[TR] Hyalite - Thanksgiving highlights 11/21/2011

[YocumRidge]

Trip: Hyalite - Thanksgiving highlights

 

Date: 11/21/2011

 

Trip Report:

My friend Leesa G and I had a sweet, but short, trip to Hyalite last weekend. Having extensively climbed ice in the Canadian rockies, Leesa never been to Hyalite before, so she was stoked to hit some early season ice in Montucky. We loaded our gear in the Leesa’s honda-300K miles-super hero-wagon and left Portland on 11/19 Sat p.m.

 

Things were looking very promising during our drive in, with the I-90 being generously iced up and snowed over and the temps staying in single digits in Spokane onwards. Awesome - until we run out of gas somewhere past Missoula at 2 freaking a.m. and had to bivvy at the I-90 roadside for a few long hours in the gas-unfriendly state of Montucky while waiting for AAA to deliver one gallon just enough to get us back to Missoula. And then back again to Bozeman.

 

Anyhow, on Sun 11/20 afternoon we had successfully made it to the Hyalite’s reservoir and begun fighting the main fork road that has not been plowed for a few days (our car turned out to be the only passenger car in the p-lot), and finally arrived at the Genesis 1 at 3 p.m.

 

Hyalite:

 

 

Leesa in the main fork p-lot:

 

 

Finally at the base of Genesis 1:

 

 

Leading G1:

 

 

Both Leesa and I led G1 in the remaining daylight and we both agreed that it was kind of stiff for a warmup, and the long drive was not helping either. The ice was heterogeneous, 2 inch thick at places, and aggressively brittle as seen on our faces:

 

Next day we headed up back to the Genesis 1 and got on the Lower Green Sleeves:

 

 

Leesa coming up the Lower Green Sleeves:

 

 

We rapped down and continued left and up to Hangover and Genesis 2. Found some nice WI2 half-pitches en route to Hangover.

 

Leesa soloing WI2 approach:

 

 

 

Hangover was in very healthy shape for a full rope length and nicely visible from the p-lot. Leesa and I both led it.

 

Leesa on Hangover:

 

 

Myself on Hangover:

 

 

After Hangover, we traversed over to the base of the Genesis 2 - a 2 tier linkup route - which was also nicely in.

 

Dr. of Internal Medicine leading Genesis 2:

 

 

to Winter!

 

 

 

We then went to check out the Amphitheater climbs.

 

Leesa really liked the right flow (a la Columbia River gorge):

 

 

Thin, slightly overhanging and drippy, it was shooting daggers at us and trying to kill, when we realized the temps in the canyon were in low 40s, so she downclimbed and we retreated back to the car. The new warming trend (high 50s in Bozeman for the rest of the week) was certainly not welcome and cut our trip short.

 

Was winter ever here?

 

 

Only in Montana! Some brave cossack hauling a year worth supply for the paleo diet: Odocoileus hemionus en crude - in what was suspiciously resembling Ivan’s old truck he was offering to sell to me .

 

Gear Notes:

2 ropes, 8 screws

 

Approach Notes:

Honda super-wagon

[wayne]

Nice! she was texting non stop as I was coming over Snoqualmie. Knew you guys had fun.

[YocumRidge]

Yeah, we were looking for you in here:

 

but where were you?

[stevetimetravlr]

Nice!

[billcoe]

Sweet looking trip!

[wayne]

.....Canmore. Wet there too at the time. We did Grotto, and Professors.