Rattler's Gulch

On Monday, we headed out of Missoula.  Our goal was to spend the week climbing through Montana before catching a flight to Oklahoma on Thursday for our friend Rhiannon's wedding. 

We chose some climbing at a drive-up approach climbing area called Rattler's Gulch.  There were some cool blades of limestone sticking out of the ground, and we had the crag all to ourselves.  Adrianne was super tired and took a nap while I scouted out the climbs.  I was pretty excited after checking out the climbs, and couldn't wait to get started. 

 

The area was marked by limestone ribs sticking out of the mountainside. 

'Going to St. Louis' was a 5.9 route up the edge of one of the blades, so that's where we started.  It was pretty different than a lot of the climbing we had done, since it was essentially up the edge of a narrow spire - not on the face of a cliff. 

Going to St Louis - a 5.9 at Rattler's Gulch

It was tricky to plan the path to the top, as we needed to move between both sides of the blade to make it to the top.  Adrianne had a little trouble, but she was pumped to try the next climb for the day. 

Adrianne is pumped and ready to climb!

Next we moved to another one of the ribs of rock, and did some tough face climbing.  I led 'Steppin Out' a 5.10a/b.  The holds were pretty thin, and the holds were only big enough for a finger or two.  

Joey planning and sending Steppin Out a 5.10

Adrianne was ready to defeat another climb - and made it up to the top despite the tiny holds.  Apparently taking a nap got Adrianne all fired up - and a bit silly. 

Something looks funny in the photo to the right... 

Next, I toproped a 10b that shared anchors with Steppin' Out before it started to rain.  We packed up fast and headed back to the van.  

On the drive out of the climbing location, we saw some Antelope for the first time on the trip, and Adrianne's first time ever.  She had to see them to believe that antelope lived in the states.  

From there we headed to Butte, MT and got some delicious pizza. By the time we looked for camping it was dark, and there were houses on all the forest access roads we went down.  Tiring fast, we returned to a Walmart parking lot we had seen earlier to spend the night.  Not our best camping spot, but it got us through the night.  In this photo you might confuse the parking lot for an RV campsite - we'd never seen so many RVs at Walmart before. 

There were RVs surrounding us in the parking lot!

The next morning after picking up some van supplies at the Walmart (we succumbed to their business plan of letting campers park overnight and spend money the next morning).  We headed out toward some climbing at a place called 'The Nuggets', but there were fires nearby recently and only local traffic was allowed near the rocks.  We had noticed it was pretty smokey, but didn't realize the fires had been so close. 

Adrianne was excited to find out that Ted's Montana Grill was in MT as well as in GA.

It ended up working out well, because we were able to do some more driving that day and make it a bit closer to Billings.  It was beautiful driving despite being a bit hazy.  We found a great camsite southeast of Bozeman close to our next climbing spot.  The campsite host, an Atlanta native, was curious how an out-of-stater found the campground that was mainly utilized by locals.  We had found it on our 'official' Montana state map, a real gem because it listed national forest and BLM land.  The host pointed out some other places to visit in Montana that we'd have to check out before heading out of the state.