Montana 12ers

The Montana 12ers

On Mt Peal, my last peak

Eric Gilbertson

August 8 – 15, 2020

Completion time: 6 days 23 hours (self supported speed record)

Peaks: 27 (plus 6 bonus peaks)
Distance: 135 miles
Elevation gain: 60,000ft

The Montana 12ers are the set of 12,000 foot peaks in montana with at least 300 feet of prominence. The peaks are generally clustered close together in the beartooth range of southwest Montana, near the Wyoming border. None of them have trails to

Montana 12ers Location

the summits, and they range from about 5 miles to 20 miles from the nearest trailheads. Most of them are class 2 hikes, but several involve class 3 scrambling. The most difficult ones are

Point 12540 and Beartooth, which both involve short sections of 4th class scrambling via their easiest routes.

Perhaps a few dozen climbers have completed this list, and it appears to be slowly growing in popularity. In 2016 Nate Bender climbed all peaks in a supported effort and finished in just over 4 days. This is officially the supported FKT.

Montana 12ers Location

In early June of 2020 I had to cancel international mountaineering plans due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions, and decided to climb a bunch of peaks in the Rockies instead. I would drive there from Seattle, so wouldn’t have to rely on flights and could stay flexible in case restrictions changed. I would start with the Colorado Centennials, then do the Wyoming 13ers. That seemed likely to take up my full two-month window, if I could even finish them all in that window. But I decided to come up with a plan for something fun to do just in case I happened to finish those projects early.

I spent a few hours looking in to the Montana 12ers, which sounded like a fun nearby list. This list had the benefit that all the peaks were on national forest and there were no access restrictions, which meant I would likely have no trouble climbing them even if coronavirus conditions got worse. They were all class 4 or below via their easiest routes, so I could easily solo them all. And they were all clustered pretty close together. I

The western portion of my route

looked into the standard routes and planned out a rough itinerary where I could hit them all in two backpacking loops. But then I didn’t spend any more time optimizing routes or planning in any more detail, since I was unlikely to have time for the peaks anyways.

In mid June after the SU commencement I left Seattle and drove 23 hours down to Colorado. I ended up climbing all the Colorado Hundred Highest/Centennials in 33 days 23 hours (a new FKT), finishing on July 19. After the Centennials I took one full rest day to drive to Pinedale, Wyoming, then climbed all the Wyoming 13ers in 16 days 17 hours (also a new FKT). I finished the Wyoming 13ers on Grand Teton with Andrew.

Andrew had six days to climb mountains with me in the rockies, and we ended up climbing Grand Teton on his first day. I had originally planned to climb other Wyoming 13ers over that week, but had managed to finish a bit early. I wasn’t planning to drive back to Seattle til mid August, so had about a full week left for

The eastern portion of my route

climbing mountains. That turned out to be just about the amount of time I’d

estimated the Montana 12ers would take, so it looked like perhaps I could climb them all after all.

After climbing Grand Teton on August 7th we celebrated with burgers and blizzards at the Jackson Dairy Queen, then bought groceries and town and found a good stealth campsite in a national forest for the night. The following is a list of the 27 Montana 12ers in the order I climbed them, with links to trip reports for each. Note: The first few days I hiked with Andrew, but we each carried completely independent gear (including separate tents), there was no pacing (we weren’t running), no roped travel, and I was in charge of navigation, so I don’t consider this supported. I did the remaining peaks completely solo. Thus I consider this a self-supported effort. I drove to the airport mid way to drop Andrew off and picked up some food in between, so that’s why it is self supported and not unsupported.

In the morning we made the long drive north through yellowstone into Montana. Andrew had about four hiking days left before he had to fly out, so we decided to do the loop I’d planned that would conservatively be around 4 days. I had estimated it would be around 65-70 miles of hiking, mostly off trail, plus 12 miles biking, since we would start and end at different trailheads. I had never heard of anyone else doing this loop, but admittedly I didn’t really do much research planning this trip.

We drove through Red Lodge then up to the Lake Fork trailhead. I spent some time repairing a bike tire that had popped from the car exhaust, then hid my mountain bike in the woods and locked it to a tree. This would be the trailhead we exited at. We then drove south to the Glacier Lake trailhead and packed up for the hike. We each had all our own gear like separate tents and food. After repackaging all the food I’d bought the previous night I was finally ready. I decided to hike in trail runners and bring micro spikes and hiking poles instead of aluminum crampons and whippet. This turned out to work pretty well.

Finally around 4pm I was all packed up and we headed out. Our first destination was Moon Lake, which officially did not have a trail. I figured there would likely be a climbers trail, though, and that turned out to be correct. After about 8 switchbacks we saw hikers coming down out of the trees, and that turned out to be the climbers trail to Moon Lake. We followed the trail up the drainage, soon emerging above treeline. We then followed grassy slopes to the south edge of Moon Lake.

It was very windy, but we found a semi-sheltered campsite on the southeast corner. There were still a few hours of daylight left, so we hiked directly up the talus slope from camp to gain the broad south ridge, then hiked up more grass and talus to the summit around 7:30pm. There were a few towers on the summit plateau of similar height, so we climbed the one that looked the tallest. There were actually two other hikers coming down as we ascended, and they would be some of the only people we’d see over the next few days.

We hiked back down the way we came, and got to camp before dark, in time to cook dinner and set up our tents.

At sunrise we left camp and hiked directly up the grassy slopes to our west to the saddle above Frosty Lake. I thought we might be able to scramble directly up the southeast ridge of spirit, but as we got closer it looked a bit too steep and exposed to be easy with our overnight packs. We didn’t have crampons, so couldn’t go up the direct southeast face snow slope. So instead we traversed around Frosty Lake and scrambled up a fun 3rd class rock rib on the west end of the lake. The rib cut through some cornices to deposit us on the plateau south of the summit.

From there we hiked easily to the summit. We passed one other hiker who was just descending, and he said he was continuing on to other peaks to the west. After topping out we continued west, dropping to a saddle then hiking up a slippery snow slope that I kind of wished we’d brought crampons for. We tagged Drop Off Mountain (also called Forget Me Not Mountain), which was on the edge of another large plateau, by 10:45am.

Our next objective was Beartooth, which looked easy to access on the map but in reality was pretty tricky. We passed the other hiker turning back just before the saddle west of Drop Off. He said it looked to sketchy and he needed to be back home early anyways. We hiked over to the saddle and it looked like sketchy loose 4th class downclimbing, potentially changing in to steeper terrain lower.

I backtracked and found a much easier class 2 route down the west ridge leading toward Silver Tarn. We hiked down the ridge, then at a small saddle traversed right across snow and talus slopes, and then gained the Drop off – Avalanche saddle. Perhaps a more direct route would have been possible, but it would really only make sense if climbing up when you can see the route better, instead of climbing down like we were.

We scrambled up to a plateau and took a break on Avalanche Mountain, an unranked 12er en route. From there it would be a short out-and-back trip to tag beartooth, so we ditched our gear. I continued with just my jacket with pockets stuffed with a bit of food. The ridge north of Avalanche was trickier than would appear from the map, and involved a few short 4th class downclimbs on rotten rock. It eased up after the saddle, and then we made a short hike across the plateau to Beartooth.

As I would come to find out, none of the Montana 12ers except Granite (the state highpoint) actually have summit registers. Many of the summits didn’t even have cairns. This is kind of surprising to me. In the cascades almost all peaks have summit registers, even peaks that have only ever been climbed a half dozen times. Perhaps there are just a few prolific peakbaggers in Washington who like placing summit registers. Or, there is one prolific peakbagger in Montana who likes removing summit registers. Or maybe it’s a combination of both.

We retraced our route, then continued down the west ridge off Avalanche. The ridge soon got steep and narrow, so we dropped down a scree gully to the south and traversed below the ridge to High Pass Lake. From there we climbed talus slopes to gain the next plateau and hiked north to the very farthest point at the summit of Sky Pilot Mountain by 6:30pm. Luckily the weather held out all afternoon and there were no problems with thunderstorms. In my experience over the summer it seemed like Colorado had thunderstorms almost every day, but as I moved farther north Wyoming had fewer storms and Montana even fewer. Maybe it was just cooler farther north, which caused fewer storms to form.

It was not obvious how to get off Sky Pilot, and this is one instance it would have helped for me to do more research beforehand. We wanted to drop down to Varve Lake, but only saw cliffs below us. So we turned around and started hiking south until we eventually found a scree gully leading down. We carefully stayed on different sides and eventually descended to the lake. This ended up being one of our most scenic campsites, with a nice level spot on a grassy bench overlooking the lake edge at sunset. It had been a long 14 hour day and we had no trouble falling asleep early.

Back to top

August 10 – Castle Mountain, Castle Rock Mountain, Pt 12540, Salo Mtn, Snowbank Mtn, Castle Rock Mtn Northeast

We left camp at sunrise with the tents still up planning on a quick out-and-back to start off the day. We hiked directly north of Varve Lake and made a quick 2.5 hour scramble up talus field to tag the windy summit of Castle Mountain. After dropping back to camp we packed up and hiked up to Navajo Tarn.

From here we debated what the plan would be for the day. There was a slight chance of afternoon thunderstorms, so one option was to tag Snowbank and Salo, get back to the tarn by noon, and then if the weather was bad just camp there. But we decided to be more ambitious and tag more peaks and move camp over the divide. Storms seemed pretty unlikely in Montana, and if one started coming we could generally see it from a ways away and modify plans.

So we carried our full packs up to the lake at the base of Castle Rock Glacier (the lake is actually bigger than Navajo Tarn now since the glacier has melted so much. We scrambled up to the saddle north of the lake, then ditched our packs and ate a snack. I pulled up Matt Lemke’s beta for the next peak, Pt 12540, which I anticipated to be the crux of the Montana 12ers. It is the only peak with sustained exposed 4th class scrambling, and is the farther peak from a trailhead (around 17 miles in). It’s interesting that it doesn’t even have an official name. This peak is actually pretty confusing. On the quad it is labeled as Castle Rock Spire, but the spire is a pinnacle to the north of the peak that is at least 40ft shorter than the true summit and only has 120ft of prominence, so is not an official 12er. There are also Castle Mountain and Castle Rock nearby that are different peaks.

From almost all angles Pt 12540 looks like a plateau surrounded by impenetrable cliffs. But just above the west saddle is an apparent weakness we would aim for. (Interestingly, I also saw what appears to be a greater weakness farther along the southwest face, which may be a class 2 talus ramp, but I didn’t investigate further).

From the saddle we followed the talus up the ridge to the base of a gully. The gully narrowed to a short chimney, which we scrambled around to the right on 4th class rock. Above the chimney the gully was very loose, and then we got to a steeper chimney. To get around this we scrambled an exposed sloping ledge up and to the left. I would consider this ledge the crux of the route, since it was the area with the most exposure, even though the scrambling moves were technically easy.

The ledge deposited us on the edge of the summit plateau, and from there it was a short hike to the true summit. I peeked over to take a look at Castle Rock Spire, which looked like a fun climb but wasn’t an official 12er (not enough prominence), so we didn’t bother with it.

Downclimbing the route was a bit sketchier but we were soon safely back to our packs. That was a great peak to climb when the rock is dry in the morning, instead of in the afternoon when a passing storm could make things wet. From the saddle we carried our packs up the 3rd class ridge to the summit of Castle Rock Mountain around 1:30pm. We ditched our gear under an overhanging boulder to return to later, then continued to the next few out-and-back peaks.

We hiked down the southwest ridge and then scrambled up 3rd class to the summit of Salo Mountain. We then continued over lots of talus down the southwest ridge of Salo, past a few tarns, and up the southeast ridge to Snowbank by 4pm. I came to realize almost all the 12ers in Montana are big flat plateaus surrounded by cliffs on most sides. This is very unique to Montana, and much different than the peaks in Washington, Colorado, or Wyoming.

Luckily the storms held off again that day. We retraced our route back to our packs over the next few hours. Daylight was waning as we saddled up and headed down the north ridge from Castle Rock Mountain. There was one narrow 3rd class section on the ridge, but the rest was easy hiking over to Castle Rock North Peak. From there we did some more fun 3rd class downclimbing down the east ridge, then topped out on Castle Rock Northeast Peak around sunset.

We were treated with an amazing sunset over Granite and the Villard Spires to the west. Virga and low clouds made it very colorful. We quickly hiked down to the northwest until we found a good scree gully to descend as it was getting dark. Just as we needed headlamps while navigating a talus field we found a flat grassy meadow above Elephant Lake and set up camp for the night around 9:30pm.

The next morning we slept in a bit then started hiking up the valley to the east. There were no trails, but the terrain was pretty open. We followed talus and meadows up to Lake Susanne, then more talus slopes to the moraine above to the east. The final scree slopes up to the Bowback-Sundance col very actually quite difficult, and took quite a while with the heavy packs.

We dropped our packs at the saddle then scrambled up the 3rd class south ridge of Bowback. After a few wrong turns tagging some false summits and getting cliffed out we eventually topped out on Bowback Mountain by 11:30am. In the distance we saw two other climbers hiking towards the summit from the north. These were the first other people we’d seen the past few days, though we didn’t hang around long enough to talk to them.

We returned via a better route to the saddle. From the saddle we climbed up a very loose scree gully on the northeast to gain the huge Sundance plateau. We then hiked over easy talus south and east to the summit, about the farther point on the plateau from where we’d started. Andrew got service on the summit and I made the final call that after I dropped him off at the airport I would officially try to finish off the rest of the 12ers. Up until that point I wasn’t sure if I had the time or energy to do them all, but after nearly finishing the first loop I decided I’d go for it, even if it required sacrificing some sleep. Andrew shifted his flight time a bit early to give me a slightly bigger window to finish after dropping him off.

The descent down to our packs was a bit easier, but then we had another sketchier scree gully to descend to the east. It was the kind of scree that’s just hardened dirt in between a few rocks, so it’s hard to plunge step or kick steps in. I wish I’d had my hiking boots, which could at least get an edge in the dirt, instead of my trail runner, which were very slippery. We eventually made it down, though, and took a break on the edge of Ship Lake.

From the lake we dropped east and south to the edge of Shadow Lake. We finished early that day, with enough time for some quick swims in the lake before bed.

This was the first day in a while we would actually hike on trail, and it sounded much easier than the previous days. A trail is so easy – you don’t have to think about navigation, don’t have to worry about where you put your feet, you just turn on auto-pilot and walk.

We started at sunrise and easily hiked up the 46 switchbacks to Sundance Pass. We hid our packs behind some rocks and then made the short and fun scramble up the north ridge of Whitetail Peak. This peak looked like one of the most popular ones on our loop, with an obvious climbers trail and many cairns along the way. We then descended to the pass and hiked up easy grass and talus slopes to Silver Run Peak. It’s not clear which of the east and west peaks is higher, and I didn’t want to have to come back and do a repeat climb like I had for East and West Twin in Wyoming, so I just hiked them both.

Back at the pass we agreed I’d hike down quickly at my normal speed and hopefully get to the trailhead first. This would give me a head start to bike back to the car while Andrew hiked down at a reasonable pace. I tried to hike quickly, and it was very easy going on the trail. I passed more and more people as I got closer to the trailhead, and eventually reached the Lake Fork trailhead by 3:30pm. I quickly found my bike in the woods, then ate a bunch of food, chugged some water, and hid my pack in the woods.

I started biking down soon after, and unfortunately the bike ride went a bit slower than I’d hoped. It was about 12 miles, but the road got pretty rough and steep at the end. Eventually by 5:30pm I reached the car, ate another snack, loaded up the bike, and started driving.

I got back to the Lake Fork trailhead around 6:30pm to pick up Andrew, and then immediately started driving south. We drove about 6 hours back south to Jackson, stopping in Cody on the way to eat more Dairy Queen burgers and blizzards. Shortly after midnight we found a good spot in a national forest outside Jackson to camp for the night.

Unfortunately I got very little sleep in the back of the forester because some mice crawled in through the engine and were rustling around nibbling on things all night. By 5am I couldn’t take it any longer so we started driving. I dropped off Andrew at the airport, then used their Wi-Fi to quickly research the remaining mountains I had to climb. There were 12 more peaks, and I downloaded the maps and summitpost pages for all of them.

There were a few unknowns in the route I planned, like I didn’t know if the east ridge of Mt Hague would work, or if the Tempest-Peale traverse would work. But I needed to get moving, so decided I’d just figure things out on the fly.

I started driving north, but within a half hour the low-tire-pressure light started flashing. I hadn’t remembered driving over any rough roads or anything sharp, but I trusted the sensor. On my phone I found an auto body shop in Jackson that opened in a few hours, so turned around and started driving back in to town. This was not good for my prospects of finishing the 12ers before I needed to be back in Seattle. I was already planning to cut it pretty close, and worried I might just have to abort the attempt if the tire change took too long.

But then the light stopped flashing about 15 minutes down the road. I pulled over and none of the tires actually looked flat. I was also confused because other times I’d gotten a flat tire the light was solid on, not flashing. I’ve had false positives before when it was really cold, but that was only in -30F or colder (like in the Yukon in winter). Then I wondered if the mice crawling around the engine all night had chewed on a sensor cable. I’d had friends have that problem before.

I decided to continue driving north. There was a repair shop in Yellowstone and one in Cody, and I should be able to get to one of those on a donut if necessary.

It turned out I never had an issue with the flat tire, and it seems the sensor was just malfunctioning. I drove straight through to Red Lodge and then farther to Mystic Lake by 2pm. I quickly started repackaging more food and packing my bag. I’d been thinking about what to pack the whole drive and made some difficult decisions. The previous four days it had never rained despite the forecast for afternoon thunderstorms. This trip I anticipated to take about three days, and I’d have to carry all my gear up and over most summits. So I decided to carry my ultralight bivy sack instead of a tent. I also decided to leave my stove in the car and just eat dry dinners. I’d picked up a Little Ceasar’s Pizza in Cody, and that would cover my two dinners in the mountains.

Also, this time I would hike with a whippet and bring my aluminum crampons in case there was any snow I needed to climb. I would also hike in hiking boots instead of trail runner. This way I could front point on snow if necessary. This loop was almost completely off-trail, so I figured the hiking boots would do better over the tough terrain. For direction, I could either start with Pyramid Peak or Mt Peale. It didn’t seem to make much difference, but Pyramid was closer and I wanted to get at least one summit that evening, so I started with Pyramid.

I left the car at 3pm and bushwhacked straight up north through the woods along the west side of Chicken Creek. After a few hours I popped out at the lake below Ram Lake. From there I wrapped around the north side of the southeast ridge of Pyramid, then scrambled up scree to gain the ridge. Once on the ridge the scrambling got difficult. It was a talus field, but the boulders were the size of cars. Getting over all of them proved very slow, and as I climbed the weather seemed to be getting worse. In fact, this was the darkest I’d seen clouds since I’d come to Montana.

I ended up riding out a few rain and hail squalls under boulders, but in between I made progress up the ridge. I topped out on Pyramid Mountain at 7pm as the rain changed to snow. It was pretty intense in the heavy wind, and I soon dropped down to the north. By 8:15pm I made it to the Pyramid-Wood saddle and it looked like more bad weather was coming. I had hoped to get over Wood and down to a tarn below to set up camp, and was planning to just do a little night hiking. But it sounded pretty miserable navigating at night in those conditions. And I didn’t want to be caught on a summit if it started thundering.

Unfortunately since I had a bivy sack I couldn’t really just camp anywhere in case it started raining or snowing. I really needed some shelter. I had an hour til the sun set around 9pm, so started looking around for a good boulder. Unfortunately there were not many good options, but I found one I could at least half get under. I leveled out some rocks underneath, set up my bivy sack and pad, and crawled in around 8:45pm.

Just about then the wind picked up and another rain and snow squall started. I soon realized my bivy sack was not as water proof as I’d hoped. But my pack was waterproof, so I stuck my pad and lags in the pack and pulled that up to my waist. All was good until the roof above me started dripping. It was raining and snowing hard enough that the water was dribbling down the sloping roof and dripping like a faucet all over me. I was soon soaked. Unfortunately I didn’t have any garbage bags, or I would have pulled those over me. I pulled my gaitors out and laid those on top of me like a blanket, and pulled my rain jacket on. I then curled up in the fetal position to try to get more under the boulder. At least the dripping was less miserable than being outside in the wind.

Around 10pm it started thundering and I was very glad not to be on a summit then. This was very unusual weather to be thundering at night, and must have been a very big storm rolling through.

I stayed wet, but at least was not getting more wet. I was very cold, though, so every 30 minutes would have to do force shivering and nibble on sugary snacks to stay warm. Finally by midnight the storm abated and the dripping let up, but then it got colder. I continued doing forced shivering throughout the night, and didn’t get much sleep. The thought crossed my mind to abort the effort and just hike straight down below treeline that night. But persisted and stayed up high.

Finally around 5am the sun started coming up and I started moving. I packed up my soaked sleeping bag and gear, then made the short and fun 3rd class scramble up to the summit of Mt Wood. Of course there were enormous boulders up there that would have been excellent to bivy under, but I’m glad to not have been up there during the thunder.

I scrambled down the southwest ridge, then down to the southeast above a snowfield. It looked tricky to follow the ridge directly to the summit of Mt Hague, so I dropped down to a flat area just south of the ridge. The wind had died down so I took a short break to try to dry out my sleeping bag and other gear in the sun.

From the bowl below the ridge I hiked up scree and talus on the southeast side of Mt Hague until I gained the northeast ridge just below the summit. The ridge to the summit looked steep, loose, and unappealing, though in hindsight that might have been the best way up. Instead I crossed over to the north face and traversed sketchy choss slopes, then scrambled up loose exposed rock to gain the plateau just north of the summit. I believe that short section below Mt Hague was actually the crux of the Montana 12ers via the routes I took. I was happy not to have to go back down that way.

Mt Hague had the closest thing to a summit register I could find, but it was just a broken empty pvc pipe. From the summit I walked easily down the gentle south slopes to point 10562. I then hiked southeast through the trees to the edge of Island Lake. I crossed fallen trees across the outlet, then took a break on a beach on the south bank and further dried out my sleeping bag in the sun.

I hiked east on a good trail, and it felt weird to actually be on a trail after so much difficult travel. I turned south at Huckleberry Creek and followed the climbers trail up the west side of the creek. This is one of the standard approaches to climb Granite Peak, the state highpoint, which is why is sees enough traffic to get a trail forming. On the way I passed a ranger hiking down and a hiker coming down from Avalanche Lake.

I followed the trail and cairns to the edge of Avalanche Lake, then hiked up grassy slopes to upper Storm Lake. After a short break I then hiked directly up the talus slopes to reach the summit of West Granite by 6pm. Over the course of the summer I’ve become pretty efficient at hiking up steep talus slopes and my pace is pretty consistent. With an overnight pack it’s usually about 2,000ft gain on talus in a mile. Then I can adjust my time prediction up or down based on how much scree is mixed in and weather I have a day pack or overnight. (I guess I have a lot of data points after climbing ~200 peaks over the past few months).

Granite Peak was so close, but I knew it was 5th class terrain in between so I should save granite for the next day when I could climb up a 3rd class route. I hiked off the southwest ridge, crossing some 3rd class rock ribs, to a saddle, then headed over for Mystic.

From the saddle I followed the southeast ridge of Mystic. I scrambled on 3rd class ledges on the south side of the ridge up to the south peak, where I ditched my pack. From there I dropped down to a saddle and then reached the summit by 7:30pm. I returned to my pack, and then traversed to the saddle just north of Villard. I had originally planned to climb the 4th class north ridge of Villard, but that seemed like a bad idea at night with an overnight pack. So instead I dropped down east from the saddle down gentle snow slopes.

I hiked down Sky Top Creek in a very flat valley as the sun set. Then in the dark I scrambled up the pass just south of Villard Spire, and hiked around to the tarn at 10,900ft just above Upper Aero Lake and west of Villard Spire. I set out my bivy sack around 10pm at the outlet of the lake and camped there.

I got up at 4:30am the next morning on what would be my final and longest day of the Montana 12ers push. I left my overnight gear at camp and hiked up the south face of Glacier Peak. Near the summit it turned into 3rd class scrambling, and I topped out just after sunrise. From the summit I did a fun scramble along and just south of the ridge to the east. The funnest part was gaining the intermediate west peak of Villard. I then descended slightly, crossed a corniced section on the ridge, and topped out on Villard soon after.

To descend I dropped directly down the south face, which had excellent plunge stepping in the scree. I remember thinking how difficult that route would be to ascend, and then I saw a climber starting to ascend it! He was planning to also climb Villard and Glacier, but was a bit nervous about the traverse so planned to go up and down each one. I assured him the traverse was safe and fun, so maybe he ended up doing it.

I dropped all the way down to camp, and then started planning how I would get up Villard Spire. Villard Spire appears to just barely rise above 12,000ft and have just above 300ft of prominence, so barely qualifies as a Montana 12er. Matt posted a route description on summitpost to follow a ledge far from the south. The route involves some exposed traversing, and didn’t really make sense to climb from my camp. I was directly west below the summit, so didn’t want to have to hike way south to gain that ledge.

So I ended up hiking directly up to the base of the summit cliffs with my overnight gear to try to find another way. Worst case, I reasoned, I could just south and find the ledge Matt took. I got to the base of a gully leading down from the main upper col just south of the summit. I ditched my pack here, and the route above looked like it wasn’t too bad. If I could just scramble to the upper col then I would meet up with Matt’s route, which I knew worked.

I hiked up talus to the base of a steep section underneath a chockstone. I then scrambled up the class 3/4 blocks on the side. I was able to scramble on the side all the way up to a broad talus ledge leading left. I noticed a cairn on a very thin exposed ledge on climbers right of the gully, and suspected this was Matt’s route. My route seemed much less exposed, so I was happy to have found it.

I generally followed the ledge up and to the left until I topped out on the summit. From the top I had great views of my remaining four peaks, and it seemed like I might actually finish that day as planned. In hindsight, I think Villard Spire was my favorite Montana 12er because of all the fun scrambling on the route.

I downclimbed back to my pack, then wrapped around the south side of the spires and dropped down to Sky Top Lakes. After crossing an outlet I then hiked straight up the steep west talus slopes to the summit of Cairn Mountain. This one, of course, did actually have a cairn on top, unlike most of the other summits. I took a bit of time on the summit to do some scouting. I was hoping to climb the southwest ramp of granite and then somehow get to Tempest Mountain next. I’d climbed granite before via the east ridge, but that route is generally considered to be 5th class and it was steep enough I’d rappelled it in 2008.

This time I didn’t have a rope, so didn’t want to descend that route. Based on the topo map I’d planned to descend back down the south face of granite and drop to Lowary Lake, then hike up to the Granite-Tempest col from there. But from my view on Cairn Mountain it looked like descent ledges went all the way around the south face of granite and connected to the col. If that were true, I could save 1000 ft of elevation and not drop to the lake.

I kept that in mind as I descended Cairn Mountain down the north ridge to the saddle just south of Granite. There I ditched my overnight gear and started up the southwest ramp route on Granite. I brought my whippet and crampons just in case it was full of snow. I was actually looking forward to this as one of the easiest climbs of the day. This was a very well-traveled route, since it was the easiest route up the state highpoint. I had loaded a GPS track, route description, and expected a good climbers trail and cairns the whole way up. That way pretty rare for the Montana 12ers.

A group of four were heading down, and they said there was just one guy above them. I easily followed climbers trails up the scree, then turned right at a big cairn after rounding the base of a big slab. I scrambled up the gully, and saw all kinds of fixed ropes. There was one down low on a 3rd class section that seemed unnecessary. I would later see more fixed ropes and rap anchors, which were surprising in a 3rd class gully. But I guess this was a very popular mountain, and that means less-experienced people climb it and aren’t comfortable down climbing the same terrain I would down climb.

One man coming down said he was lowering himself on a fixed rope and the rope broke and he fell 10 ft onto his back! He said he was ok, though, but warned me to be careful of the fixed ropes. I assured him I wasn’t planning on touching any of the ropes anyways.

Up a bit higher there was a snowy icy section with more fixed ropes, but I was able to scramble up rock to the side and not need my crampons. Finally, I reached a chockstone with a white fixed rope hanging down. I think this was the one the guy had trusted. It looked like a hardware store rope, not a climbing rope, and would definitely have been sketchy to put body weight on. I did an awkward chimney move to get above the chockstone, then followed cairns on the ridge all the way to the summit. I had the summit to myself, but saw a group of five people descending down the east ridge.

It’s amazing how the state highpoint gets many orders of magnitude more ascents than any surrounding peaks. There were probably 30 people that ascended Granite that day, but I might be the only person to climb Villard Spire all summer! (and villard spire turned out to be my favorite of all the 12ers). Granite did have an awesome view and a really nice summit register. I made sure to sign in, and noted that I just had two more 12ers left to finish the list. It was 1:30pm and seemed like I was on track to finish that day.

I downclimbed the route to my gear, then started traversing from the saddle. I ended up traversing around 11,200ft. The talus turned to grassy ledges, which wrapped around the southeast ridge of Granite. I hadn’t read about anyone doing this traverse, and hadn’t seen the whole route from Cairn, so it was a bit of adventure climbing. The ledge got narrower and narrower until one section would require tiptoeing across a small lip above great exposure. It was unclear if it got any better after that, so I backtracked, then downclimbed to a lower scree ledge. From there I traversed, making one delicate exposed slabby move, but I eventually reached easier terrain.

I then traversed on ever-easier scree and talus slopes until I reached the Granite-Tempest col. The route had worked! And by taking it I’d probably saved an hour or two over dropping down to Lowary Lake. There were more climbers hiking to the col from tempest. I passed by them, then passed by two climbers hiking back from Granite. I guess these crowds were to be expected since it was a Saturday, but it was still a big contrast to all the other 12ers, where I hadn’t seen anyone else.

Eventually I left the climbers trail and scrambled directly up to the summit of Tempest Mountain by 4pm. I took a short break and made a plan for my final peak. Mt Peal looked extremely close, but I’d seen and heard there is a cliffy saddle in between tempest and Peal, with the direct west ridge of Peal being 5th class. I made a plan to go check out the saddle just to be sure there was no viable route, then I’d hike north along the edge of Froze to Death Plateau until I found a way down.

I made it to the edge of the saddle, and couldn’t see any way down the cliffs. I saw a gully on the west side of Peal that looked like it would go, but I couldn’t get down to the saddle. Maybe there was a way I overlooked, but I soon gave up and started hiking north. I kept peeking over the edge of the plateau, but was always met with cliffs. It was frustrating because I was hiking farther and farther away from my last peak. Finally I found a gully that might work.

I hiked down scree to what looked like a chockstone, but was able to scramble around it to a steep snow slope. There I put on crampons, unsheathed my whippet, and front-point downclimbed to the base. That was the only time I actually used the crampons on the trip, but they were crucial to getting down that gully. I then hiked down talus to a tarn at 10,500ft and took a short break. Above me was a long talus gully that looked to gain the north ridge and standard route up Mt Peal.

The gully ended up being tedious by doable, and I soon crested the edge of a plateau. I then powered through another half mile of talus and found myself on the summit of Mt Peal at 6:37pm. That was my final Montana 12er, and I guess it was fitting that it would be a tough one. I hung out til 7pm admiring the view and taking pictures.

The descent would be no cakewalk, though. I figured I had three options. Option 1: go back up the snow and scree gully to Froze to Death Plateau and go cross country back to the main trail back to Mystic Lake. Option 2: descend to Turgulse Lake, then hike up talus on the north side back up to Froze to Death Plateau, saving a bit of distance. Option 3: Hike down and out to Phantom Lake, then pick up a climbers trail down from there to the main trail, then follow the main trail up and over Froze to Death Plateau.

All options had about the same amount of elevation gain and distance. However, night was coming soon. I was reluctant to be hiking all the way across Froze to Death Plateau at night. It would likely be cold and windy, and I’ve learned navigating above treeline at night tends to be very slow. If I needed to bivy I didn’t want to have a repeat of the miserable bivy above treeline below Mt Wood. If storms came in, I definitely didn’t want to be on the plateau at night.

I’d read there were good climbers trails down from Phantom Lake, though, and I figured I could reach the lake by dark. It sounded much more pleasant to be doing all my night traveling on trails instead of cross country above treeline. So I opted for Option 3.

I descended the way I’d come down to Turgulse Lake, then hiked on talus and nice meadows along the east side. I crossed the outlet and hiked around the west side of Froze to Death Lake, passing a few tents. Below the outlet I followed granite slabs, then crossed over to the east at treeline. I thought there would be a climbers trail, but I never found it as the sun was setting. So I had to bushwhack down in the dark to Phantom Lake, where I did pick up a climbers trail.

The trail ended up passing through a campsite, and a few guys were still awake near a fire at 10pm. I asked them if the trail was in good shape down the outlet, and they were very confused and concerned about me. They were probably wondering how I got there if I hadn’t come up that trail. I told them I was headed to Mystic Lake and didn’t want to go over Froze to Death Plateau at night.

This led to more confusion (since they thought I was referring to Froze to Death Lake). I was actually very far from Mystic Lake, and they had come from a different trailhead that was closer. They told me I should just stop for the night and go back in the morning. That sounded pretty appealing actually, but I had just run out of food and needed to drive back to Seattle starting the next morning, so needed to keep moving.

I assured them that I do stuff like this all the time and that they shouldn’t worry, that I’d be fine. So I continued down the climbers trail. It was actually pretty difficult to follow at night in an open woods section, and I got turned around for a while. But I eventually found it. I dropped down a steep talus and scree section, then traversed and eventually regained the official trail around 8,400ft.

From there it was easy but tedious hiking back. I slowly hiked up to the west to the saddle at 10,140ft, then started down the switchbacks to Mystic Lake. My feet were in pretty tough shape from going in hiking boots all day basically completely off trail. Below the lake my pace slowed considerably as I gingerly walked through the very rocky path. At one point I stopped to take a nap around 3am, but soon after a hiker came up the trail and I woke up.

August 16

I continued down and finally reached the car around 4:15am for a nearly 24 hr day. I quickly jumped in the back and went to sleep. I had told Katie I’d be back to Seattle Sunday night, though, and it would be about a 15 hour drive, so I couldn’t sleep in too long.

I got woken up by the sun about 2 hours later, so started driving out around 6:30am. I stopped briefly at West Rosebud Lake on the way out and went for a swim that counted as a bath. It had the dual effect of cleaning me off and waking me up.

The 15 hour drive was tough but I nibbled on trail mix most of the way to stay awake, and made it back to seattle by around 9:30pm.

Over the past 60 days I had climbed around 205 peaks, all over 12,000ft (CO Centennials, WY 13ers, MT 12ers, lots of bonus peaks), and taken only 3 rest days. I would end up resting for the next week before doing any more exercise.

Montana 12ers

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