance at the same event last year. In fact, my (attempted) climb of The Sceptre was one of the most exciting of the day! At least I thought so, anyway. It was really very hard, with a bulging, overhanging section in the middle with giant icicles hanging off it. Most of the climbers used the rock on the side of the waterfall for support over this difficult section. I tried to do that, and was way more successful than I thought I would be - only I didn't really know where to go from there. For some reason, I edged left over the icicles, which left nothing for my left foot to connect to. So I was connected by two ice axes and my right foot, and I wasn't getting anywhere, so for some reason I moved farther left... so I then had nothing for my right foot to connect to. So I was just dangling there. I pulled my right ice axe out of the ice, but then I was just dangling from one arm - which was kind of exciting with all the people watching below, including some truly world class ice climbers. (Canadian Guy Lacelle had just done the route before me - he's climbed more ice than anyone in the world.) So I'm hanging there by one ice axe, realizing I can't go on - but I can't really get off, either. Well, I can, but it would involve falling. We're on top rope, so it's pretty safe, but falling would involve leaving my leashless ice axe in the ice. Which, in the not-very-coherent moment, seemed like something I shouldn't want to do. But, really, with all the top-notch guys down below itching to go next, it wouldn't be a problem. So I let go of the ice axe and fell, and then the ice axe came out of the ice and fell, narrowly missing my head and then crashing down toward the spectators below. Exciting!

No one was hurt, thankfully. I was dangling there on the rope so I asked to be lowered by my belayer, who seemed a bit surprised that I didn't want to try it some more. I was so close!

The ice is sweet, but the future may be bitter

By Ray Sikorski

(This article originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of the Tributary magazine.)

The 2006-2007 ice climbing season was akin to the movie Deliverance: One hell of a wilderness outing, marred somewhat by the prospect of banjo-wielding psycho hillbillies doing unspeakable things to your friends.

The season was one of the best in recent memory. “There was ice in places that some people have never seen ice before,” said Joe Josephson, author of Winter Dance, the seminal guide to ice climbing in Southwest Montana. Routes like Narcolepsy, Airborne Ranger, and even the aptly named Smear Today Gone Tomorrow made appearances, as well as routes that had never been seen before. On top of that, an inordinately lame early snow season made the normally treacherous drive to Hyalite Canyon’s frozen waterfalls a relative breeze right into February. Those unwilling to sacrifice their boards to the rocks on the ski hills took to Hyalite instead, with the Grotto Falls parking area filling up right up through Super Bowl Sunday.

But then, of course, was the specter of the banjo-wielding psycho hillbillies — in the form of the U.S. Forest Service — ruining all the fun. Area ice climbers had grown accustomed to negotiating the unplowed, rutted road from the Hyalite Dam to the Grotto Falls trailhead till their trucks and Subys just couldn’t take it anymore, which some years could be as late as March. The Gallatin National Forest Travel Plan, released in December, threatened to change all that. The plan, currently under appeal, proposed gating the road at the southernmost point of plowing on the first on each year, requiring climbers to ski, snowmobile, or walk a minimum of three-and-a-half miles to the ice.

“There’s not many people with the ability, gear, or gumption to ski or walk or whatever it takes from the dam,” Josephson said. “It’s basically gonna eliminate most of the climbing that goes on in Hyalite.”

Which would truly be a shame. According to Josephson, with over 140 established ice climbs within a three square mile radius, Hyalite is one of the top ice climbing venues in the world. “It’s the most concentrated area of consistently formed ice in the country.”

That’s what attracted my housemate Craig Hall and I to ice climbing in the first place. Craig had taken part in expeditions up Rainier, Denali, and other high peaks, and I had done my share of scrambling in the Tetons as a founding member of the Creampuff-Pantywaist Climbing Association (Motto: “If it’s big we can’t climb it, if it’s small we can’t find it”). But there was something about the serene gurgle of a waterfall in winter — and bashing it to smithereens with ice tools and crampons — that drew us to the cliffs.

We attended Barrel Mountaineering’s Ice Festival in November, where top ropes dangled from the cliffs of Genesis I, one of Hyalite’s most accessible routes. The festival was great: Along with trying out first-rate gear and getting instruction from ice pros like local legend Jack Tackle, we gained enough confidence in our abilities to venture out on our own.
Scary! Right? The thing about ice is that it has a tendency to break off when you whack at it, and ice climbing is all about whacking. Constant, repetitive whacking. The key is to have a sort of elegance and precision to your whacking, so that you surmount the frozen waterfall with grace and efficiency. And hopefully you don’t take the whole shooting match down with you.

Despite Craig’s enthusiasm, I was a bit skeptical. Jack Tackle had an icy stare and a determined, no-nonsense way about him. Did we have that? Did we need that? After all, Craig is a jazz guitarist and I’m a sort of silly writer. There’s no doubt we’re climbers, but, really, we’re artists. I sensed that maybe we were just a little too loopy to do this.
Case in point: Our gear, or lack thereof. Ice climbing equipment is not cheap, and we weren’t going to sink hundreds of dollars into a new sport right off the bat. But we each already had mountaineering boots and crampons, ropes, harnesses, and carabiners. Add to that a handful of antique ice screws purchased at a garage sale and a mismatched pair of decade-old straight shaft ice tools we planned to share, and we were raring to go.

Barrel Mountaineering owner Chris Naumann said: “As long as you use good judgment and common sense, there’s nothing really wrong with figuring it out on your own. There’s something to be said for doing it that way – just discovering it yourself, versus being told how to do this or that.”

And figure it out we did. In repeated forays to the Genesis area, we learned all sorts of things. For example, while in other sports helmets are only used in emergencies, in ice climbing that’s not the case at all. The top climber regularly sends down chunks of ice ranging in size from pebble-ish to volleyball-ish (though not nearly as bouncy), and one quickly learns to lower one’s head at the call of “Ice!” for maximum brain-bucket effectiveness. Kicking a crampon too close to your other leg can turn your snow pants into tatters, and you end up looking like you just Hulked out — clearly an ice climbing “Don’t.” Stepping on the rope with crampons is a bit of a faux pas. Tossing the top rope into a bunch of bushes can really delay things. As can leaving the ice screws in the car and having to trudge back for them. If the climber at the top of the climb sends ice tools flying down the rope, which you have wrapped around a tree, it can be really scary. Not recommended.
Ice is weird. On super cold days it becomes hard and brittle, and it’s difficult for a pick to find purchase. In a rare display of temper, Craig hurled an incorrigible ice screw into the snow… but it wasn’t the screw that was at fault, it was the ice. On warm days, the tools slide in with ease, and we find the grace we were hoping for. On a really warm day — like, next summer — we hope to find the ice screw we’re still looking for.

After one great King Midas mood Craig bought more ice screws and brand new ice tools of his own. I inherited the old mismatched straight-shaft ones, which I’ve gained a certain awkward fondness for. Now we’re both lead climbing like crazy: Genesis, Greensleeves, Hangover… and that’s just in the Genesis area of Hyalite. There’s tons more. We just did Pine Creek Falls in the Absarokas, and I experienced my first leader fall. The rope saved me inches from the deck. I was shaking after that, but I carried on.



And there’s always next year, right? Ah, but the plan. In Deliverance, the brave canoers were among the last to paddle the Chattooga River, which was being inundated by a new dam. If I recall correctly, that movie ended with one guy dead, one seriously wounded, and another…

Well, I’m just hoping for a happier ending.

For information about ice conditions, Hyalite road conditions, and finding climbing partners visit MontanaIce.com

Leader Fall

Ice climbing, Pine Creek Falls, it's beautiful but scary. The upper falls is a gaping maw with frozen icicles for fangs. Ice cold water churns and spews. I lead that pitch, sidestepping gingerly in the soft snow-covered ice, careful not to break through.

The ice screws I've inserted form an "S" pattern from me crossing and recrossing the waterfall, and the friction from the carabiners makes pulling the rope difficult. The final stretch is straight up along the left-hand side of the falls. My left foot slips, but I recover.

Near the top, the ice is so thin I can see clearly to the water rushing underneath. It couldn't be more than an inch thick. To break through could spell disaster — it's bad enough to fall, but to fall into a waterfall and dangle under an ice-cold shower could be really unpleasant. I steer towards the far left of the ice, right against the rock wall, hoping for the best. My choices for pick placement are limited, but I'm nearly at the top. Just a couple more picks, a couple more steps.

Left pick. Fine. Right pick. Not so fine. Is it good enough? I raise a foot to test the balance, and feel myself leaning back, the picks sliding...

Oh, shit, I think. Here I go.

And away I went.

I must have fallen about 20 feet. It really wasn't bad at all — I stopped about an inch or two above the snowy ledge. I straightened out, stood up on the ledge, and waved to Craig that I was okay. Really, my first thought was that it was kind of funny. Then I noticed my hands and legs shaking from the adrenaline.

I belayed Craig up to the ledge, and he finished off the final section of the falls. He was a little sketched out by the water flowing right underneath, too, and used the rock wall to support him up the edge of the ice. Picks, crampons, even gloved hands right on the rock. I followed right behind him. I knew it was climbable. It was just harder than the climbs we had done in the past, and a lot scarier, but totally doable. Falling is part of the sport — that's why there's ropes and protection.

I think I'm learning.




Craig Hall on Pine Creek Falls

Here vs. there

It’s now been three months since I left the warm, Mediterranean climate of Sonoma for the wintry cold of Montana, and it’s time to assess. Did I make the right move?

Absolutely. That’s the short answer, anyway. Just the fact that I’m now an adequate ice climber… Would I be if I stayed in Sonoma? Not bloody likely.

But there are a lot of things that I miss. A steady job with a steady paycheck is one. Although my job at the Sun was really starting to get to be job-like, and that’s part of the reason why I left, right now I’m just scraping things together. I guess it’s sort of a contradiction: right now I miss the security of knowing what’s next, even though that security really got boring for me after a while.

I’m also a bit jealous that the folks at the Sun are now dabbling in video for the website, which sounds exciting. I’d love to be part of something where anyone’s idea is worth trying out, which is what seems to be going on right now. It looks like a really cool scene.

And naturally I miss my friends over there, although I have a lot of friends here. It’s been great being in a house with three housemates, because working in the basement can get kind of lonely. I don’t know what I’d do without them sometimes. I miss the camaraderie of a workplace (although not the politics).

There are some things I don’t miss at all. Hot summers, dreary winters, and just way too many people and cars crammed into a place. Everybody driving everywhere for everything, and always in a rush. And I don’t miss the greed…, which is not to say greed doesn’t exist in Montana, but I got hit with it a few times upon leaving Sonoma.

The first was from Bill Hammett, publisher of the Sun, who refused to give me permission to reprint articles I had written as a Sun employee. Granted, the Sun owns intellectual rights to most of my work, but it’s a commonly accepted practice for publications to grant its writers permission to use their own work once they leave the company, free of charge. Hammett, whose background is not in newspapers and is unfamiliar with this practice, demanded some sort of compensation.

The second was from my former landlady, Debra Ritner of Glen Ellen, shorting me $300.96 on my apartment’s security deposit, despite Deirdre and me cleaning for a solid week prior to moving out.

Here’s the breakdown of what she took out, from the letter she sent me with the remainder of the deposit:

1) 2 plants for front planters and it need more soil.
Plants $11.69
Soil $4.62
(the charge for the plants was anticipated, though not the soil)

2) Living room mini blinds that were broken - size 58x46 from 3 Day blinds
$125.04
(the edges of three blinds were bent, which I don’t think was our doing originally)

3) Broken faucet in kitchen water leaked all over bottom cabinet floor
$39.61
(This one is the most egregious – blatant theft on her behalf. First of all, the faucet wasn’t broken when I moved out. Second of all, she’s the landlady – it’s her job to take of things like broken faucets, not mine. She had called to tell me that the faucet was broken before sending this letter, but she never said she was actually charging me for it.)

4) Re-clean carpet, some stains in bedroom but very large stains in living room, tried to re-clean so we didn’t have to charge you for replacement of L.R. carpet
$88
(Gee, thanks Debra, although the carpet was professionally steam-cleaned, as per the instructions in the lease, and the receipt was put on the counter for you to see. The stains you mention are in your head.)

5) Recleaned outside of refrigerator, kitchen walls had food and grease on it and kit fan recleaned, yard raked leafs, pine needles, trimmed bamboo, pulled weeds
2 hr. @$16/hr. =$32

In the end she writes “Best Wishes on your new home! You were both good tenants and paid us on time.”

Without having taken photographs it’s hard to show just how clean the apartment was, both inside and out, but some of the things on this list are crazy. Some, such as the blinds and the carpet stains, I’m convinced were not our doing, although I don’t have hard evidence. Some things are just natural wear and tear after living in a place for over two years. Suing her would probably end up costing more than I would ever get back.

It just disturbs me that someone would take advantage of me in this way. We gave her almost $24,000 in rent over 25 months ($950/month); we always paid on time, and never had any complaints from the neighbors. Why would she do this?

Ice Climbing in Hyalite Canyon

(I'm in yellow helmet, Craig's in white helmet)

While shimmying up a frozen waterfall might not be everyone’s idea of a day well spent, for my housemate Craig and I it’s been a longtime goal. Well, a month-and-a-half long goal, anyway.

Craig and I started immersing ourselves into rock climbing in October, and as winter’s chill descends on Montana, ice climbing is the next logical step. We both see it as step in the larger process of becoming proficient all-around mountaineers, in which we’re able to take on any peak. Craig outlined goals for the next year and a half that include increasingly harder routes in the Tetons, the Gallatins, and the Absarokas.

So we better figure this stuff out! On Sunday we participated in Barrel Mountaineering’s Ice Festival, in which we were given top-quality gear and taught by world-class ice climbers, including Bozeman’s Jack Tackle. It was kind of a trial by fire for us; we had both dabbled in ice climbing a little bit, but really are beginners. The guys set up top-ropes and sent us up some pretty crazy stuff right off the bat, trying to teach us good technique… which was great, but what we really needed were the fundamentals. I mean, we were dangling 50 feet above the ground, with the only things holding us up being the tips of two metal picks and the front-points of our crampons. That takes a little getting used to!

We got better as the day went on, and as the guides tossed the ropes down we knew we wanted more. So Craig and I ventured back out to Hyalite today to get back on the ice. This time we weren’t carrying brand new, state-of-the-art demo gear; just our own boots and our own mountaineering crampons and Craig’s two old-school, straight shaft ice climbing picks, which we agreed to trade off. Plus, we had to figure out how to anchor the top-rope on our own — something we’d been studying in books and magazines, but hadn’t had much hands-on practice with. Plus, Craig had to get back to a music rehearsal at one, so we didn’t have much time.

But, boy, did we make the most of it. We left the house at about 7:15 a.m., and of course there was the obligatory stop at the bagel shop… by the time we got all the way down Hyalite, dropped the gear off at the Greensleeves ice route — next to Genesis I — hiked up to the top to set up the anchor, and rappelled down to the foot of the climb, it was 10:30. Wow! Some folks like sports in which they just have to lace up a pair of shoes and go. Climbing, as a sport, is 80 percent lacing up of shoes and 20 percent actually on the rock.

Once we got going there was no stopping us. Greensleeves is a relatively easy climb, starting off steep and then easing out to a lower angle. Short and sweet, which was perfect for getting our fundamentals down. We were both a little concerned about our equipment, but everything worked great, including my strap-on crampons and Craig’s ice tools. In fact, we seemed to have better luck swinging Craig’s heavy tools than the lighter-weight ones we were lent on Sunday — one nice solid swing was all it took to get good purchase. And I felt more at ease hanging off the tips of my crampons.

We each took three turns on the ice, slightly varying the route each time. The last one took me right over the main stream of the cold, dribbling water; it was warmer today, and the water sprayed over my ski pants as I climbed.

Back when I worked in the Tetons I had done a lot of mountaineering, but I had stopped for a while. A friend had slid on the soft snow of Diappointment Peak’s Spoon Couloir, and all I could do was watch helplessly as she flew past, unable to stop herself. Miraculously, she survived with only scrapes and a concussion, but it made me overly cautious in my outdoor adventures. Now, climbing with Craig, using ropes, being careful about our protection, I feel little I’m getting back into it at last.