Friday, June 25, 2010

Unclimbed Lines

On June 19th Stan Price and I went into the Beartooths Mountains, our plan of climbing the North Face of Granite Peak in a day was abruptly ended by a storm high on the peak. So as to not waste a day in the hills our day of climbing turned into a day of exploration. We covered 20-22 miles that day and found some great looking ice, rock and ski lines. All of these lines are on buttresses and sub peaks that aren't even named on the most recent topo map of the area. There simply isn't enough time in one mans life to do it all, but we will try!
Melted out ice line, there also was a huge wet streak right of this. Who wants to go back in December?
Stan was drooling over these two!
Amazing ski lines, I fell through the ice up to my waste shortly after this.
Corner system on the left of the picture, looks like great rock.
Several good looking rock lines.
North Face of Granite just before the storm hit.
Stan on the plateau.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Tower of Innocence

For a great alpine rock climb in the beartooths, The Tower of Innocence is hard to beat. It will give you 7-8 pitches of mostly 5.8 and 5.9 climbing, there are some short sections of 5.10 but nothing sustained. The rock quality is great and it is a short approach, by Beartooth standards. There are two other towers that lay next to Innocence, Tower of Poor Rock on the left and Tower of Incubus on the right. I have done routes on them as well and while the quality isn't as good as Innocence they are still worthy climbs. This summer I plan to link all three towers in a day, should be a great climb.

Pitch 8
Pitch 4
Pitch 3
Pitch 2
At the start of the route, waiting to see if it was going to rain. It did rain, on pitch 8!

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