Journeys: Beehive Peak

I woke up in the predawn hoping for a brilliant sunrise. The sky remained dull and pale. I rolled over and looked at my pack laying outside the tent door. It was covered in frost. I had underestimated August in Montana. I clambered out of the tent to use the bathroom in the cold. Below me at the mouth of the valley I saw a massive cloud inversion that covered the Gallatin Canyon and Big Sky. I roused Tanner to have a look.

Tanner checking out the inversion.

We left the tent just after seven to climb a 5.6 on Beehive Peak called What's Left. We started on a black ledge above a black dike. Trending left I climbed an extremely loose half pitch to a nice belay ledge. Tanner followed. I started up a large corner, but soon found the rock to be so loose it was terrifying. I climbed back down and looked for another way up to the left. Once again I encountered deathly loose rock. I backed down and went in search of a route up the face and out of the corner systems. I was thirty feet up and realized Tanner probably would not be able to get up the route with his hiking boots. I backed down to the belay ledge. Tanner and I talked about how crappy the rock was. I looked straight up at the original crack and went for it.

It was loose. It was dangerous. I pulled over a block wedged at the top of the crack praying that it would not come out and crush both of us. The block did not budge. I belayed Tanner up. Tanner took a breather while we scouted the next pitch. It looked to be 5.6 and on much more solid rock than the last two pitches. We ran out a full length of rope on the pitch that turned to 4th class at the top. We sent two or three more 4th class full rope length pitches and made the summit.

As usual, things got a little silly on the summit.

Extreme hair brushing.

Oh boy...

We hiked off using the 4th class descent. There were rap anchors in two places, but we did not use them opting to down climb. We continued down the 4th of July Couloir, which was completely dry and loose.

We packed up the tent and all of our gear and hiked out. Just a few miles down the road our growling bellies asked us to pull over for food at First Place Pub. We were much obliged.