Montana Headwall

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SUMMER 2013

Complimentary

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How Conrad Anker stays grounded

CONTENTS

SEPARATION ANXIETY Tourniquets and the art of tyin’ one on

ON THE MOVE The future comes closer on Canyon Peak mtheadwall.com

16 28 36

KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

INSIDE On Belay 6 Grub 44 Contributors 8

Man vs. crawdad

Head Trip 46

Head Lines 10 Tour de Tejay van Garderen Doping crackdown clips XC From rope to rug Budget woes gone wild

From casting aspersions to just plain casting

Head Out 52 Spring into summer

Head Light 22 Head Gear 54

The magic hour

Essentials you hope never to use Ruff and ready: six K-9 must-haves

Head Shots 24 Our readers’ best

The Crux 62 Wild Things 42

Dark tide rising

Swarm on ice Cover photo of Conrad Anker by Jimmy Chin

317 S. Orange St. • Missoula, MT 59801 406-543-6609 • Fax 406-543-4367 mtheadwall.com

Please recycle this magazine

Montana Headwall (ISSN 2151-1799) is a registered trademark of Independent Publishing, Inc. Copyright 2013 by Independent Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinting in whole or in part is forbidden except by permission of Independent Publishing, Inc. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively. And yeah, we’re having fun.

STAFF

EXECUTIVE EDITOR GENERAL MANAGER ASSOCIATE EDITOR PHOTO EDITOR ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER PRODUCTION DIRECTOR CIRCULATION MANAGER CONTRIBUTORS

Brad Tyer Cathrine L. Walters Carolyn Bartlett Joe Weston Adrian Vatoussis

Alex Sakariassen, Lisa Densmore, Jessica Murri, Jason McMackin, Dave Reuss, Matt Holloway, Monica Gokey, Eric Oravsky, Ari LeVaux, Nadia White, Michael Moore, Chad Harder, Matthew Frank, Robin Carleton, Tom Robertson

COPY EDITOR ART DIRECTOR PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES FRONT DESK EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Skylar Browning Lynne Foland

Brad Tyer Kou Moua Jenn Stewart, Jonathan Marquis Tami Allen, Steven Kirst, Alecia Goff, Sasha Perrin Lorie Rustvold Matt Gibson

Cathrine L. Walters


invited Headwall Photo Editor Chad Harder to my wedding on Aug. 8, 2009. I also gave him an urgent assignment that week to make a climbing trip in the Pipestone area. So climbing he went. And while I was tying the knot on a perfect sunny Saturday along the banks of the Clark Fork, Chad was struggling to survive after a massive boulder fell on his right arm, pinching his hand off at the wrist. The office let a couple of days pass, then called me in the middle of my honeymoon. I quickly got Chad on the phone from his hospital bed in Salt Lake City. Given that he had already undergone several surgeries and been under anesthesia for many, many hours while doctors delicately salvaged his hand, he was remarkably lucid, calm and generous. “I’m going to stay on my honeymoon,” I told him as we wound up our call. “Good,” he replied. Four years later, Chad recounts the gruesome episode for Headwall readers (page 28). He’s more at ease with it than I can manage. I could barely get through the reading. I groaned out loud, put it down and paced the room between paragraphs. You’ll probably squirm, too. Chad’s story reminds us that freak accidents happen and that chance is a deciding factor in our lives. But it glosses over the aftermath of punishing recovery and restoration, and that’s where Chad came up huge. It takes real strength to overcome a catastrophic injury like his. The struggle with pain, grief, fear and frustration could break anybody, and I don’t think it’s possible to skip any of it and get on with life again. Chad’s mettle has been impressive to behold. Chad’s all right now. He kept his hand, though he cursed it for a long time as it healed. And while it’s not quite as dexterous as it once was, Chad gets by quite nicely. Last year, we went backcountry skiing together, and he kicked my ass on the way up and again on the way down. I rarely notice his injury unless he scratches his head. His wrist doesn’t move at all, so his whole arm kind of saws back and forth to achieve the desired effect. Chad recently decamped to Alaska for even grander adventures in the mountains. But he and I will be forever bound to that August day in 2009, the most consequential day of each of our lives. I will probably never celebrate a wedding anniversary without thinking of him, nor publish an issue of Headwall without recalling his part in it.

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ON BELAY

I

Matt Gibson Editor-in-chief

Cathrine L. Walters



CONTRIBUTORS

Nadia White

Michael Moore

Ari LeVaux

Around these parts, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a few outdoor journalists like Dave Reuss. His work has been featured in Mountain Gazette, Dead Point Magazine and The Montana Historian. When not pretending to be the managing editor of Outside Bozeman, his hobbies include playing music and looking thoughtfully into the distance while wearing a wetsuit. You can read more of his work at reusswriting.com.

Nadia White teaches journalism at The University of Montana. She paddled the Inside Passage alone last summer as part of a 4,000-mile trek by bike, kayak and canoe that followed her great-grandmother’s migration from Oklahoma to the Klondike gold rush. She is currently working on a guide to better adventure writing.

Michael Moore is a rock and ice climber with more than 25 years of experience. He’s a board member of the Bitterroot Climbers Coalition and has recently been part of a small group putting up new climbing routes in Mill Creek. When he’s not climbing, he works for United Way of Missoula County.

Ari LeVaux writes Flash in the Pan, a nationally syndicated weekly food column. His writing has appeared in Outside, Slate and other regional and national publications. Wherever he is or whatever he’s doing—usually hunting, gardening, gathering or cooking—rest assured that his mind is on his belly and his belly is on his mind.

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Dave Reuss

120 Hickory St., Suite B Missoula, MT 59801 (406) 549-0755 fvlt.org Montana Headwall Page 8 Summer 2013

1705 Bow St. • Missoula, MT 59801 549-5283 • sapphirept.com John Fiore, PT • Rachael Herynk, DPT • Lindsey Flint, DPT


Montana Headwall Page 9 Summer 2013


TOUR DE TEJAY

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HEAD LINES

Cycling’s best young rider reveals his favorite Montana routes It’s been quite a year for former Montana resident Tejay van Garderen. It started when the 22-year-old professional cyclist finished fifth in the 2012 Tour de France and earned the Best Young Rider Classification, or rookie of the year. It continued into early 2013 with a fourth-place finish in the Paris-Nice stage race and a first place in the young riders division of France’s Criterium International. Then, after completing the April Tour of the Basque Country in Spain, van Garderen received a call from his wife, Jessica, that she was going into labor three weeks early with their first

child. Within hours, van Garderen was on a plane so he could join Jessica in the delivery room to welcome their daughter, Rylan. Now, van Garderen, who grew up in Bozeman and moved to Missoula when he was 14, is looking to build on his recent successes with a slate of major summer races. He has specifically targeted the USA Pro Challenge in August, where he finished

second last year, and the Tour de France in July, where he’ll be a co-leader for the BMC Racing Team. Van Garderen doesn’ make it back to Montana often—his off-season home is in Italy—but he credits his time in Big Sky Country for helping to launch his career. We recently caught up with van Garderen to ask about his favorite training routes in Montana. Tom Robertson

Tejay van Garderen became the third American to win the Tour De France Best Young Rider Classification, following Greg LeMond in 1984 and Andrew Hampsten in 1986.

BATTLE RIDGE ROAD, BOZEMAN

PATTEE CANYON, MISSOULA

This 70-mile loop can start in downtown Bozeman or at the base of Bridger Bowl Ski Area, and gains 4,000 feet of elevation in Bridger Canyon.

The Missoula Bike Club has hosted the Western Montana Hill Climb every fall since 1977. Van Garderen is a two-time overall winner and holds the record in the 15-17 age group with a time of 13:09.

“In Bozeman, the Battle Ridge Road was one of my favorite training rides,” van Garderen says. “I just remember it being super epic for my 13-year-old self. It was one of those rides I would brag, ‘I went all the way to Battle Ridge today.’ When I was at the top it gave me a reason to thump my chest a bit. That, and it was beautiful country.” Montana Headwall Page 10 Summer 2013

“Pattee Canyon was cool because there was a time trial there every fall,” he says. “I remember doing training rides, gauging my time off of all the previous times in the race’s history. I would always race myself up. I spent a lot of time training on that climb, riding it multiple times a day on many occasions.”

Kristof Ramon


HEAD ONLINE

Only at

John Lehrman

Who is Hank Patterson? Jessica Murri tracked down the fly-fishing expert and YouTube sensation during his appearance at the Down the Hatch Fly Fishing Film Festival in Missoula. Her audio story—also found in the Head Out section—introduces Patterson, his popular online videos (more than 300,000 views) and the angler’s keen sense of humor.

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Keep up at Kootenai Creek Casey Greene uploaded a short video to our Head Out section capturing a hike along one of the Bitterroot’s most popular trails. Make sure to watch past the credits for the blooper reel and one unfortunate tumble. PLUS: • Planning a summer trip? Explore Headwall’s exclusive database for more than 600 detailed descriptions and reviews of parks, peaks, resorts and more. • Don’t condemn your killer shots to anonymity in hard-drive purgatory. Share your best images in our Head Shots slideshow with a chance for publication in our next issue. • Like us on Facebook to keep track of the latest news, condition reports and exclusive Headwall contests.

HEAD LINES

Snow found at Lost River Regular online contributor John Lehrman finds sunshine and late-season snow in central Idaho, and writes about it in our Head Out section. The trip includes a stop at Stanley’s natural hot springs, hiking past Little Redfish Lake, Redfish Lake and the five Bench Lakes, and backcountry runs on Mount Heyburn, Borah Peak and the Lost River Range.

Jedediah Hohf


CLEAN RIDE

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Doping crackdown clips Missoula XC

Chad Harder

USA Cycling recently rolled out its new RaceClean program, a ramped-up drug testing effort intended to stamp out the blood doping that’s rocked the sport. It means that before the elite-level mountain bikers line up to race in the third annual Hammer Nutrition Missoula XC at Marshall Mountain on June 22, there’s a chance they’ll be tested for doping. Phil Grove, of Whitefish, will be one of the competitors at Marshall Mountain. He’s

“I don’t really see why this large doping-control effort needs to be in place at an event that everyone more or less is just doing for fun,” says Grove, who works for a sports nutrition company. He thinks USA Cycling’s dictate shows that it’s “maybe a little out of touch with the realities of mountain bikers in the U.S.” The initiative is perhaps out of touch with the realities of race organizers, too. USA Cycling is passing drug-testing costs onto the

U.S. Olympian and Missoula native Sam Schultz, pictured, has won the Hammer Nutrition Missoula XC at Marshall Mountain each of its first two years. a “professional” mountain biker, but he puts the title in quotes because, even though he competes in a couple dozen events each year, he can’t make a living off of mountain biking alone. Few do. With such paltry winnings compared to those at larger road-racing events, he says, there’s minimal incentive for riders to artificially boost their oxygen-carrying red blood cell counts.

events themselves. Ben Horan, the Missoula XC director, says it costs upwards of $3,500 to test at a race, which will be chosen at random with perhaps a day’s notice. Instead of forcing promoters to play drug-testing roulette and sticking as many as a third of the events with the full cost of cover testing, all races in the series are splitting it, meaning Missoula XC will pay at least $1,200.

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“It makes everything cost more for all of the promoters in an industry [in which] it’s already pretty difficult to make ends meet,” Horan says. Not that Horan’s against testing. He says doping happens at all levels of cycling. “It’s a real problem,” he says. “I don’t know that it’s quite as endemic in cycling relative to other professional sports as it sometimes gets credit for, but it’s definitively something we take seriously.” “If we’re footing the bill,” he adds, “we’d like to see those guys come and test our event. But we’ll see [a day or two before] if that’s going to happen.” This year’s Missoula event kicks off with the inaugural Summer Solstice Short Track race on June 21. The Hammer Nutrition XC, featuring top professional riders from the U.S. and Canada, takes place June 22. The weekend concludes with the Hair of the Dog Super D, a chairlift-accessed downhill race at Montana Snowbowl, on June 23. Matthew Frank


reached the end of the rope, use one last finishing nail to keep the rug from unraveling.

UPCYCLE

- Old climbing rope - A handful of finishing nails and a hammer - 2 tubes of caulk and a caulk gun 1. Wash and dry entire climbing rope. You may use any length or diameter rope you choose. The diameter and length will ultimately affect the size of your finished rug.

3. Work the remaining core back into the sheath making sure to have at least a few inches of coreless rope at the end.

Piece of scrap plywood Duct tape Disposable latex gloves Utility knife

4. Burn the tip of the rope with a lighter to prevent fraying. 5. Drive a finishing nail through the coreless end of the rope to attach it to the center of your plywood. 6. Carefully spiral the rope snugly around itself starting with the coreless end of the rope. In order to keep the spiral tight, periodically use a finishing nail to keep the rope in place.

9. Using the caulk gun, apply caulk on the exposed side of the rug. Spread the caulk with latex gloves. Let it dry for 24 hours. 10. Take out the last two finishing nails and systematically tape the entire caulked side of your rug. 11. Flip the rug over. Your rug is finished!

Instructions and photos by Robin Carleton

7. When you have

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2. In order to get a tight roll at the center of the rug, use the utility knife to slide the core out of the sheath and cut out some of the core at the end of the rope.

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HEAD LINES

ITEMS REQUIRED:

8. Take all of the finishing nails out except the nail in the center and the end of the rope.


CLEAR CUTS

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HEAD LINES

Budget woes gone wild Folks seeking the usual summer escape in Montana’s national parks may note a few changes this year. Longer lines at check stations, reduced availability of campsites, delayed response times to emergency calls—Glacier and Yellowstone alike have tightened their belts in response to the federal sequester. Panic struck this spring when the parks announced plans to delay their respective openings by two weeks to reduce the cost of plowing roads. That initial scare proved premature, and the parks have opened on schedule. But plowing was just the tip of the budgetary iceberg, and for now visitors will have to grit their teeth and bear it. “We’re just acknowledging that with a somewhat smaller staff but the same number of visitors, that’s going to present some challenges,” says Yellowstone National Parks spokesman Al Nash. Among the challenged are staff-led programs. Glacier saw its budget reduced by nearly $700,000 this year, prompting the park to hire fewer staff for the summer season. Park officials issued a statement in March saying the availability and frequency of ranger-led hikes and educational programming will decrease notice-

ably as a result. The story is no different down in Yellowstone, which saw its budget cut by nearly $1.3 million. Nash expects the diminishment of staff-led activities won’t impact first-time visitors as much as repeat visitors, who tend to utilize park programming to “enhance their experience and understanding.” More adventurous outdoors enthusiasts seeking a backcountry escape in Yellowstone’s Hellroaring Creek Area or

Developed campgrounds and visitor centers will open later and close earlier. Backcountry campers should take particular note of one sequester impact: fewer personnel will likely mean delayed response to emergency calls. Nash cautions visitors to Yellowstone—and any national park, for that matter—that self-sufficiency may be more a necessity than in years past. “Because of the size and scope of this park, and the distances between locations, we

The National Parks Service estimates 1.85 million people visited Glacier in 2011, spending roughly $98 million. In 2012, the number of visitors increased to more than 2.1 million. Glacier’s Belly River will likely experience rougher roads and tougher trails this summer. Glacier has already cautioned recreationists that trail access will be delayed by up to two weeks this year, and the reduction in seasonal staff will prompt a decrease in trail maintenance. Glacier’s backcountry volunteer coordinator position has also been scaled back, meaning hikers will likely see fewer volunteer patrols and reduced services at backcountry campsites. Park Superintendent Kym Hall says road-maintenance patching and grading will be reduced as well.

recognize and we encourage visitors to recognize the wild nature of Yellowstone, even if they’re along a roadway,” Nash says. “They need to first and foremost be responsible for their own wellbeing.” Nash knows that “anybody who’s into serious recreation in this region” is well versed in the risks of Montana’s wild places. But at all levels, from first-timers to veterans, visitors need to recognize the signs of hard times. “We’re trying to make them as unobtrusive as possible,” Nash says. Alex Sakariassen

Chad Harder




he climbing gear is sorted and packed, and Conrad Anker emerges from his basement gear room with Hyalite Canyon on his mind. He’s handled his morning business—a chat with National Geographic, a magazine interview and a quick reschedule for a business meeting. Now, he’s ready to get out. “What are you thinking for the day?” says his wife, Jenni, as Conrad cinches up his pack.

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“Well, we’re going to shoot some pictures and climb some ice,” he says. “I’ll see you at sunset.” The last line is not just something a husband tells his wife. For Conrad and Jenni, it’s a pledge forged through a tragedy that reconfigured both of their lives. He says something to this effect every time he leaves for a climb. After 25 years in the sport, Anker has become one of alpinism’s biggest stars. His record of hard ascents on icy mountains and rock faces around the world puts him among the world’s elite. He captains the North Face company’s climbing team. Last spring the Bozeman resident summited Mount Everest without oxygen while assisting a group of Montana State University researchers. It was his third time reaching the highest point on earth. Yet for all his accomplishment and stature, Anker is still bound to a single day in 1999 when the course of his and Jenni’s lives dramatically changed. What happened that day is why he never leaves home without telling her when to expect his return.

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onrad Anker, now 50, is paid to climb, paid to be one of the faces of the North Face brand. In other words, he is paid to be seen, preferably on the most scenic, radical terrain possible. “What I do is sports marketing, and I guess I see myself as a brand compass,” he says. “That involves making sure The North Face is visible, is respected, and is a good citizen. Job one, though, is making sure the company is visible in the media.” That means numerous appearances, countless interviews, and juggling a schedule so Byzantine that he has a Bozeman assistant who refers to herself as “Girl Friday.” It also means climbing big routes—the kind that get covered in magazines and on film. “Part of the way I am paid is by exposure in the media,” he says. “I don’t have a problem with that, in part because it’s good for the company, but also because I want what we do to be out there. I want people to think about the exploration aspect of what we do. I want to inspire people to challenge themselves.” Though some climbers grouse about the effects of money on the sport, Anker says the concern is misplaced, at least at The North Face. “Our athletes, it’s up to them what to do,” he says. “It’s a pretty organic thing. What do you want to go do? We never say go do this or that.” Some have argued that money has influenced climbers to make choices they wouldn’t otherwise make, to climb routes that involve outsized risk designed to garner maximum media. Jimmy Chin


“What people don’t understand is that climbers understand risk in a way that many people don’t,” Anker says. “It’s true, I think, there are some people involved in all sorts of risky professions who aren’t good at assessing risk. Those professions weed those people out, whether it’s firefighting, police work or climbing. I know the people on the North Face team, and I don’t think any of them don’t think about coming home at the end of the day. I know I do.” One of Anker’s signal achievements bears witness to that statement. The Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru has long been one of alpinism’s holy grails. Located in the Garhwal Himalaya of India, Meru marks the mythic center of the universe, according to Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The faithful believe the body of God twined itself with the body of the land at Meru, thus linking the physical and spiritual worlds. The fin, a startling, iconic spire, became the focus of Anker’s climbing universe by way of his mentor, Mugs Stump, who was twice rebuffed by the “sharp blade of stone.” Anker, too, was turned back in 2003 and 2008.

“Maybe we weren’t deserving of going to the center of the universe,” Anker said after the 2008 attempt. Part of the dynamic that ended the 2008 effort with Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk was Anker’s promise to his family in Bozeman. He wrote after the trip that there are more important things than reaching every summit. “It felt fitting that the upper world was unattainable. Perhaps our goal had been another form of Western hubris,” he wrote in the spring 2012 edition of Alpinist. “And yet I felt good about the attempt; we’d gotten so close, no one was hurt, and I’d returned to my family. We’d played on the mountain’s terms, and the mountain had won.” Anker had plenty of other objectives in the great ranges, but Meru lingered. As much as he convinced himself that his decision to turn around was the right thing to do, a part of him couldn’t let it go. It was sort of like the sports car that you don’t really need,” he says. “It wasn’t something I had to do, but it was there all the same. We’d been so close and the fact is, it was still unclimbed.”

When he announced to Jenni that he wanted to try again, her response was understandable. “What is the sense in going back?” she asked. Anker’s answer perhaps resonates only with climbers and other explorers. “I still had to finish Mugs’ dream for him, even if I didn’t understand why,” he wrote in Alpinist. “I tried to justify the hazards in the same arrogant way I had for 20 years. With proper planning, I thought, we will avoid risk. Fear and doubt awakened me late at night. All my rationalizing was bullshit. It was dangerous and selfish to go to Meru.” In 2011, Anker, Chin and Ozturk returned. And on their 11th day of climbing, the trio stood poised below the last pitch. “You need to take this pitch, this is your dream climb,” Chin said to Anker. “No, you take it,” Anker responded. “The Shark’s Fin had been Mugs’ dream and then, for a while, mine,” Anker wrote in Alpinist. “… It was already time to pass on that metaphysical ball of knowledge to someone younger.” “I want to go last,” Anker told Chin. And he did. Then he went home to Jenni and the boys.

Portaledge camp at 20,000 feet in the Garhwal Himalaya Jimmy Chin


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nker didn’t always think first about returning home. When he was first starting his climbing career, it was more important to push himself and establish his place in the sport. In 1999, Anker set out for Shishapangma in Tibet with his best friend, Alex Lowe. The trip would mark the first time Americans skied off the summit of an 8,000-meter—26,000-foot— peak, and would further cement Lowe’s status as the world’s best all-around climber. The crew expected October 5, 1999, to be an easy day. Anker, Lowe, photographer David Bridges and the rest of the team planned on adjusting to the altitude before climbing the world’s 14th-highest mountain. “This was a rest day and we were just trying to acclimatize, just doing some walking on the mountain,” Anker says. “In hindsight, it was obvious the place was an avalanche runout zone, but we weren’t on high alert.” About 6,000 feet above where Anker, Lowe and Bridges were walking, a serac cut loose, triggering a slide that at first seemed distant and nonthreatening. But as the avalanche picked up speed and volume, the men scrambled for cover. Bridges and Lowe went one direction, Anker another. “They went downhill and I went laterally,” he says. “I saw them in one place and then I laid down and saw them in another. And then they were gone.” Anker, then 36, was hammered by the slide’s windblast and thrown 100 feet, suffering broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and cuts to the head. The rest of the team was elsewhere when the slide occurred, but soon joined Anker in a futile search. Lowe and Bridges were gone without a trace. Anker had never lost a partner until Shishapangma. “This was something new for me, a catastrophe in the mountains that hit me directly,” he says. “Mugs had died, of course, on Denali, but I was in Zion, so it was different. I think when we’re in our 20s and 30s, death hits us harder. Where I am now, I know we all die, that we’re all finite. But then, I was just crushed.” Anker suffered survivor’s guilt, recycling the capricious equation that left him alive and his friends dead. “Classic stuff: Why him? Why not me? What about his family?” he says.

Ice climbing in Hyalite Canyon

Yogesh Simpson

The gear room

Yogesh Simpson

After being turned back in 2003 and 2008, Anker successfully climbed the Shark’s Fin in 2011.

Jimmy Chin


fewer risks these days, but it’s important to understand that I’m a professional climber.” “I do take

Yogesh Simpson

Anker had climbed with Lowe since 1990, when Lowe worked for Black Diamond and Anker worked for The North Face. “He’d moved to Salt Lake from Ventura and we just immediately hit it off,” Anker says. “We had the same drive, same motivation. We were a solid partnership. He was stronger than me, but he was stronger than everybody.” Anker eventually brought Lowe onto the North Face team. They were pioneers in the early days of “professional” climbing. They climbed in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Alaska, doing rescue work on Denali, North America’s highest peak. Over those years, Anker got to know Lowe’s family, including his wife Jenni and three boys—Max, Sam and Isaac. In fact, Anker was present when two of the boys were born. After his climbing partner’s death, he reached out to Jenni. “I was struggling, and I spent a lot of time talking to Jenni on the phone about what had happened and what would come next for all of us,” Anker says. Slowly, organically, Anker and Jenni Lowe fell in love. The relationship sparked considerable discussion in the climbing community. “It’s not something where I asked myself directly whether it was the right thing or weighed the pros and cons,” he says. “It came from the heart and was very natural. Jenni embraced it and the boys were very much into it.” In 2001, Anker and Lowe married, and Anker adopted the Lowe boys, who were then 10, 7 and 3. “The boys and I have had a great relationship, and I’m honored to have the chance to play a role in their lives,” he says. “Sometimes the loss manifests itself in ways I don’t understand, but we

move through it. I think they’re more at peace with me than some of the kids I’ve seen in families that have been divorced and remarried.” Anker understands why some questioned the relationship, and he never shied from answering those who bothered to ask. “I think my friends and family were always supportive, but some people thought Jenni didn’t need another climber in her life,” Anker says. “I understand why they might feel that way. But I always tell people, if you’ve got a question, here’s my phone number. Call me and we’ll talk. This is a happy union, a real life where we deal with all things that everybody deals with.”

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squire magazine is perhaps a curious place for Anker to show up, but there he is, No. 7 in the magazine’s online list of the 50 “greatest athletes currently in action.” “If you haven’t heard of Conrad Anker, you should have,” wrote Garth Sundem last year. “He’s a badass and a heck of a nice guy … Though he can’t

compete with the renown of a LeBron, his ratio of good fame to bad fame lines up just right.” Anker is the top mountain athlete on the list; fellow North Face climber Alex Honnold clocks in at No. 12 and skier Lindsey Vonn sets up at No. 15. The list, of course, is skewed by numerous biases, but a couple of things about it are interesting. First, one of the metrics is the difficulty of the sport, in which climbing ranks fifth, behind more traditional sports such as boxing and ice hockey but far ahead of others, such as distance running and golf. Second, the rankings include ratings for things like philanthropy and character, or failures of character, like Tiger Woods’ philandering and Lance Armstrong’s doping. “The whole thing made me laugh a little bit, but it’s also nice to see recognition of climbing as a difficult sport,” says Anker, who found it amusing to be ranked above a household name like Tiger Woods. “Our sport has a lot of inherent difficulties, and it has some inherent risks that most other sports don’t have. I wouldn’t make too much of it, but it’s nice to see climbers be part of the discussion.”

Yogesh Simpson

Anker with Jenni and the boys, Isaac, Sam and Max, as well as their two dogs, Happy and Leroy

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The sport has come a long way since Anker was first introduced to it. He grew up near the mountains of central California and his father was a “backcountry enthusiast” who instilled love and respect for wild country. “We were in Tuolumne County, which served as a gateway to the backcountry in the same way [Bozeman] serves as a gateway to the Yellowstone country,” he says. “That was our existence, and we were always going off into the backcountry with burros and donkeys for fishing and peak bagging. Some of my most formative memories are from those times, and I just remember thinking how badass my dad and his friends were.” To this day Anker still has a pair of hulking leather boots owned by one of his father’s friends. “That’s a formative time, and I was fortunate enough to grow up in a house where family was respected and where my parents nurtured this love for the outdoors,” he says. That love eventually sent Anker to college at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he studied commercial recreation and began working for The North Face in 1981. The legendary Stump would occasionally cruise into the store where Anker worked to buy a block of chalk and would soon be telling stories about epic climbs around the world. The best stories were always of summits that denied him. Those stories would eventually include the Shark’s Fin. “To me, Mugs was a seer,” Anker

A shrine to Alex Lowe inside Anker’s gear room in Bozeman

wrote in Alpinist. “He used big, hard routes to try to cross into that ideal space where you climb without conscious thought and imagine an unlimited reality. I wanted to experience what he did. And then, that one day, he asked me to go climbing. That was it.”

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n one of the last days of Bozeman’s ice-climbing season, Anker heads to Hyalite Canyon with a group of friends and newcomers. Like some emissary of goodwill, he makes his way around the socalled Genesis area, greeting one and all as if he were running for political office. He’s not, although Anker is intensely involved in both the local and worldwide climbing communities (see side-

Yogesh Simpson

bar). This is just how Anker carries himself, especially when he’s climbing. “We have to realize how lucky we are to be here,” he says after lending his ice tools to a novice climber from Butte. “You have to be ready to get all the joy you can get out of these days. That’s part of what we’re doing here.” The statement sounds a lot like something Alex Lowe used to say: “The best climber is the one having the most fun.” The one having the most fun on this particular day is a 20-year-old named Luke, who is new to ice climbing. He’s climbing with old, heavy ice axes. Luke himself is a bit heavy, as well. But he doesn’t care. He’s climbing ice and he seems to be loving every minute of the experience. Continued on page 58

BORN: November 27, 1962 NICKNAME: Radster RESIDENCE: Bozeman FIVE NOTABLE CLIMBS: First ascent, with Mugs Stump, of “Streaked Wall” in Zion National Park (1990); first ascent of the southwest face of Latok II, Pakistan (1997); Mount Everest research expedition to seek answers to the disappearances of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine (1999); three new routes to Vinson Massif, Antarctica (2000-01); first ascent of Shark’s Fin on Meru Peak, Himalaya (2011). FIVE BUCKET-LIST CLIMBS: Southeastern ridge of Annapurna, Himalaya; Nameless Peak, Himalaya; the Matterhorn, Swiss Alps; Mount Robson, Canadian Rockies; Mount McKinley, Alaska, with son Max. CIVIC GOOD IN BOZEMAN: Affiliated with the Bozeman Boulders Initiative, which funds and builds realistic climbing boulders in local parks and open spaces; and fundraiser for the Bozeman Ice Tower, a premier climbing facility and concert venue that would be built on the Gallatin County Fairgrounds. INTERNATIONAL OUTREACH: Board member of The Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation and the affiliated Khumbu Climbing School in Nepal; board member of the Conservation Alliance; and board member of the Rowell Fund for Tibet. CREED: be good. be kind. be happy. Yogesh Simpson


HEAD LIGHT by Cathrine L. Walters

t’s late in the day and the sun is setting. As you look to your friend after a long day on the trail you notice a beautifully colored sky behind him. He’s engulfed in brilliant light and appears featureless, but you know he’s smiling back. Wanting to document this spectacular contrast, you grab your camera, point, and pull the trigger. Your flash fires to fill in the shadows and ruins the shot. What happened? Your camera metered its exposure on your friend, not on the brilliant sky. Shooting in such limited ambient light can be frustrating, but learning to create photographic silhouettes will add an entirely different mood to your photos. To create a successful “shadow portrait” you need to consider three key elements: subject, separation and backlight. When photographing a silhouette, all surface features will be lost and the subject will appear black and one-dimensional, so it’s important to frame the shot on something the human eye can easily recognize. Think of trees, mountains, bicycles, animals and, of course, people. In order to make clear that your subject is, say, a mountain biker on a hillside and not an

I

elephant in a tar pit, you or your subject will have to move to an appropriate vantage point. Typically, this means getting low and shooting up, framing the mountain biker against a bright sky. This ensures that you get the best outline and create separation between the biker and his surroundings. Most automatic digital cameras determine the exposure and focus of a shot when the shutter button is pressed halfway down. In silhouetting situations, if you follow through and press the button all the way, the flash will fire. The trick is to fool the camera by

pointing it toward the sky with the shutter button pressed halfway down. Now, still holding the shutter button halfway, reframe the shot onto your subject and press the button all the way. Shooters with a little more experience may prefer to use the camera’s manual setting. Once you’ve mastered still subjects, try moving targets. This takes a little more skill to get proper focus, but can result in even more dynamic images. There are worse things to do with your time than spending magic hours in search of a perfect shadow.

Cathrine L. Walters


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HEAD SHOTS mtheadwall.com Paul Roys captures a self portrait while gliding toward Mount Sentinel in Missoula. ÂľGoPro, 5mm, 1/800, f /3.6, ISO 100

Ashton Howard


Eric Berkner

A mountain goat stands among wildflowers in Glacier National Park. ÂľCanon D20, 300mm, 1/250, f /5.6, ISO 100

Fatima Donaldson

Staring up at aspens at Maclay Flats in Missoula.

ÂľNikon D300, 24mm, 1/3200, f /2.8, ISO 200 Paul Roys

Montana Headwall Page 25 Spring 2012


HEAD SHOTS mtheadwall.com

Marisa White

Marisa White takes a leisurely ride through the hills north of Missoula. µNikon D5000, 35mm, 1/125, f /16, ISO 250

Benjamin Polley

Benjamin Polley captures a beautiful sunset from the Prairie Reef Fire Lookout, located in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. µCanon G1x, 15mm, 1/40, f /5.6, ISO 200

We know you’re out there, having epics and snapping photos. Instead of condemning

them to anonymity in hard-drive purgatory, go for the glory and send your best images to us at hweditor@mtheadwall.com. Include the location, your name, the names of all people shown and any information you think is useful. We’ll take it from there.





Spire Rock near Butte

Chad Harder

“I think I need a tourniquet.” I heard my mouth issue the unlikely phrase calmly, like asking for a glass of water. I’d been climbing, and just fallen a dozen feet. A boulder the size of a refrigerator fell with me. It stopped moving right between my knees. I was dazed, sore, and I couldn’t move my neck, but mostly I was grimly aware that my right hand was no longer on the end of my arm. The hand was still attached, but just barely. It dangled near my elbow. Between it and me was an exposed mess of shattered bones, grated skin and severed sinew. The open end of an artery was pumping wildly, painting arm and granite in a warm red. The bright ivory bone fragments and mangled innards looked like a deer leg that had been blown apart by a bullet. The wound had an inoffensive, almost coppery odor, like damp meat or blood. I imagined my deerbutchering days might be over. My partner, Kara McMahon, appeared from behind me, frightened but poised to help. It took only seconds to agree the hand was lost. It required no imagination to see my arm now ending in a stub. We turned our focus to saving the rest of me. As far as we could figure that meant stopping the bleeding. Kara pulled the climbing rack from my pack, unclipped a 24-inch sling of webbing, and doubled it up. To get the loops around my wrist I grabbed the limp hand with my good one and lifted it. Bone shards caught and clicked in the

least of which was getting me—the biggest guy in the group—to the road. This would be a first tourniquet for all of us. Kara hardened herself, grabbed a stick, inserted the lever through the loops of webbing and twisted. The strap snugged against my forearm about two inches upstream of the wound. I breathed deeply, realizing that we were choosing the terminus of my new arm. “Ready?” Kara’s face was inches from mine. She was about to finish off my hand with a tourniquet, a thing neither of us had ever considered. I nodded, slowed my breathing, and positioned my hand back where it had always been. The wrist gurgled and clicked. I looked directly through a void that had recently been my wrist. Kara McMahon The tourniquet dug into my forearm. Kara repositioned for leverage, then twisted until the spurting stopped. lighting her like an angel. I quipped that She went a few turns more, then pressed the real tragedy was that she didn’t rip the stick against my forearm and tied it her shirt off while straddling me more tightly in place. often. Sitting there, propped against my Two friends—John Adams and Jesse pack, I wanted to help, but I was at a loss. Froehling—arrived horrified, and offered Most pressing now was the walk out. The to do whatever they could. John got idea of getting to the rig with this nowthrough to 911 immediately. An ambulance would be at the trailhead in an hour extraneous appendage flopping at the end of my arm was freaking me out or so, but that seemed a long ways off. enough that I considered yanking it off We had much to do before then, not the joint, but the pain felt distant. The joint was in the wrong place and the hand, heavy and stiff, did not feel like mine, or even alive. The sling positioned, Kara stepped across and straddled me. She removed her cotton T-shirt to use as a bandage. The morning sun shone on her skin, back-

Montana Headwall Page 30 Summer 2013


entirely, removing it like a bracelet. I thought I might just pull it off, slip it in my pocket, and carry it out. Why not? What was the better option? I forced myself to inspect the wound more closely. All the back-of-hand tendons were severed. So was at least one artery. The nerve situation was unknown but I couldn’t feel anything past the pinch point. No bones or connective tissues seemed to bridge the gap. The skin of my wrist looked like perforated tissue paper. The hand might release with a reasonable yank. One bundle of abraded tendons remained intact on the inside of my wrist. The “flexors,” I’d learn later. Having butchered dozens of deer and elk, I have some understanding of tendon strength. Without a knife, the effort would be heroic, if not futile. I was vaguely aware that a series of aggressive but unsuccessful tugs would be hard to erase from my memory. But walking out with a dangling hand was equally unappealing. Jesse found a nearby juniper branch and I used my left hand to press the fingers of the unfeeling right hand into a fist around it. The pale fingers stayed where I put them. Jesse wrapped it with Kara’s T-shirt and held it snug with webbing. The whole mess would be held rigidly in place and not flop about. This took maybe 10 minutes, and I hadn’t moved an inch from where I’d landed. Kara insisted that I sit tight until she’d checked out my spine and palpated me for less obvious injuries. She’ll say anything to get a piece of me. ••• Kara pinched my toes and poked every inch of my body. All seemed fine until, probing near my knee, her thumb pressed into something she called “squishy.” That hidden 3-inch gash would eventually take several layers of stitches to close, but I hadn’t noticed it. Kara was now even more suspicious about my ability to assess my own spine, and she suggested

we wait for the medics. But this hell was starting to get to me, and I was ready to get off the rock and to the hospital. My neck was stiff but didn’t seem broken, so with my friends’ help I struggled to my feet, only to find my knees and feet too banged-up to stand, let alone walk. The terrain didn’t permit a side-by-side carry, so I started scooting downhill in one-handed crab-style. The truck was just a quarter-mile away, but that seemed terribly far.

Kara McMahon

arrived—an ambulance carrying no pain meds. Too much risk of getting them stolen they explained as I finally let myself lose it, writhing and complaining on the gurney but thankful to be hospital-bound. Less than an hour later, nurses at the St. James Hospital’s emergency room in Butte injected me with some forget-about-it cocktail. A kindly doc chatted me up while unwrapping the mess. “What are we looking at here?” he asked, maybe of Kara, maybe of me. “Well, my hand was sorta pinched off by a falling boulder. Kara McMahon It’s pretty ugly.” “Oh yeah? What do you think is going to happen?” I don’t recall hearing ATVs, but John tracked down a rider (I didn’t catch your name, but I still owe you a beer!) who came over immediately and gave me a ride to the road. We pulled in just as the ambulance


He carefully deconstructed our makeshift splint, revealing my wrongcolored and disjointed hand from the dirty, crusty mess. The purplish-yellow color was difficult to swallow. “I think it’s done for,” I said. “Done for?” The doc leaned close to my face. “We don’t do amputations,” he said. His matter-of-factness was so confident I believed him. But I knew that the tourniquet had been constricting bloodflow for an hour. And with my hand and wrist resting on blue surgical pads, I could clearly see more space than wrist separating the two. But it was the right thing to say, an invigorating and empowering last thing to hear before passing out. ••• I woke dazed. Doctors were talking to Kara. I was wearing nothing but a gown. A bandage extended from above my elbow to well beyond where my fingers should have been. A clue my hand was still in there? It was all held in place by a brightyellow foam brace full of holes. It looked like what a Cheesehead might put on his head for a Packers game. The ER staff said they’d heard that before, and let me know I would soon be flying. An ambulance zipped me to a Life Flight airplane for an immediate flight to the hospital at Utah State University. The

plane was refueling when we got there and the ambulance had other broken people to go deal with. They pulled me out and collapsed my gurney directly on the hot black tarmac. The ambulance sped

“Done for?” The doc leaned close to my face. “We don’t do amputations,” he said. away and even though I was left just inches off the ground I recall good views of the Berkeley Pit and Our Lady of the Rockies. Flight nurses stood nearby, dressed like Top Gun pilots and chatting, exuding calm confidence as they waited for the plane. A slight wind licked at my gown, and I might have felt sexy if it hadn’t been for that Cheesehead thing on my arm. I asked for more pain meds and wondered what things might look like under this bandage, and what would happen next.

••• A lot had occurred since we’d arrived to climb at Spire Rock just a few hours before. Spire is one of countless piles of giant granite boulders rising out of the high desert of Homestake Pass, the route by which Interstate 90 crosses the Continental Divide a dozen miles southeast of Butte. The rounded formations are part of the Boulder Batholith, an unmistakeable granite formation visible from the highway. The hard, clean, quartz monzonite has long served as a magnet for rock climbers. But while dozens of established climbing routes make it a prominent cragging destination, it’s the uncommonly dry and warm microclimate that draws the masses during the shoulder seasons of spring and fall. When Missoula is wet, or still coming out of winter hibernation, the crags at Spire Rock are frequently dry, sun-baked and inviting. After a quick and greasy breakfast at Butte’s M&M Bar, we’d arrived racked and ready, angling for mid-level sport routes up the west face. There’s no single approach trail, just incipient paths weaving through sagebrush, juniper and boulder piles before converging at the saddle separating Spire Rock’s two prominent towers, The Queen and The King. We spread out and took our own routes up, choosing whatever level of challenge we wanted as we went. I found myself farther left than the others and confronted with a choice of scrambling through spiny vegetation to the right or a balancey boulder problem to the left. I chose left. It was short, just a delicate, gently overhung step-across that required an under-cling to accomplish eight feet of traverse. I was feeling strong and eager and got right to it. I pounded the rock with my palm a few times to determine its soundness. It rang a bit hollow, but felt rigid, so I called it good. I reached beneath, found a solid grip and, swinging my left foot toward the next step, pulled my body into the rocky bulge. Kara McMahon


Kara McMahon

That’s when the rock shifted and collapsed, the coarse granite pressing against my face while its thin lower edge drove toward the rock below. Its weight pushed what had just been an excellent handhold right through my wrist as if it wasn’t even there. I instinctively shoved away from the tumbling boulders and, aware that Kara was somewhere behind me, screamed “ROCK!” With the sharp, unmistakable smell of broken stone dusting the air, I became aware that a Massive, Important Thing was happening. A split second later I came to a rest, utterly limp-wristed, and not yet understanding the gravity of the situation. ••• The “partial” part of a partial amputation is weird. It may be better than full amputation, but it’s also more difficult to comprehend, and way more hassle to deal with. If your finger or leg is completely detached, there’s not much to do other than decide whether to carry it out or leave it for the birds. Partial amputations leave wiggle room and invite questions like, “Is the appendage salvageable?” Aron Ralston has considered these things. His hand was trapped under a boulder while hiking in Utah, and he famously chose to cut it off. Others have done the same when their arms have

fragments with a chunk of my hip to create a bone that extends from knuckle to elbow. Today that knuckle is calloused and often bleeding, because I bang it on everything. It’s inconvenient, and it can be awkward, but it’s so much better than a handless stub. Some circulation and chronic pain issues remain, but I’m not complaining. I had written off the hand, and I’ve still got it. I can grip a camera, plant a ski pole and boy can I hold a beer. I call that a smashing success. As beneficial as it was, therapy was terribly painful, more persistent than the injury itself, and a real psychological challenge. It also introduced me to remarkable people with equally difficult or worse conditions who helped me appreciate my luck. One had fallen into a well and, among other serious injuries, had “de-gloved,” essentially ripping the skin entirely off his hand. His therapy involved having his hand surgically inserted into his abdomen, where conditions are Kara McMahon conducive to regrowing skin. Another was in therapy after having his ulna and radius shattered by a .50 caliber bullet, fighting and don’t ever return completely to normal. Nerve regrowth was incomplete, so I in Afghanistan. He too had needed a tourniquet. The military uses them regudon’t feel the back of my hand, except in larly to stop severe bleeding when medone hyper-sensitive, on-fire spot, a “neuical help is nearby but not immediately roma.” Doctors combined salvaged bone been trapped by winches, combines, front-end loaders and fallen logs. They had to get out. My boulder didn’t trap me. It let me and my mangled hand go. Repairs were complex enough that one surgeon told me it was the most significant reconstruction his team had ever attempted. One titanium plate, four surgeries and lots of rehab later my hand is back on my arm and functioning remarkably well. I still have flexibility issues, because tendons adhere to bone when they’re immobilized

Montana Headwall Page 33 Summer 2013


on the scene. Their reasoning is that cutting off blood flow to an appendage is appropriate only when an injury is thought to be life-threatening. And ending that threat to life was exactly what we were trying to do at the time. We didn’t know it, but two separate arteries feed oxygenated blood to the hand. The tourniquet we applied worked by stopping the leaky one—the radial. Doctors speculate that it didn’t stop the other, the ulnar. Though compromised by the tourniquet, the ulnar continued pumping blood, keeping my hand alive enough to salvage. ••• I didn’t return to the accident site for years, but last summer I went back to get a more levelheaded sense of the scene. I arrived emotional—a bit nervous, a bit sad. Kara and I walked up the hill in silence, retracing our steps of three years prior. When we neared the area, we split up to look. Kara found it immediately, an obvious void where the rock once rested, its unmoved neighbors precarious in its absence. The rock that had crushed my arm was obvious, still clean

The rock

Chad Harder

and pale from its recent tumble. The granite slab beneath it was still white, chipped by the falling boulder, not yet covered in lichen or duff and gleaming exposed in the sun. There was no blood visible. I remembered the broken-rock smell. Warm from the uphill approach and the afternoon sun, we shed a layer and sat down on the offending stone. We burned some dried sage that Kara had brought and I smoked a bowl. Sizing up the boulder, I was glad to be alive. We

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agreed that I had been incredibly lucky, that the rock was plenty large enough to have done more damage than it did. I exhaled into the clean, crisp air and felt fortunate to be here again, and still. It was a visceral, potent reminder of human frailty, impermanence, of my place in this world. Perhaps more than anything else, that falling rock defined my last three years, altering my work and my play and the lives of many deeply caring friends and family members. But that’s just the “me” part. On that quiet afternoon, looking out across the grand landscape, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the utter irrelevance of that one small rockslide to the part of the universe that isn’t me. Millions of similar granite boulders emerge from the surrounding forest, every one of them under the constant assault of wind, rain and gravity. That one of them fell and smashed my wrist was a nearly unnoticeable shift in the landscape’s endless erosion. I felt a strong sense of place, and of peace. We walked quietly back to the truck, turning around to watch a climbing party top out on The King, laughing and shouting their joy to be alive.


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by Aaron Hanson photos by Robin Carleton

HEAD TRIP


ll we needed to do was get down. I followed the taught line of 10mm climbing rope that stretched over the edge and out of sight past the first overhang. The granite dropped steeply away beneath me, revealing the stark contrast between the snowfield down below and the scree field beyond that. It was at that paralyzing moment I felt the first pangs of doubt seeping into my consciousness. We were stuck. This route wasn’t going to work. And it was up to me to figure out a different way. I took a deep breath and assessed the situation: I was stranded in a sea of near-vertical granite in the

A

middle of the Bitterroot Mountains, responsible for two less experienced climbers and separated from our de facto guide. Assuming I found a safe way down, we still faced a six-mile hike back to our cars before the afternoon sun turned to dark. I wasn’t sure what to do. And yet, as daunting as the situation appeared to be, the thought crossed my mind that this was exactly what I had longed for. I had exchanged the personal stumbling and searching of my recent past with a more immediate predicament. I asked for this. Now I just needed to find a way out.



One week earlier, with coffee balanced precariously in my lap, I’d turned my car east onto Interstate 84 for the beginning of a move from Oregon to Idaho. After months of job searching, my wife and I had a reason to relocate. I’d landed a new job as a teacher and it left me feeling the excitement of change for the first time in what seemed like forever. The move and my new opportunity were all I was thinking of when my friend Robin Carleton called just days before the drive. “You will only be three hours away, why don’t you come over and visit us in Missoula next week?” he blurted through the earpiece. “It’s the perfect time of year for the high country!” Robin and I met at Eastern Oregon University, when I was a confused freshman and he was an upperclassman with a penchant for sniffing out bold expeditions. During my four years at EOU, it was a rare weekend that Robin did not convince our unsuspecting group of friends to partake in three-day forays into the mountains and onto the rivers of eastern Oregon. He referred to them simply as “adventures,” which made them sound as if they were no big deal. For me, they weren’t quite so nonchalant. It was during those challenging weekends that I learned the most about my potential and resolve, and began to appreciate the endless possibilities of exploring the outdoors.

The everyday humdrum of life can, however, get in the way of pursuing such eye-opening experiences. My wife and I used to explore other countries and climb remote mountains, but other things started to take precedence. We’d lost touch with the outdoors. Routine had dulled our senses. It was partly for this reason that my wife and I wanted to move to Idaho, needed a change of scenery and were ready for something new. So it couldn’t have been more perfect to have Robin on the phone, beckoning us to take a detour and tag along on his latest “adventure.”

Canyon Peak sits on the west side of the Bitterroot Valley, 9,154 feet high, situated above Canyon Lake and, farther below, the city of Hamilton. The plan was to hike from the trailhead about five miles in to Canyon Lake and then hike a little farther before tackling the exposed fifth-class face to the summit. We carried gear and food for one night, as well as a light rope and a small assortment of climbing gear. When my wife and I arrived at the trailhead, we greeted Robin and his wife, Chris. The day was hot, but the four of us quickly trekked up the trail alongside Canyon Creek and left the smothering temperatures of the valley behind. I remember my pack feeling light and our pace fast during the first four miles. Then the trail began to

steepen. We reached a narrow canyon guarded on both sides with towering rock walls, and filled with the sounds of water cascading down the granite slides of Canyon Creek. We hadn’t even reached the climbing portion, and already I was beginning to feel a freedom I had not felt in a long time. The jagged beauty of the Bitterroots continued to reveal itself along the hike. At one point I peered through an opening in the trees, past a moss-covered boulder, and saw the valley drop away sharply beneath me in a dizzying array of cliffs, interrupted only by the silvery tongue of Canyon Creek as it fell from the head of the valley. It was a breathtaking moment, spoiled only by the fact that we were nowhere near our desired stopping point at Canyon Lake. As is often the case in an alpine environment, everything in the Canyon Creek drainage is bigger than it seems. We expected the lake around every bend, but time and again we were faced with another hummock or switchback taking us even higher. We had been grunting upwards for what felt like an eternity when the narrow trail suddenly pointed down. I thought for sure it would be the beginning of the Canyon Lake basin. Instead, we found a muddy patch of nothing. We stopped in the waning evening light and looked at one another, speechless. With a feeling of dread that had been slowly taking hold over the last few grueling miles, I thought of the anonymous fork in the trail about an hour back. Could it be that we were lost? It’s times like these that Robin tends to thrive. His wisdom—or luck; I’m never quite sure—during self-induced mountain hardship has never ceased to amaze me. He’s optimistic and firm and calm. In times of upheaval in my personal life I have relied on this same rock-steady insight from him for inspiration and advice.


“We need to continue across this open area and search for a trail,” Robin said confidently. “I am sure if we just follow this drainage we will be able to spot Canyon Peak and take our bearings.” It occurred to me later that this is why I decided to do this climb. The challenge and connection to the outdoors are part of it, but sharing the adventure with an old friend is what I’d missed most.

The hours of early evening came and went by the time we finally flopped down in a soft, grassy meadow at the far end of upper Canyon Lake. Robin had been right. He found the trail, which had been partially hidden in a thicket of brush, and we safely reached the lake before sundown. The impressive east face of Canyon Peak stood directly above us. The next day dawned clear and warm and we were glad we had positioned ourselves close to the base of the climb. We hopped from boulder to boulder across the scree below the peak, pausing only to rope up as the north ridge rose and steepened. As we made our way up the ridge, following crack systems and face features that led across sheer slabs, the ground dropped away, replaced with the void created by the near-vertical faces of the peak. We climbed as two teams of two, each couple experiencing the route-finding challenges and overcoming technical crux sections. The granite crystals bit into the rubber of our climbing shoes and provided solid purchase when handholds were scarce, and cracks and fissures of varying sizes offered excellent jamming for our hands when the wall steepened.

“On belay,” I shouted as my wife prepared to tackle the third pitch of the climb. The next pitch would gain us the ridge and a breathtaking view with thousands of feet of exposure. Once on the ridge, we regrouped. After pausing to gaze down on the dramatic formations of Blodgett Canyon to the north, we turned to face the last and most difficult portion of the climb. At this point, about 250

dropped away, replaced with the void created by the near-vertical faces of the peak.” “The ground

feet below the summit, the ridge narrowed and rose drastically. The climbing was never extremely technical, but the exposure made us happy to periodically place cams and chocks, clipping the rope to them and allowing our system to give us the confidence needed to balance and smear through the final moves. We reached the summit one by one and exchanged high-fives and handshakes on a small area of flat, crystalinfused granite that glittered and reflected the intense rays of a sun that now caused us to shield our eyes. A breathtaking panorama of the Bitterroots stretched out before us. I was aware of a feeling that I had not felt in many months. This was where I needed to be. The hardest part of savoring a moment like this one is remembering that you still have to get down. And it’s easy to forget that in a harsh, unforgiving environment like Canyon Peak, the way down can be more treacherous than the way up. Once the four of us finished admiring the view and snapping photos, we rappelled and traversed our way down the east face with slings wrapped around trees and rock horns for anchors. We avoided the difficulties of the ridge we had just ascended, until noticing that what had looked like a low-angle and relatively broken face was actually dangerously steep and as smooth as a newborn’s behind. Robin hung 60 meters below with no apparent tree or protrusion to set up a rappel anchor. The rest of us looked on from a ledge above and realized this route wasn’t going to work. We were stuck. Even worse, we’d been separated from Robin.


Thanks to those early years of weekend adventures in the mountains, Robin and I have plenty of experience solving problems. With Robin hanging below, he and I shouted ideas back and forth and eventually devised a plan. I tied two 60-meter ropes together to create one 120-meter line, which we thought would be just long enough to get Robin past an overhanging rock to safe, low-angle terrain below. I took my time lowering him, holding his full weight, until he reached the easier footing. Once there, Robin carefully climbed and slid his way toward the talus field below, but the move meant our extended rope was left dangling above the passable but treacherous terrain. The whole process of lowering him past the knot had been exhausting and complicated, and the less experienced climbers of our group didn’t exactly feel comfortable about following Robin’s path. We needed an alternate route—and, as the day was moving to evening, we needed it fast. We still had a long hike waiting for us. For the past hour I had been scanning the face for weaknesses. Although much of the terrain surrounding us looked moderate, I knew that looks can be deceiving; one short, blank section can render a featurefilled route impassible, and loose rocks can lead to a slip and disaster. We didn’t have Robin to help guide us since he was already safe below, so I had to trust my instincts and get the rest of us down. I pointed toward a possible escape route and we headed that direction. In that moment, challenged by the elements and humbled by the surroundings, I couldn’t have been further from my recent routine. My senses were no longer dulled.

“What took you so long?” Robin asked. “I had a nice, mid-afternoon nap in the shade.” We couldn’t help but laugh, thankful to be standing on solid ground and be done with Canyon Peak’s daunting east face. Looking back across the tiny ledge system we had followed, I felt the strain of hours of concentration ease. I enjoy the focus necessary to navigating alpine terrain, but I also enjoy a deep exhale after successfully conquering it. I hardly remember the leg-numbing stumble back down the scree. We packed camp and had enough time to take a refreshing swim in the lake before hiking back down the trail to our vehicles. We had just completed one of the most invigorating weekend trips I had ever experienced. In the car on the way back to Missoula I felt exhausted and starved, and my mind drifted to thoughts of food and cold beer. But I was also aware of an overall feeling of satisfaction. This trip marked the true beginning of my new future and affirmed the decision my wife and I made to move. We were where we belonged. We were ready for our next adventure.


WILD THINGS by Lisa Densmore

he dark cloud would have appeared normal at first, an afternoon storm building over the Beartooth Range. However, there was something different about the cloud’s texture, and, moments later, its sound. Storm clouds shroud mountains like a thick gray soup. The sounds associated with them are wind and thunder. This cloud pixelated the atmosphere and hummed. As the din swelled, it was clear this was no cumulonimbus weather event, but rather a swarm of locusts. Then, just as the flying mass reached the eastern slopes of the Beartooths, it stopped, swatted from the sky by ... the weather. In a case of disrupted migration, a storm blindsided the cold-blooded locusts and knocked them onto a glacier at 11,300 feet above sea level on the north side of Iceberg Peak. Subsequent blizzards buried the bugs for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, but they resurfaced a century ago as the ice sheet, now fittingly called Grasshopper Glacier, receded. J.P. Kimball, a geologist looking for mining opportunities, discovered the frozen insects in the early 1900s. Shortly afterward, the U.S. Bureau of Entomology determined them to be extinct Rocky Mountain locusts (Melanoplus spretus). Just 30 years prior to Kimball’s discovery, trillions of Rocky Mountain locusts still inhabited the western United States. Scientists estimate that locust outbreaks used to occur in Montana about twice each decade. According to Jeffrey Lockwood, a professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wyoming who has studied Rocky Mountain locusts much of his career, swarms like those entombed in Grasshopper Glacier were part of the species’ lifecycle. “Locusts sense crowding, by touch and smell, as an indication that food sources will be in short supply in the near future,” Lockwood says. “It triggers morphological changes. They grow longer wings because they have to get the hell outta there. Their color changes, perhaps to fool predators into thinking they taste nasty, and their reproduction is suppressed in exchange for building energy reserves.”

T

Lockwood believes the change from content hopper to pandemic pestilence is a survival mechanism. “When they’re not crowded, locusts tend to avoid each other, but as they change from solitary to migratory, they seek close contact, like schooling fish,” he says. “With 100 million in a swarm, the chance any one of them will be bird food is low.” Historically, some locust outbreaks were so dense they created multiday solar eclipses. They devoured plants, laundry, leather, even the wool off the backs of sheep, but the locusts that swarmed the Beartooths made either a navigational error or flew into a freak storm and froze to death. Grasshopper Glacier on Iceberg Peak is one of at least three locust-encrusted ice sheets in Montana. A second in the Beartooths is called Hopper Glacier, and the third, another Grasshopper Glacier, is in the Crazy Mountains. In the 1990s, Lockwood discovered yet another in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. The one on Iceberg Peak is the best known, and it’s disappearing. Years of diminishing snowfall and melting have reduced it from over five miles to less than a quarter-mile across. For many years, anyone could make the four-mile hike to Grasshopper Glacier and chip out a perfectly preserved hopper. Recently, more and more of the locusts have melted out of their icy tomb and decomposed. How could a species numbering in the trillions disappear so quickly at the end of the 19th century? Between outbreaks, the locusts lived in river valleys, the same places pioneers found best for agriculture. Those early farmers unknowingly wiped out the locusts when they diverted streams for irrigation, allowed cattle and sheep to graze riparian areas, and eliminated beavers and their dams. Now, the only evidence of their existence— the ones encrusted in Rocky Mountain ice—are on the verge of disappearing as well.

Jeffrey Lockwood



GRUB by Ari LeVaux

Cathrine L. Walters

rawdads, also known as crayfish, are like lobsters, except they live in freshwater, and they’re smaller. Montana’s crayfish live in rivers, lakes, ponds and marshes—just about anywhere there’s a permanent water source. They like to hide in nooks and crannies along the bottom, between rocks and under logs, but can also be seen prowling about. You need a fishing license to legally take them, either with a trap, or mano a mano, like a man. Most of my crawdadding takes place in the Blackfoot River. It’s a lazy river in summertime, when the crawdadding is good, and the place I like to go is just 40 minutes from Missoula. The water at this access is slow and deep, with lazy eddies circling beneath black cliffs. The last time I was there, my crawdad adviser and I used snorkeling gear to survey the forest-green river’s rocky bottom. He’d stashed seven crawdads in his mesh diving bag before I even had my mask on. We carried the mesh bags in one ungloved hand and wore gloves on our other. The most important rule of crawdad hunting is: don’t ever switch the bag to the gloved hand and grab a crawdad with your naked hand. Those pincers can draw blood. It’s amazing how far the scream of a pinched crawdad hunter can travel underwater. A claw is often the first thing you see, poking out from some crevice. Reach fast and grab behind the head. Crawdads will often wiggle free with a violent burst of the tail. This typically happens just when your lungful of air is finally spent. But with prey in sight, scurrying away, you dig deep and give chase, your cells breathing nothing but adrenaline. Many times have I found myself twisting at some upside-down angle, kicking and convulsing and trying not to gulp water. Hunting crawdads is the closest I’ll ever come to being in a jet-fighter duel, or a big-screen Kung-Fu fight scene. The first crawdad I caught had only one claw, and that’s all it needed. When I grabbed the supposedly safe spot behind its head, it immediately did this crazy yoga move, reaching behind its back and pinching my gloved hand. Unwilling to let it go, and unwilling to let it keep pinching me, I committed the beginner’s error of transferring the crawdad to my other hand. My unprotected fingers felt the spines and sharp edges of the exoskeleton as I yanked my gloved hand from its calcium

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carbonate clamp. As soon as I pulled the glove from the maw of said claw, it went straight back into the yoga pose, this time toward my ungloved hand. I panicked at the thought of getting bit, and at the possibility that the crawdad might get away. When it clamped my ungloved hand, I shrieked appropriately. I used my gloved hand to pry open the claw, at which point the animal detached itself from said claw and darted away, leaving me in an empty-handed handshake with a disembodied claw. I had been out of air and planning to go to the surface before I even spotted that one-armed crawdad. After a U-turn, the chase, the game of hot potato and the claw ejection that ensued, my lungs were imploding. But, reaching into a seldom-used emergency reserve of whoop-ass, I continued my pursuit of the limbless warrior. Amazingly, I caught it. Not only that, but I made it back to the surface without blacking out or inhaling river. My crawdad adviser and I emptied our bags into a cooler filled with river water, and he sprinkled in cornmeal for the crawdads to eat. The cornmeal pushes whatever filter-fed crap is in their guts out the other end. We took our catch home and put them in an aerated fish tank until the next evening. About a third died and we had to toss them, reinforcing the conventional wisdom that it’s best to cook your fresh-caught crawdads ASAP. Boil crawdads for 10 minutes in salted water and, if you wish, crab boil (a spice mixture available in most stores) until bright red. The crawdad adviser likes to pull off the tails and suck out the hot guts (and eat the tails, of course, where most of the meat is). I wondered whether the guts, filled with cornmeal, might taste like lobster polenta, but they tasted kind of disgusting, like guts. The claw and tail meat were great. I cooked all my crawdads and then set to experimenting. First I made scampi, frying the meat with garlic, butter, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. Then I made ceviche by marinating the cooked crawdad in lime, crushed garlic, chopped cilantro and red onion, minced jalapeno, and salt and pepper. I also tried putting them in paella. They didn’t suck. Montana crawdads may not be as big as lobsters, but they make up for their small size with sweetness. With crustaceans as tasty as these in the mountains, who needs a coast?


Join us for these Local Sierra Club Outings Free & open to the public! Deadman Point at Blue Mountain, Missoula (women only). June 10 to sign up, contact Maria at maire-mt@earthlink.net.

Dinah Lake Trail from Lake Elsina, Mission Mountains (women only). July 29 - to sign up contact Janet Fiero at janetfiero77@gmail.com

Fred Burr Reservoir, Bitterroot Mountains (women only). June 19 to sign up, contact Mary Owens at trekker320@aol.com

Grizzlies in the Gallatin. August 3 (date tentative) - to sign up, contact www.montana.sierraclub.org click on outings

Canyon Lake, Bitterroot Mountains. July 13 - to sign up, contact Mary Owens at trekker320@aol.com.

Glacier country paddling, car camping and hiking (women only/member preference) Aug 9-Aug14 - to sign up, contact Janet Fiero at janetfiero77@gmail.com

Kayak Paddle from Forest Grove to Big Eddy, Superior (women only). July 15 - to sign up contact Maria at maire-mt@earthlink.net Glen Lake, Bitterroot Mountains (women only). July 24 - to sign up, contact Mary Owens at trekker320@aol.com Learn to survive in the outdoors class, Missoula. July 25 - to sign up, contact Mike at jarnevic@earthlink.net Learn to survive in the outdoors outing, Missoula. July 27-July 28 - to sign up, contact Mike at jarnevic@earhlink.net

Great Burn backpack (member preference). August 23-August 25 - to sign up, contact Bob Clark at bob.clark@sierraclub.org Missouri River Badlands canoe trip (member preference). Sept. 5-Sept. 10 - to sign up contact, Janet Fiero at janetfiero77@gmail.com or John Wolverton at yodelingdog@hotmail.com Camp, hike & paddle to Wild Horse Island, Flathead Lake (member preference). Sept. 7-Sept. 8 - to sign up, contact Maria at maire-mt@earthlink.net or Mike at jarnevic@earthlink.net

The Sierra Club's Montana Chapter is helping to protect the landscape and natural resources of Montana for future generations. For more information visit:

www.montana.sierraclub.org Montana Headwall Page 45 Summer 2013


HEAD TRIP

Day 1: The Bitterroot

by Dave Reuss • photos by Sam Lungren

There’s a point where normal, otherwise benign activities can border on the aesthetic. Everyday actions can achieve such a high level of proficiency that they transcend execution and approach beauty. They become an art form. Even without knowing a driver from a pitching wedge, watching The Masters in Augusta is inspiring. Even if you hate the Red Sox,

seeing someone throw a ball as fast as a bullet, followed by someone sending it into the next county with a wooden stick—it’s just pretty. When it comes to fly fishing, a good number of people think of Montana as the Fenway Park or Augusta National of trout country. As such, it’s bound to attract the fishing equivalent of Ted Williams or Tiger Woods. Floating down the Bitterroot toward Hamilton, I’m surrounded by experts of the craft. They throw gorgeous casts, big loops of neon whipping over-

head, only to land the fly gently on the water. The practice is drilled so deep into their muscle memory, it’s as if it’s encoded in their DNA. With veterans in all three rafts, my ham-fisted casting technique stands out like a boner in sweatpants. The only thing I have managed to hook all day is the bill of my hat. For the eighth time in about three hours, I swing my fishing rod back so the guide can unweave my rat’s nest of a line and smile my best sorry I’m an idiot smile.


This was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. Three guided trips down three different rivers, with stops at six microbreweries scattered across roughly 200 miles of western Montana, and all the fish I can catch. I had warned everyone involved that I don’t actually know how to fly fish, and everyone had assured me I’d have a great time anyway. There were journalist/fishermen from Texas, Minnesota and Idaho who had been throwing flies since Reagan was president—and they’d all promised not to make fun of me. The guide puts my knotted line in his lap, closes his eyes and rubs his temples. “Why don’t you sit the next few plays out, alright Bud?” Oh man. Not “Bud.” The word reserved for people you detest, people

whose name you can’t be bothered to learn. See also: Champ, Slugger and Sport. Growing up near Billings, beautiful scenery was little more than wallpaper on the desktop of my life. Mountains were something to look at. Rivers were something to drive over. I need help. I look back at my guide, hungry for advice—any tips or words of wisdom distilled from his years on the water. “I haven’t caught a single fish all day,” I say. He rolls his eyes. “You know, that’s why they call it ‘fishing’ and not ‘catching.’” On every fly but my own, feisty rainbows are being caught by the net-full. The rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is the handsome high-school quarterback of the fly-fishing world; around these parts, it’s probably what you think of when you hear the word “fish.” They fight well, they taste good and

they’re pretty. Over the last 100 years, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has stocked a few hundred million of these babies into every stretch of water that’ll hold them. Laughs come easy as we approach the take-out. Arms swing in every direction to deliver high-fives and handshakes over what’s deemed a successful day. I don’t see what the big deal is.

Day 2: The Clark Fork Different water, different guides. Just past Missoula, the Clark Fork flows wide and slow. There are fish in here, our new guide assures us, but they’re going to be tricky to catch in the summer heat. Just great, I think to myself: fishing on expert mode.


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A few miles from the put-in, my reel buzzes as something blasts downstream with my fly. The fish hops out of the water—it’s no bigger than a Costco croissant—but I reel it in anyway, beaming. Success. “Aw, it’s just a whitey,” the guide sneers, popping the fly out of its mouth. “Don’t get your camera out—it’s a waste.” My smile melts as Señor Blanco just stares with blank eyes from the guide’s hand, popping its stupid mouth open and shut, looking almost embarrassed for me. “But it’s a fish, right?” I ask as the guide overhands the fish back into the river like a Nerf ball. “Yeah, but it’s kinda like reeling in an old boot.” The mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni) is a native to Montana waters. It fights just as hard as its trout brethren and can make for some damn good eatin’. But it is often maligned as a trash fish by fishermen and guides, largely because it is ugly. My first and only fish apparently doesn’t count. “So I still haven’t caught anything?” I ask my guide. “You know, that’s why they call it ‘fishing’ and not—”

“She’s a

pig!

Keep your

tip up, give ’er line!”

“Yeah, yeah, save it,” I say, taking another long drink of my beer. This sport doesn’t make sense.

Day 3: Middle Fork of the Flathead A steep canyon of limestone frames this stretch of river. In water clear as vodka, you can spot individual fish lurking between the rocks and searching for food. My comrades start pulling in hefty rainbows and cutthroats. And right around my 800th attempt at casting like a normal human being, my fly doesn’t cartwheel uselessly onto the water and my line doesn’t fold itself into knots. I’m like a kid successfully riding a bike for the first time, a whole new world of possibility opening up. After floating into a deep pool past a set of rapids, the guide pulls hard on the oars to bring the raft to a stop. “There’s always somethin’ good here,” he says. We cast. Dark, fishy shadows hover over the rocks, and in a second my rod buzzes and bends almost down to the water. My hands sweat against the smooth cork. My breath stops.

“Oh shit!” my guide says, stomping his foot to drop the raft’s anchor. “She’s a pig! Keep your tip up, give ’er line!” I squeeze hard, clamping the wet nylon to the rod, but the fish rockets off and line burns across my fingers. My eyes go wide. I strip more line in, walking the delicate balance between the line is gonna break and it’s gonna spit the hook. After taking three more big runs with my fly, there it is, gasping in the net: a 17inch bull trout as thick as my forearm. “She’s a beaut! Nicely done!” the guide says, digging the fly out of its mouth with a hemostat. “You’re not supposed to catch it, but good job anyway!” The bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) is very picky about where it makes babies, so after decades of mining, irrigation and dams screwing up its mojo, it’s on the threatened species list. You can’t deliberately fish for bull trout. You’ll get in trouble. In my defense, I can’t deliberately fish for anything. “But it still counts, right?” I ask as the guide lowers the fish back into the water. He smiles and nods. “Of course. It might be the biggest fish we’ve seen all day.”


WWW.BIGSKYBUILDERS.COM 406-842-5068 contact Howard Mills, Owner • howard@bigskybuilders.com Montana Headwall Page 50 Summer 2013

As the trout kicks its tail and jets back into the safety of the deep, I slump back into my seat and smile. It was that perfect moment, the just-right angle when it all makes sense—like driving past a cornfield, and watching a jungle of random stalks resolve into a thousand clean rows. It’s so clear now. That’s why people go fly fishing. Not just because a big trout ended up in my net as I rode snowmelt down to Flathead Lake, covered in sunshine, with the swishing action of fly rods on every side of me. I get it now. As in golf or baseball, every swing is another chance to improve. Chasing that perfect moment is frustrating and addictive, but so much fun. I might never be the Tiger Woods of dry flies but, as it turns out, all men are equal before fish. And hell, even if you don’t catch a thing, you’re still in paradise. We down our last few beers at the take-out. On the drive home, every smooth piece of water beckons me. Like a lab with its head out the window, all I want is to be back outside: in the boat, on the banks, anywhere. Rivers are no longer just something to build a bridge over. Every riffle and line of bubbles whispers an invitation to come try my luck. Since I’ve been home, I haven’t managed to catch another fish, but it doesn’t matter. Chasing the impossibly perfect cast is enough for me. You know, that’s why they call it fishing, not catching.


Montana Headwall Page 51 Summer 2013


mtheadwall.com

HEADINGS

JUNE JUNE 8 Lobby for extra water at every checkpoint during the 40th annual Governor’s Cup Marathon in Helena. If 26.2 miles seems harder than running for public office, then try one of the other distances offered at this race: half-marathon, 10K, 5K or 1-mile fun run. Visit govcupmt.com.

Do your part for diplomatic relations with our neighbors to the north by running in the annual Waterton Glacier Relay. The race takes teams of 4, 8 or 12 through Waterton Lakes National Park and Glacier National Park, and spans 100 miles (or 161K, if you prefer). Visit watertonglacierrelay.com for race maps, passport info and the all-encompassing “Race Bible.”

JUNE 29 Pack up some moist towelettes, a couple boxes of Pop-Tarts and lots of Gold Bond for Montana’s longest mountain bike race, the 24 Hours of Rapelje. The event takes place near Columbus and helps support Stockman Cafe. Join a team or test yourself with a solo run. For more info go to 24hoursofrapelje.com.

JUNE 9 From here on we’re talking about the Herron Half Marathon and 10K Trail Run in Kalispell. These races take place on running and biking trails around the town, and all proceeds from the race go toward Foys to Blacktail Trails, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding public access in the lands leading from Foys Lake to Blacktail Mountain ski area. To register visit runflathead.com. JUNE 15 See the sights in the best way possible— via bicycle—during Pedal the Pintlers. The race features distances from 20 to 100 miles of road riding, with majestic views of lakes, peaks and anticlines. Ride and registration start at Washoe Park in Cathrine L. Walters Anaconda at 7 a.m. Cost is $45. For more information call Crown Mountain in Montana’s Sawtooth Range, overlooking the Bob Marshall Wilderness Chad at 563-2034 or email chadlanes@msn.com. JULY JUNE 22 All you Ned Overend wannabes take note: The Hammer Nutrition Missoula XC mountain bike race is a grueling up-anddown affair full of technical riding and breathless climbs. The event takes place at Marshall Mountain Ski Area just outside of Missoula. For a full list of costs, events and trail maps visit missoulaxc.org. You’ll be coming around the mountain when you take part in the inaugural Trail Rail Run, which follows the old Milwaukee and Northern Pacific railroad grades from Mullan, Idaho, all the way to St. Regis. Race lengths include 50 miles, 50K, 30K and 10K. Head to trailrailrun.com.

The Wulfman’s Continental Divide Trail 14K is a point-topoint, singletrack race on a section of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail between Homestake Pass and Pipestone Pass near Butte. In other words, you’re dealing with some altitude. Race limited to 240 runners. For more info visit buttespissandmoanrunners.com. JUNE 23 If you’re the type of athlete who’ll try anything, then try the Bozeman Tritons Triathlon. This annual Gallatin Valley fun fest features both a sprint distance race and a long course race, with options for all abilities. For costs and more info visit bozemantritons.org.

Montana Headwall Page 52 Summer 2013

JULY 4 Tell your children “I was there” by attending the inaugural Dynamite Dash in Lincoln. The event takes place at Hooper Park and features a 1-mile, 5K and 10K run/walk. More importantly, there is a 1-mile beer run. For more info visit lincolnmontana.com. JULY 6 Take a two-day toodle through northwest Montana during the Gran Fondo Kootenai. This road-biking tour traverses scenic byways near the legendary Yaak Valley. No doubt, 172 miles among friends can’t do nothin’ but good for your heart and soul. $125. Visit montanacycling.net.


Since you recently loaded up on hot dogs, beers and watermelon to celebrate Independence Day, it’s time to take a stretch and have a run at the Bangtail Divide 38K, a point-to-point race which begins at the Stone Creek trailhead and ends at the Brackett Creek trailhead in the Bangtail Mountains near Bozeman. $60. Limited to 150 racers. Visit 406running.com. The aptly named Glacier Challenge boasts six different legs: canoe, kayak, road bike, mountain bike, 4K run and 10.5K run. Enter as a team, with a partner Cathrine L. Walters or as an individual—and good Attempting a route from Tweedy Mountain to Torrey Mountain in Montana’s Pioneers luck, especially if you’re entering solo. For more info, check event, the Butte 100 Mountain Bike ends on Main Street in downtown out theglacierchallenge.com. Race. The competition starts and ends Polson. Visit polsontriathlon.com. at the Homestake Lodge and allows JULY 11 only 250 riders for its 50- and 100-mile Be a dirty rotten scoundrel and Would I? More like walleye. races. Sign up at butte100.com. race both the cross-country and Make your governor proud at downhill events at Lone Peak’s the Montana Governor’s Cup Walleye The views are unmatched, but Revenge and I’ll personally give you Tournament at Fort Peck Lake. The the water is still cold at the the foot rub of the century because you three-day tournament has a $15,000 Lake Como Triathlon. The earned it. The races take place at Big first-place prize and events for the event includes a 1,500-yard swim, 12.6Sky Resort and there are plenty of bruwhole family. Bonus: The event is mile mountain bike section and 7.7-mile tal ascents and high-speed descents to now a part of the Walleyes Unlimited trail run. If doing it all solo doesn’t satisfy even the burliest of big-lunged tournament circuit. Visit mtgovcup.com. sound appealing, form a team. Visit cyclists. Visit montanacycling.net. lakecomotri.com. JULY 14 AUGUST 24 This summer marks the 7th JULY 28 Billed as “3.1 miles of mud, annual Missoula Marathon, The 9th annual XTERRA Wild sweat and obstacles,” The once voted top race in the Horse Creek Triathlon features BozeMonster Challenge presents nation by Runner’s World magazine. races and distances for every level. For one down-and-dirty foot race. Head to If the marathon’s too much, check out more info visit bigskytri.com. bozemonster.com for more information. the half-marathon, 5K, kids race or beer run. For more information Triple your fun at the AUGUST visit missoulamarathon.org. Bitterroot Classic Triathlon. If swimming isn’t your strong AUGUST 3 JULY 20 suit, this may be your event: The event Leave it to the organizers of the Curious about trying a takes place at the Bitterroot Aquatic HURL Elkhorn Endurance triathlon? Now’s your chance. Center and is only 750 yards. That’ll Runs to describe their event: “Run ‘til Dillon’s Beaverhead Y-Tri bills itself leave plenty of time to make up ground you hurl, then run some more.” Sound as a perfect beginners’ race, open to on a 20K road-bike ride and 5K run. like fun? Sign up for the 50-mile, 50K teams or individuals. Veterans are Head to bitterrootclassictriathlon.com. or 23K race—each along trails and welcome to race, too, as long as primitive Forest Service roads near they play nice. To register head to AUGUST 30 Montana City, outside Helena—at signmeup.com/90859. Tie one on during the Ennis on vigilanterunning.org. the Madison Fly Fishing JULY 27 Festival. This family-friendly AUGUST 17 I know what you’re thinking: party features fishing competitions and Take on the best the Flathead Any chance I could ride some skill-development seminars, as well as has to offer at the Polson sandy trails, hit up some rocky technical entertainment. The festival is a Triathlon. The race offers the usual tri sections and climb tens of thousands of fundraiser for the Madison River events: a 1,500-meter swim in Flathead feet all in one day, in one race? You sure Foundation. For more information head Lake, a 24.9-mile bike through the surcan, psycho. It’s time for another round to madisonriverfoundation.org. rounding area, and a 6.2-mile run that of Montana’s toughest cross-country Montana Headwall Page 53 Summer 2013


HEAD GEAR photos by Cathrine L. Walters

KENDAL MINT CAKE A British kayaker turned me on to Kendal Mint Cake, which is sort of like the confectioner’s version of lard. The high-calorie recipe (glucose, sugar, peppermint oil) has changed little since the 1800s, but today it’s more of a snack food for outdoorsy folk than a tasty dessert treat. That might have something to do with the fact that Kendal Mint Cake is not very tasty. Its mint flavor is overpowering. “Cake” is also a deceptive label— the texture is more like drywall. These unappetizing characteristics are exactly why I keep it in my pack. Snickers, Twix and other tasty emergency rations have a miserably short life expectancy in my dry bag. But I can resist eating Kendal Mint Cake until I am seriously hungry. (Monica Gokey)

DUCT TAPE I consider duct tape my best friend in the backcountry. It’s my tool box, my medical kit and my sewing machine all rolled into one. It has helped me fix broken skis, ski poles, kayaks and tent poles. I have used the silvery strips of magic to reattach plastic buckles to my pack and soles to my shoes after they’ve come unglued a bit too close to the fire. Duct tape provides relief for blisters,

closes gaping wounds and assists in the creation of an emergency splint. One piece from this rescue roll can also patch my tent’s rainfly, the hole in my rain jacket and the crotch of my pants. Once, it helped keep the down fill in my sleeping bag after a midnight struggle with the zipper went bad. Every time my duct tape is needed, something has gone terribly wrong. But it’d be a whole lot worse if I didn’t have the tape. (Robin Carleton)

SPACE BLANKET I carry a very-well-stocked firstaid kit just about any time I’m in the backcountry, a bundle so chock-full of contingency preparations it barely squeezes into its zippered, paperbacksize pouch. And it’s the squeezing that makes me reluctant to ever deploy the most intriguing item in there: the space blanket. The tissue-thin, Mylar sheet will ostensibly serve as emergency shelter. If I were ever injured, stuck and cold, the space blanket would supposedly help me maintain a few extra degrees of warmth and minimize my exposure to wind, rain and snow. But the coolest feature is that it packs down to almost nothing, a tidy rectangle you could stick in a birthday card—or an over-stuffed first-aid kit. I’m curious to break it out just to see what it actually does. Is it big enough to duck all the way inside? Would it quickly tear to pieces on a rocky bivouac? But ultimately, I don’t really want to investigate, because once it’s unfolded, there’s no squaring it away again, no return to the pristine state of compact, cleanly cornered, utterly efficient storage in my bloated kit. So folded up and tucked away it will stay, until such time as … ugh, I don’t even want to imagine. (Matt Gibson)


ROPE KNIFE My rope knife hangs from my neck like little more than jewelry. During countless river, ocean and mountaineering trips over the last 10 years, it has received little attention and been the source of occasional frustration (the sheath has a knack of snagging things), but I still carry it. It’s much more than some cling-on taking a ride. I put it there, after all. I lost it once for three months and scoured every stopping place along the Clark Fork for its glimmering edge. I could have bought a better, newer one, but that was the one that was mine, and I was relieved when I finally found it. I consider it my last line. My last hope. When the time comes, it will have to cut the rope that threatens someone’s life, most likely my own. (Eric Oravsky)

PAINKILLERS Lugging a first-aid kit on backcountry adventures seems reasonable and wise— until you dislocate a knee, pinch off an appendage or char your sinuses blowing up a camp stove. Then that kit feels inadequate, if not useless. So my kit is tiny: a Ziploc full of super-adhesive Band-Aids, duct tape and hardcore painkillers. Band-Aids are universally useful for small stuff. When the situation is dire, duct tape can splint or seal or stabilize (see previous page). But when things really hit the fan, a prescription painkiller like oxycodone is the big gun that increases survivability simply by improving an injured person’s mental state and allowing vital first-aid tasks to be completed. Painkillers should be handled carefully. They’re powerful, commonly abused and not without side effects, so tell your doc why you need them and learn which one is best for you. If your health-care provider won’t oblige, try an E.R. doctor or someone who specializes in wilderness medicine. Once you get the pills, be sure to print the drug’s “Fact Sheet” from fda.gov and avoid complications by affixing it to the bottle’s label. Then bury them in your pack and pray they go unneeded. (Chad Harder)

ROPE There is no more sickening sound than the clang of metal and the breaking of bones, followed by the whining of the family dog. It’s even worse when it happens 1,000 feet from a trailhead. Conibear traps are the Rubik’s Cube of the trapping world, and anyone unfamiliar with them will be perplexed when it comes to releasing a dog. They cannot be released by hand. I always carry a rope— think braided climbing cord, but a leash works just as well— on hikes with my dog. The rope should have a loop the size of your foot on one end. If Fido gets caught in a Conibear, place the loop around your foot, then thread the rope through the springs of the trap. Quickly pull the rope toward you, compressing the springs and releasing one side of the trap. On the spring, there will be a safety to hold it in place. Repeat the same steps on the other side and your dog will be free. One of the hardest parts of releasing your dog from a Conibear trap is staying calm, and keeping your dog calm. If you have a rope with you—and know how to use it—you have that much more reason to keep cool in a terrible situation. (Jessica Murri)

PINE PITCH SHAVINGS In the mountains, I am most comfortable off-trail and alone, slipping slowly and silently about the woods, creeping ghostlike across the landscape. I stop often, listen, sniff, senses engaged, and leave little trace of my comings and goings. Consequently, I never build fires. Not in summer, not in winter. With adequate clothing, there is no need to broadcast my smoky presence to every animal and human downwind of camp. I prefer to travel and sleep less conspicuously. For over a decade and a half, however, I have carried a small Ziploc bag of pine pitch shavings in case I find the need to build a fire for survival—for warmth, as an emergency signal, to keep a prowling grizzly at bay, whatever. So far, knock on wood, the sweet-smelling curls of fiber remain in the bag—dry and waiting. (Matt Holloway)


HEAD GEAR by Jessica Murri

We’ve seen it before: Those sad eyes. The devastated stare. That look of wanting. We’re carrying our skis or raft or backpack out the door and we give the dog the old, “Sorry, buddy. You have to stay.” Well, maybe not. A plethora of products allow Fido to tag along, whether it’s skiing the backcountry, rafting the rapids or trekking out along some remote trail. After all, it’s always better to have a best friend along for the adventure.

PIEPS TX600 Dog Avalanche Transmitter, $149.95 This mini transmitter with a frequency of 456,000 kHz is ideal for avalanche rescue dogs, hunting dogs or backcountry powder hounds. Attaches to the dog’s collar and has a receiving range of 15 meters.

Ruffwear K9 Float Coat, $79.95

Doggles, $19.99

Whether you’re rafting the rapids, floating the Blackfoot or SUPing in Frenchtown, this doggy lifejacket keeps your pup afloat. The strategically placed foam panels don’t cramp your dog’s doggy paddle, and there’s a handy handle on top for you to help your dog out of the water.

They may look silly, but these shades protect from UV rays, dust, wind, rocks or bugs. A wide nose bridge, foam padding around the frame and adjustable head/chin straps ensure they actually stay on.

Garmin Astro 320 Bundle, $549.99 Perfect for hunting dogs—or the type that has a tendency to stray off-trail. The GPS transmitter fits on the collar with a flexible antenna secured around the band. Bonus: It’s waterproof.

Cathrine L. Walters

Ruffwear Grip Trex All-Terrain Paw Wear, $69.95 These booties feature Vibram soles, so you and your best friend can match in the great outdoors. Tip: Be sure to size them right. It’s no fun to see your happy pup come trotting up to you, wet and tail wagging, with only three of the four booties still on.

Ruffwear OmniJore Joring System, $149 This dog-harness/towline-leash/human-hip-belt apparatus can be used for skijoring, skatejoring, bikejoring or any other kind of joring you can think of. If having your dog pull you along terrain makes you—or the dog—a bit nervous, rest assured that the quickrelease setup allows you to safely bail.


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Conrad Anker CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21 Even the most clueless climbing novice knows Anker’s name, and it’s not lost on Luke that he’s in the presence of one of the world’s best. When Anker gets around to greeting and encouraging him, Luke does everything but genuflect as the pro offers a few tips. One of those tips is pretty pointed— either lose weight or be resigned to climbing badly. As Anker moves on to climb a few routes, Luke beams. “Did you see that?” he asks. “Conrad Anker talked to me. He told me what I need to do. I know I’m too heavy, but I’ve been working on it. Now, though, I’ve got to do it. I mean, dude, that’s Conrad Anker. I gotta do what he said.” As the day winds down and Anker and his posse drive toward town, he recalls the conversation with Luke. “I think it’s important to take time for that sort of stuff,” he says. “That’s going to matter to him. It’s part of our job as older climbers to talk to the youth,

to encourage and inspire them. Climbing makes us better if it makes us happier. He’ll be happier when he’s more fit.” The truck winds down the frozen road, and Anker starts to wax philosophical about a life shaped by rock and ice, by love of the mountains and those he shares them with. “I’ve learned that these things—my family, my passion for climbing and for being a force for good in the local community and in the larger community— are the source of happiness for me,” he says. “I know that life will keep changing and keep throwing new challenges my way, but my intent is always to embrace them and explore them and find a way to turn them into an experience that’s rewarding. Even when we’re suffering, whether it’s in the mountains or because of something going on at home, trying situations are a way to understand our human condition. You have to try to rise above the adversity. I like doing that.” The sun is close to setting as the truck pulls up outside the Lowe-Anker home. His promise is fulfilled one more time.

Anker in Hyalite Canyon

Yogesh Simpson

Exceptional Events @ Hilton Garden Inn.®

• • • •

Weddings and receptions Rehearsal dinners Overnight accommodations for out-of-town guests Honeymoons

Our fine dining, restaurant quality catering offers options designed to help you create a delicious and memorable event in your personal style. You can count on us to make your event a success. To make reservations contact the Hotel direct and visit us online.

Hilton Garden Inn Kalispell 1840 Highway 93 South, Kalispell, MT 59901 Tel: 1-406-756-4500 Fax: 1-406-756-4505 www.kalispell.hgi.com ©2013 HILTON WORLDWIDE Montana Headwall Page 58 Summer 2013


Conrad Anker CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21 Even the most clueless climbing novice knows Anker’s name, and it’s not lost on Luke that he’s in the presence of one of the world’s best. When Anker gets around to greeting and encouraging him, Luke does everything but genuflect as the pro offers a few tips. One of those tips is pretty pointed— either lose weight or be resigned to climbing badly. As Anker moves on to climb a few routes, Luke beams. “Did you see that?” he asks. “Conrad Anker talked to me. He told me what I need to do. I know I’m too heavy, but I’ve been working on it. Now, though, I’ve got to do it. I mean, dude, that’s Conrad Anker. I gotta do what he said.” As the day winds down and Anker and his posse drive toward town, he recalls the conversation with Luke. “I think it’s important to take time for that sort of stuff,” he says. “That’s going to matter to him. It’s part of our job as older climbers to talk to the youth,

to encourage and inspire them. Climbing makes us better if it makes us happier. He’ll be happier when he’s more fit.” The truck winds down the frozen road, and Anker starts to wax philosophical about a life shaped by rock and ice, by love of the mountains and those he shares them with. “I’ve learned that these things—my family, my passion for climbing and for being a force for good in the local community and in the larger community— are the source of happiness for me,” he says. “I know that life will keep changing and keep throwing new challenges my way, but my intent is always to embrace them and explore them and find a way to turn them into an experience that’s rewarding. Even when we’re suffering, whether it’s in the mountains or because of something going on at home, trying situations are a way to understand our human condition. You have to try to rise above the adversity. I like doing that.” The sun is close to setting as the truck pulls up outside the Lowe-Anker home. His promise is fulfilled one more time.

Anker in Hyalite Canyon

Yogesh Simpson

Exceptional Events @ Hilton Garden Inn.®

• • • •

Weddings and receptions Rehearsal dinners Overnight accommodations for out-of-town guests Honeymoons

Our fine dining, restaurant quality catering offers options designed to help you create a delicious and memorable event in your personal style. You can count on us to make your event a success. To make reservations contact the Hotel direct and visit us online.

Hilton Garden Inn Kalispell 1840 Highway 93 South, Kalispell, MT 59901 Tel: 1-406-756-4500 Fax: 1-406-756-4505 www.kalispell.hgi.com ©2013 HILTON WORLDWIDE Montana Headwall Page 58 Summer 2013


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Montana Headwall Page 59 Summer 2013


Custom USGS Topographic Maps of Montana and Idaho are available through a print-on-demand program in the Missoula Public Library’s Audra Browman Room. These 11”x17” maps are $2 on standard paper and $3 on weatherproof paper.

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Montana Headwall Page 61 Summer 2013


Dark tide rising

by Nadia White

THE CRUX

When setting up camp becomes part of the adventure continued the comedy of bearproofing my food supply as the late midsummer’s sun set. Again and again I whirled the long, orange string with a rock tied to it and heaved it toward a branch. I missed. I got the wrong branch. The rock fell off the string. I could only laugh. I was too tired even to stop trying. This camp had been brutal to set up. I had landed my kayak when the tide was out and a 100-yard expanse of rocks the size of bowling balls separated the water from the only potential tent site, a tiny patch of sand at the edge of the forest, a spot that might or might not be dry at 2 a.m. when the tide would be high. Camping spots were increasingly sparse in this northern British Columbia portion of the Inside Passage. Steep, rocky shorelines backed up by impenetrable forests left few accessible options. A new moon and the summer solstice meant the tide would come in high and fall away low. No matter how many times I eyeballed my tide charts and the rise to the sand, the beach seemed too low. Six inches of water is a far cry from dry. It seemed silly to set up a camp that would likely flood. If I left the gear in the boat it would stay dry, I reasoned. But loaded, the kayak was too heavy to carry across the barnacleencrusted and kelp-wrapped rocks. I tried several cockamamie schemes to avoid unloading the boat. Eventually I tied it to a huge piece of waterlogged driftwood that stood at least four feet high and seemed stuck on the rocks. Time was of the essence and I worked with focus. I built a scant raft of long, slender logs that would

I

Nadia White

Montana Headwall Page 62

protect the kayak and keep it upright when the tide set it back down in the middle of the night, in the middle of the cove. I tied the boat, on its raft, to the big log, leaving enough line so it could rise the full height of the tide. I unloaded only my essentials for the night and retreated to the spot of sand. I looked back at my boat, 100 yards away with the tide rising fast. Already, its stern was afloat. I looked at my bare

camp and thought, “What have I overlooked? What could go wrong?” A list of potential disasters flooded my mind. A football-field of water would separate me from everything my life depended on. The boat could come untied and float away; it could be smashed by incoming driftwood, swamped by wind. The log it was tied to could float the whole contraption away. Continued on page 60




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