1 Climb. Hike. Ski. Bike. Paddle. Dedicated to the Enjoyment and Promotion of Responsible Outdoor Adventure. Club Contacts ABOUT THE CLUB: Website: http://rockymountaineers.com Mission Statement: e-mail: [email protected] The Rocky Mountaineers is a non-profit Mailing Address: club dedicated to the enjoyment and The Rocky Mountaineers promotion of responsible outdoor PO Box 4262 Missoula MT 59806 adventures. President: Joshua Phillips Meetings and Presentations: [email protected] Meetings are held the second Wednesday, Vice-President: David Wright September through May, at 6:00 PM at [email protected] Pipestone Mountaineering. Each meeting Secretary: Julie Kahl is followed by a featured presentation or [email protected] speaker at 7:00 PM. Treasurer: Steve Niday [email protected] Activities: Hiking Webmaster: Alden Wright Backpacking [email protected] Alpine Climbing & Scrambling Peak Bagging Newsletter Editor: Forest Dean Backcountry Skiing [email protected] Winter Mountaineering Track Skiing The Mountain Ear is the club newsletter of The Rocky Snowshoeing Mountaineers and is published near the beginning of Snowboarding every month. Anyone wishing to contribute articles of Mountain Biking interest are welcomed and encouraged to do so- contact the editor. Rock Climbing Canoeing & Kayaking Membership application can be found at the end of the Rafting newsletter. Kids Trips Terracaching/Geocaching 2 The Rocky Mountaineers 50th Anniversary PARTY!!! 2:00 PM SATURDAY MAY 15 - POTLUCK - LARRY CREEK GROUP SITE In celebration of our 50th anniversary, we are having a party on May 15th at the Larry Creek Group Site, which is near the Charles Waters Campground, AKA Bass Creek Campground. This party will replace the regular Wednesday night meeting and we will hold an election of officers and present Achievement Awards. See the website for the list of achievement awards currently available. If you qualify, tell one of the officers and you too could receive a very special award. The party will start around 2:00 PM. Our reservation states check-in time is 1:00 PM. Check-out time is noon the next day. Some people will be spending the night and hiking on Sunday. Bring your sleeping gear if you want to join a hike or just need to avoid driving for awhile. Food will be potluck, but don’t let that scare you away, you don’t have to bring food. The Club will be furnishing burger patties, wieners, brats, buns, pickles, onions, condiments, plates, and utensils. Bring your own beverages and anything else you want to eat. Also….. Present at the Party will be one of our members, Michael Hoyt. Mike has just written and had published a brand new guidebook (see the Press Release on page 7). He will be bringing copies with him and autographing and selling them for $30 (that’s $4.95 off the regular price). The Rocky Mountaineers-- 50th Anniversary History Contributed by Steve Schombel Hi everyone! As most of you know, we have been submitting some articles about Rocky Mountaineers history to accompany our 50th anniversary year and the party we are having on May 15th at the Larry Creek Group Site. I did a short interview via telephone with Shirley Braxton, widow of Sam Braxton, the club’s second President, and, perhaps, most active member. I asked her if she remembered anything about Gardner Miller, the club’s very first President. She said that she and Sam and some others did several climbs with Gardner Miller. She also remembered that Gardner organized the team that put the first summit register on Granite Peak. She said that the Forest Service asked Sam Braxton to do this, but, after some negotiation Gardner volunteered to lead the group. This meshes very well with some information we got from some former active members we interviewed earlier. Unfortunately, Shirley said that Gardner Miller has been gone for quite a few years, and that she will be out of town and will not be attend ending the anniversary party. I also thought that a good way to finish this series of articles on Rocky Mountaineer club history would be to reprint the trip reports of two prominent climbs done by club members in Glacier National Park in the early days. The first is a climb of the NW Face route of Mount Wilbur, directly up from Iceberg Lake. The participants were: Tom Choate, Renn Fenton and Gil Averill. The trip report is in Volume II, (2) 6, 7 of the December 1962 issue of the Mountain Ear. Gordon Edwards, in his Climbers Guide to Glacier National Park, wrote that, to the best of his knowledge, this route has never been repeated. The second was an ascent of 3 Walton Mountain in July of 1974. The participants were: Paul Jensen, Mavis Lorenz, Tom Shreve and Allen Smith. The trip report was in the Mountain Ear, vol. XIV (4), map 2, Jan. 1975. Gordon Edwards wrote that this was, to the best of his knowledge, the first ascent of one of Glacier’s five technical peaks as listed by the Glacier Mountaineering Society, and in Pat Caffrey’s Climber’s Guide to Montana. It is fascinating to read about some of the major climbs done by club members in the early days. From December 1962 Mountain Ear: First Ascent of the North Face of Mount Wilbur – Glacier National Park by Tom Choate Mount Wilbur is one of the most difficult mountains to climb in Glacier Park. It provides a spectacular backdrop for the view across Swiftcurrent Lake from the Many Glacier Hotel. When one realizes that this sheer east face is the easy and requires rope work (after having read Edwards’ Climbing Guide), you begin to wonder what the rest of this peak is like. Thus, after climbing the mountain and enjoying its very spectacular cliffs and views along both of the “easy” standard routes, we were challenged to try the unclimbed North face. Reconnaissance from the Summit to the first notch in the ridge to the west indicated a narrow chimney cutting the north face straight down to Iceberg Lake over 3000’ below. It looked possible if it were dry and the climbers well equipped. We set off at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, August 4, 1961 to fulfill the dream of challenging this sheer face which forms the south wall of the great cirque surrounding Iceberg Lake. Gil Averill, another Rocky Mountaineer, and Renn Fenton, an old hand at Wilbur climbing from South Dakota, and I signed out at the Ranger Station. It was a fine, sunny day and it already felt hot by the time we reached Iceberg Lake. Many white icebergs floated in the milky green waters. It was perfect for color photography. About 9 a.m. we labored up the long slopes of talus and scree leading down into the lake from the cliffs. At the base of the first low cliffs two unafraid mountain goats jumped up from a snow crevasse where they had been resting and paused to look us over carefully before leaving. The ledges and talus blocks and more staircase ledges went on and on, and we scrambled over fully 2000 vertical feet of them before we felt it necessary to rope up. We were now 300 feet below the black diorite sill which traverses cliffs of the upper peak on all sides. Above us lay the formidable chimney, obviously the only route through the overhanging cliffs on either side. This date was almost too early, as the rock was damp and slippery in places and falling rocks screamed by occasionally. Renn made the first try, stemming up to a slippery spot, where a slip of one of his feet spoiled his nerve. I succeeded in leading this spot by finding an acceptable piton crack and driving home some slip insurance. So it went for three leads up to the ledge below the diorite where we could rest out of reach of falling stones from above (or from the hold-cleaning duties of the leader). Above the diorite the whole face overhangs, including the chimney, and several chockstones hang out over you as you worm or stem your way up. Rocks kicked or pulled loose shot straight down 50 feet or so on top of your belayer, obviously requiring much care. With one or two pitons protecting each lead (because one falls out of such a chimney, not down it) I wiggled through small holes under piano-size chockstones., using each for a belay point for the next lead. Momentarily the chimney widened and flattened for a resting place, 500 feet down from the top of the west ridge. “Renn’s terror” chimney was now past. More in his natural element of face-climbing, Renn led two pitches in the wide chute and entered a left branch of it. Over two more ledges a sheer face confronted us, not far from the top. I decided a crack leading up it would work, but found it took four pitons in hard – to – find cracks to make it safe. The “interesting” point here is in the middle, where the belayer squats under an overhang, held in by only an anchor piton, to do his duty while looking over the edge at the lake far below. A last scramble and suddenly we burst into sunlight and a vast panorama of peaks to the south across the deep gap of Swiftcurrent Valley. 4 After a rest and a snack here, broken by rope coiling and picture taking, we scrambled the 300 feet of ledges just SW of the ridgetop up to the small flat summit area, arriving at 4 p.m. We rested by the tall cairn for almost an hour, drinking in the panorama of peaks and looking alternately into the three valleys 3300 to 4300 feet straight below.