Beehive Basin

Before I update you on the Beehive Basin trip, I need to inform you of other events also. The first one was doing a triathlon with my Pops back in Rapid City. We decided to do a team event where I would swim, my friend Dave would bike and my dad would run. Dave and I weren't necessarily well prepared for this sort of thing since we decided to do it about a week or two before the race. Not exactly good training time. Pops, on the other had, had been training for a while and was in better shape than us. We just need to get him swimming like mad and he'll rock these triathlons in no time. Well, we ended up doing pretty well in it and actually got second place in the team category! Not too shabby. Next year we'll get first.
Next up was a little bit of time spent in Big Sky for the annual Western Agricultural Economics Association's meeting and conference. This would be my first time going to a conference of any sort, nonetheless an economic one. It was a sign that I should be growing up and making progress towards a career. I feel like it's coming right up. I'll save that for some other time though. Well, the conference was actually pretty good. Good food, good speeches, and an excellent area.
This is a fairly big conference and had people from all over the U.S. I ended up meeting quite a few people from different areas. And I can now say that economists might actually be a little more dry than accountants. I know you'll like to hear that Pops. It was quite the realization. At least I add a little bit of excitement.... kind of. Mainly professors just try to ignore me when I come in with a bloody face....
Well, to get on to the good stuff; I went to Beehive Basin right next to Big Sky and did some climbing/skiing. It was pretty amazing and for once had some really good weather. There was barely a cloud in the sky. Tom came down Friday night after my conference was over and we camped along the road taking in the amazing scenery of stars that night. It was amazingly clear. We woke up at 5:00 am, finished packing the gear and took off on the trail by 6:00 am. We were carrying our skis, ski boots, ski poles, ice axe, crampons, rope, climbing gear (cams, nuts, quickdraws), and some food and water. The night before we decided the 12 mile round trip, a climb up a couloir, a 6 pitch rock climb, and a ski descent of another couloir would take us about 12 hours on the upper end. We were a little off.... with food, water and time.
When we started hiking at 6:00 am it was fairly light out. A somewhat welcome sight. It was good we were hiking in the light, but it was not fun hiking that early. As much as I like alpine starts, I do enjoy at least sleeping until 8:00 am. The initial hike up was pretty straight forward and didn't offer any surprises. It's an easy hike with not much incline the whole way on a good dirt trail. The trail goes right next to the river draining the area and offers a nice subtle background.
Of the 5.5 mile hike up to the base of the climb/couloir, only about 2 miles was on dirt. There was still enough snow that we hiked about three miles on snow! When we got up to the base of the South East Couloir, we got the rope, crampons, and ice axes out to start the climb. It wasn't too bad of a climb, but it was just a little bit icy since it's in the shade most of the day. When we got to the top, we were sitting directly on a knife edge ridge. This thing dropped off on both sides of you making for a lot of exposure. While the climbing wasn't necessarily hard, having skis and ski boots on the backpack and having that much exposure did make the climb very interesting. While we were switching the snow gear for rock gear, we started to put the sunscreen on because it was beating down on us. We had been in the shade most of the day, but now that we were on the ridge, there was no hiding from it.
When we set off on the ridge, the climbing was very straight forward. We had no route description nor had either of us climbed it before, but we just kept on going and hoped everything would work out. We managed to get ourselves scared a couple of times because of snow on the route and because we thought we might be off route because the climbing was getting harder. That wasn't really making us feel any better, but we did manage to stay on route as best as I can tell. Aside from the climb, we had awesome views from every vantage point. We could look in every direction since we were on top of the ridge. Absolutely great sights!
Once we made it to the top, we made our way off the back side and heard that this was a scramble down a couloir. Well, because of all the snow and ice, this was not an easy scramble. We downclimbed a little chimney into a snow chute, and then scrambled lower to a snow filled couloir. That downclimb took us a very long time.
Once at the bottom of that couloir, we made our way another 200 feet to the ridge and looked down into the South West Couloir we were going to ski. It felt great to finally make it to that point! The packs were so heavy and hiking and climbing all of this in one day was quite a chore! With a little food and the last of our water, we sat staring at the couloir and getting ready to ski. Tom went first since I lead the other couloir. When he dropped in he immediately set off a wet slab. He turned right into it and I thought he was going to get taken down by it, but he skied away from it. We both sat there looking at each other surprised that this wet slab was as big as it was. It took quite a bit of snow with it, and while he skied down the rest of the way, he was still setting off other sections. When he got down it was my turn and I did the same thing! The slabs weren't as big as his, but we were setting these things off constantly! I had never seen anything like it.
Once we reached the bottom, we could keep skiing out for a couple miles until it turned to dirt again. By this point we were absolutely famished from having eaten a couple clif bars during the day and we each had two liters of water... which had been gone for a little while. While heading back you hear the roar of the water draining all of the snow melt down the valley. It was a horrible reminder of how dehydrated we were. After putting the skis back on the pack, I finally succumbed to temptation and drank straight from the river (we didn't bring a purifier). Luckily I am not sick, but that could have been a bad scenario if I did.
Well, we finally made it back to the cars at 8:00 pm. 14 hours later! It was something else to go that far and do that many things. I did enjoy all of the climbing and skiing, but I was absolutely spent by the end of the day.