The Rocky Mountaineers

Dates: April 13-14, 2019 Leader:Forest Dean Participants: Brent Maier, Logan DeBoer, Jerry Cintron, Erin Carey, Casey Lammers, Josh Ashton, Joe Hylton
For the second consecutive spring, we put together this weekend practice session to work on all things related to snow climbing and glacier travel.Two days prior, on Thursday, we held a roundtable session at Big Sky Brewery to discuss these important components of mountaineering.The session was very well attended with 12 folks showing up.For this weekend training, I had decided to cap the participants at eight so as to provide for a better experience for everyone there.Unfortunately had to turn a few other interested individual’s away (stay tuned as we will try to put another one of these field days together soon!)
Last year we held this practice at Snowbowl and was planning to again this year but then they decided to stay open for an extra weekend.So we moved to Marshall Mountain (thank you Bruce, for the permission) which worked dece…

Date: April. 13th, 2019 Participants: Steve Schombel, Marianne Cassidy, David and Julie Kahl
I like when an otherwise casual hike turns into a mystery of sorts. Fish Creek road is off of the part of Sunset Hill Rd. south across the Blackfoot River from The PawsUp Resort. It is on the flanks of Bata and Baldy Mts. The start of the road actually runs on a divide ridge between Elk Cr. to the south and Fish Cr. on the north. David and I had explored part of it back in January and now we were back to extend the explorations. The road was mostly clear of snow now, but with recent rains it was damp mud. The day was cloudy in the upper 40’s/7.2c. Not far in we saw elk off in the distance through the trees, deer were everywhere. We also saw blue birds, woodpeckers in all the areas, and geese over head. But no flowers not even buttercups. Not quite 2 miles/ 3.22k back we came upon a trail junction, with a gated two-track road that went southeast into a section of the Clearwater State Forest, t…

Date: April 6, 2019 Trip Leader: Susanna Girolamo Phillips Participants: Minot, Mick, Jenica 
On Saturday four of us adventured out before an other weather cycle rolled in. We meat early in the morning to start our day and carpooled all together to south Hamilton. We were able to leave the Ward Mountain Trailhead at a good time. The mountains welcomed us early with sunshine. We found the lower part of the mountain trail (south and east aspect) dry and muddy. During our ascend, earlier in the day, the upper part of the mountain was easier to travel. But as soon as we hit 8'000 ft wind and snow restricted our visibility. We made it to the summit just before noon. We retread below the top and enjoyed a short lunch break before making our way back down the mountain. The skiing down to 6'000 ft was on snow dust on top of snow crust. The snow crust didn't start breaking until we reached about 5'200ft. Soon we found our self's punching through rotten snow. We then decide…