Cooke City Area Archives

On Saturday, Susan and I skied, climbed, and snow slogged our way up to Petrified Dreams (although we didn't know it at the time, close inspection of the guide book confirmed it this morning). It is considerably thinner than it was when the picture in "Winter Dance" was taken but it's still a fantastic and spectacular climb (75 meters!). We climbed it in three pitches and found the same "fortunate belay caves" as in the first ascent. However, the last pitch was not WI4 (WI6 perhaps?). This weekend both pitches 1 and 3 formed the crux of the climb.

Today we climbed Hydromonster. It took us 2.5 hours of snowshoeing to get to it but if you hit it before the next storm and follow our tracks you can probably get to it in 60 minutes. As indicated in the Winterdance guidebook, park at the pullout with the "Baronette Peak" lookout sign. Walk towards Tower Jct 0.4 miles to the bridge and catch our snowshoe trail on the other side of the drainage.

spent last weekend playing in the mountains around Cooke City. I wasn't climbing, but thought i'd post my observations. I could see in the daylight early last friday morning that the Hippo is just about ready for a dance. -Dually, MANY other pillars and link-ups exist in plain eye sight from the road. Snow conditions for the most part felt pretty good (i was never on barronette however, and "pretty good" for me is maybe "suspect" to some?). -perform your due-diligence. All the climbs in silvergate look superb from the road as well.

Things are looking up with colder temperatures all week. Everything is starting to form I got out this week on this. [img]http://montanaice.com/forums/user_images/jpeg.gif[/img] It is a fun WI3 in good shape (thin) that gets buried later with snow. The last couple of warm days got everything flowing. Conditions will just get better! Jay

Where is the best place to check avy conditions for cooke city?

I spent last weekend in the Cooke area hiking around to see what was forming. Cloe and I hiked to the base of the Hydro Monster but it was just a little shy of coming in. Should be there by the end of the week. Several of the Barronette routes were very close to forming. Also drove down to the Pilot Creek area where numerous routes are well on there way to being in. Very nice dark, three pitched, brown booger of a climb was almost climbable. Looks like a great start to the season. kristoffer Erickson

Almost every pitch of ice that has been climbing in Pine creek is currently in. Easy drive to the parking lot. Blue and green are huge but be aware, spring avi conditions can bring wet slides. kristoffer erickson

Things were much warmer this time. Stan and I headed back to Pilot Creek to get on the Unnamed Left route before avy conditions worsened. You definitely needed skis to get to the base,unless you like to wallow.

I?m continually amazed at the climbing in the Cooke city area this season. Yesterday Whit Magro, Conrad Anker and myself went down to climb the far left pillar on Barronette that seems to form rarely and then only as a pencil. The Winter Dance guidebook has no information about this but Ron?s supplement has mention of the route. Here is Ron?s description: "Park at the west side of the Barronette Ski Trailhead and ski 20 minutes down the trail to the first big clearing. Ski another couple hundred yards and look for the climb above.

Rusty Willis and I headed up Chief Joseph Hwy to climb Leaning Tree, but wussed out with the prospect of dropping into even colder temps at the bottom of the Clarks Fork Canyon. Temps were reading -15 on the road above. So we drove further to the snowmobile dropoff point. This is the Pilot Creek parking lot. It's a deep snow bushwack to the cliffs where the conditions have been very kind this year.