Oh Hyalite...

So I spent the entire week trying to track down my boss to no avail. So I apparently thought that meant I should ditch Friday and go skiing instead. It seemed like the perfect idea... and it was. It was clear skies and no crowds at Big Sky. Perfect day. Well, almost perfect. Our area has been in quite the warm spell and hasn't seen snow for weeks. This seems to be typical of Montana though. Get good snow early and then January ends dry. Hopefully by February we'll see some colder temps and more snow.
After the skiing, a few of us went to the Banff Film Festival to watch some inspiring outdoor flicks. They show movies from ordinary mountain culture all the way to insane skiing and climbing. It's a good mix of shows to get the motivation going.
Well, after the show I packed the 'ol backpack for ice climbing the next day. Jeremy, Amy and I went up to Hyalite to see how the ice conditions were. Since it's been warm I was a bit wary of things melting, but it turned out to be okay. Definitely not great, but not horrible either. I hadn't been ice climbing for a few weeks, so the confidence was waning a bit... and it showed. Not only were we doing a pretty stiff climb, but it took 10 swings to break away all of the bad ice to get to the good stuff. By the time I made it up the first half of the climb I was freakin spent! So tiring to swing that much and make zero progress. Stupid ice climbing.

Ice Climbing

I'm disappointed to say that I did not make it to Cody, WY right before Christmas as was planned. Jeremy got sick as we hiked in and when we were at the base of a climb he got dizzy and on the verge of puking. It was ugly.
So, we hiked out and I went ice climbing in Rapid instead. It served for a few good days of ice, but nothing like back in Bozeman.
The pictures are of Slama and I in Spearfish Canyon.
This coming weekend a few of us are thinking about doing a big ice route out in the Absaroka/Beartooth's. I'll let you know if we make it out there.