Kootenai Canyon

After camping nearby, we headed for a fun day of climbing at Kootenai Canyon.  We spent some time consulting the guidebook on some climbs in our grade, and had trouble finding too many sport routes in the canyon.  We found three sport routes that we could climb - two 5.9s and one 5.10a. 

In the parking lot, after making some sandwiches, we noticed the trees flurrying.  Let me explain, there where white dots floating around all of the pine trees in the parking lot.  I had a hard time taking a photo of the phenomena.  Then I noticed white "flurry" by the van.  I wasn't sure if it was a moth or a butterfly, and spent a good while chasing a few of them to find out.

As it turns out they were butterflies.  Apparently it was the season for these white butterflies because they were up and down the canyon, and landed on us several times during the day.  They liked Joey's neon hat.

The canyon was beautiful, and the trail going up the canyon was wide and well maintained.  The stream running by the trail was pretty - later we found out it is a prime kayaking location.  

We headed up from the trail to our first climb - Captain Ging a short (only 40') 5.9.  The guide book read that it was past a tree with a mailbox (which we saw - certainly a nonsequitor in the middle of the woods) and had 4 bolts leading to a two bolt anchor.  And as an option you could walk off to decend.  Joey and I looked at the face and could only see 3 bolts.  It was weird since the climb was so short that we couldn't see the top or the anchors, but we supposed they were hiding on some positive face of rock. 

Joey lead the climb with little trouble, but as he passed the third anchor, he didn't see the rest of the climb.  He continued up to the summit of the climb, and didn't see the anchors either.  Apparently the last bolt and anchors vaporized and hadn't been  replaced. We had recently started studying natural anchors and setting protection using the features in the rock, but didn't really feel confident or motivated enough to set a top rope anchor here.  Joey walked off of the climb and I ended up skipping it because it was so sketchy.   

 

We headed back down the slope to the main trail and headed over to our next target - 11th Commandment a 10a.  We had a bit of a time finding this climb, our guide book topo images were pretty tiny so we spent a bit of time walking around tryign to figure out which was the right climb.  Eventually we settled on a route we were pretty sure was the right climb.  I wasn't exactly sure since it looked pretty overhung, but Joey was gung-ho and ready to climb.  I was happy to belay him. 

The climb was tough.  The overhanging sections are always really tricky, since you are hanging from your arms to support your weight and not standing on your legs.  It was also a pretty long climb, 80', so you need to rely on your endurance to get you up to the top.  Joey stuck it through, and very very slowly made it to the top.  For those of you that were with us at Devil's Punchbowl for Joey's birthday - you may remember Joey's really long lead... it was a lot like that.

By the time Joey made it to the top, I wasn't so sure I wanted to attempt this climb.  I was equally unsure if Joey wanted to do the climb again.  If I couldn't climb this - Joey would have to reclimb the route to retreive our gear.  I reminded Joey of this - and we decided to just have Joey come down from the top and not set up the equipment for me to climb the rock.  Once Joey came down off the climb - he remarked that that must have been a "Montana 10a".  

We met up with some other climbers just reaching the crag as we were packing up our gear - and they affirmed what we had encountered so far.  This climb was pretty tough for its grade - and the first climb we did isn't usually done without toproping off of some natural anchor.  They recommended the other climb we had picked out, which was across the river. 

We headed down to the canyon trail and looked for a place to cross the river.  The book mentioned there was a log you could cross to get tothe other side.  We found a log jam.  I was intimidated.  Huge timbers spanned the creek - and there were several logs piled on top of each other making for a trickly climb across the river.  Joey was a champ and hiked both of our packs across so all I had to contend with was balancing across the branches.  

On the otherside there was a large mossy boulder field.  We hopped across the boulders upstream and met another set of climbers returning from the pitch we were headed towards.  They gave us some rough instructions on how to get to the climb.  The lady mentioned that river had only recently receeded enough for them to access this side of the river - maybe only a week or two ago.  We continued up a little ways across the mossy (and sometimes unstable boulders).  

At this point, I didn't really want to go further.  It was getting late, the terrain was unstable, and I was skeptical if I'd even be able to do this next climb.  We were supposed to meet some friends of friends in Missoula that evening, and I didn't really want to arrive like I had just rolled off of a boulder field and fallen into a river.  Okay, so I was tired and a little paranoid and skeptical.  We ended up heading out without doing the last climb of the day - and rolled into Missoula after dark. 

We ate our first mexican food on the trip.  Boy, we had missed it!  We got the evening started with a couple of strawberry margaritas, and had a great time enjoying the local scene in Missoula with Mark and his friends.