Iceburg Notch: Many Glacier to the Loop

My boss Beau and I have developed something of a tradition, in which, at the end of every summer we pick a hike that kicks our shit. The hike isn't always long, but due to a combination of length altitude, and ample amounts of navigation error we epic. This season we traversed from Many glacier to the loop via iceberg notch. The first part of the trip is easy: 5 miles to the favorite tourist haunt Iceberg Lake. From there things get tricky. 2,000 feet on rotten scree ledges to the notch. Climbing the notch alone is roughly the same difficulty as most the peaks found on top of the pass. 

Beau at the lake with the Notch above. 

Beau about halfway up.  

Looking down the notch. Some dude skied this last winter!

This is where we began our epic. According to the old Edwards guide it was only another hour to the top of Iceberg peak. We'd made good time so why not? ...thus began a 4hr route finding detour with limited water. The lack of pics from the peak portion speaks to our suffering.  

Beau on the summit. the lake is 3,000 feet straight down. 

 A glisade on our decent down the back side. 

Mt. Gould above the granite Chalete on our final 8 mile push from Ahern pass brought us to the loop. 

Blogger is being dumb here are a few pics.

So I was in glacier for a month and did not post once. Our shitty generator, hundreds of screaming 12 year olds, lots and lots of days in the park, and me being a royal bum all conspired to prevent this from happening.  I was going to post all of my pics at once but blogger is shit, and I'm in a laundry mat with crappy wifi. Here are a couple shots. I'll post more when the internet is better. 

The mission Mtns on the drive to the flathead.

Shannon and Tron, surveying the Quartz lake loop

Spam bloc enjoying the views from Oberlin.

Sarah, more enthused about the trail than myself.

Torrey Lake and a bunch of Pioneer Rock.

Turns out moving out of your apartment really blows. Especially, if you're dedicated to getting your security deposit back. After multiple days of scrubbing goo out of my fridge I decided that wilderness was much needed. The only problem was I decided this at around 4pm on Saturday. Which I arrogantly decided was not going to stop me form going backpacking. Which in turn meant I didn't leave my car for Torrey Lake until 6:30pm. ....Yep, hiked by headlamp and sent my tent up in the dark. 

With that said, the Pioneers are very cool and relatively untrafficked mountains (I only saw one other party the entire time and had the entire lake basin to myself). Torrey Lake is nestled high between Tweedy and Torrey Mountains, the tallest Montana peaks outside the greater Yellowstone and only 11,000 footers west of I-15. 

I hoped to bag one of the peaks, but unfortunately my puppy Norma was a wuss and appeared incapable of technical scrambling, and I didn't have the heart to leave her as cougar bait by the lake. 

With that said the lake was rad, and the mountains lived up to the claim made in the old Cafferty guide that the southern Pioneers hold the largest quantity of untested granite in the state. 

 The hike in.

An epic buttress. 

Another one. 

Last light on tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. Two stellar spires on Tweedy's east ridge.  

Tweedy 

Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum again, with the lake below for scale. 

My tent in front of Torrey.

Hopefully I'll be back for the peaks. 

Stuart Peak the long way.

Got a camera for my birthday, which means y'all can expect far more regular posts. Over the 4th Sarah and I decided to skip out on the war zone like celebrations you could expect from Butte, and head into the Rattlesnake. For all the time, I've spent putzing around in the recreation area, I'd never actually made it to the wilderness boundary. 

The plan was to bikepack to the Franklin Bridge, camp and fish, then stash our packs bike to the wilderness boundary and hike the back way up stuart peak. It actually worked pretty flawlessly (with the exception of the fishing) though, I will admit to underestimating the overall milage given our short time window. 

 Sarah trucking in on the old forest service road. 

 Some hardman's cabin, 15 miles from the trailhead. 

 Monching, on the dam at the first lake. 

Rattlesnake creek through a pretty cool chute. No idea if creek boaters run it.  

Lake Mckinnely.

Being my first experience with the new camera, I punted and did not charge the battery. Right about here is were it died. We did summit and the views towards the missions and swans were pretty awesome. 

4th of July has come and past, I'm now a crusty old man (25), and peakbagging season is on. Huzzah! 

the park revisited

Had a long weekend over easter, and due to impending winter storm warnings around Butte, I decided to visit my old stomping grounds on the North Fork of the Flathead. It seems pretty crazy that a year ago I'd just started living there. Weather was un-seasonally nice, and we took full advantage by lounging around the Glacier Institute like champs. We did however to do a little hiking on the southern boundary trail, which follows the Middle Fork of the Flathead. This trail would normally not be my first choice, but snow up high had us looking for new options. It turned out to be great. Despite having driven the same route on highway 2 numerous times, being on the opposite side of the river, and traveling at a much slower pace changed the entire experience.


Middle Fork


Precambrian Super Choss

One final push to the end of the semester. Here's to hoping its only beautiful outside on days I can actually afford to recreate.

Siyeh Peak plus Siyeh pass.

John David jordan and myself did a little hikin' over the weekend. Here are some pics of our trip up one of the 6, 10,000 footers in the park (photos by JD). The photo of cracker lake is looking down from the east face of Siyeh, the tallest verticle face in Montana... A true choss monster.







Later in the day JD hooked on to a bull trout. Sadly no pic. But trust me, it was rad.