Froze to Death Plateau

I spent a lot of time researching which peak I wanted to summit in the greater Yellowstone area. There were two at the top of my list, both of them the highest peaks in their states; Granite Peak in Montana and Gannett Peak in Wyoming. The shortest trail leading to Gannett peak was over twenty miles long, far too challenging for a weekend, and with the Granite trail being around eleven miles the decision was made! It’s always difficult because we can’t get an early start on Fridays with Andrea’s work schedule.

We had been staying in Red Lodge, a small town of 2000 residents and an ideal jumping off point to the Beartooth mountains. Almost cutoff during the long Montana winter, the town had a very cool vibe, smack bang in the middle of grizzly country, and accessible after an amazing drive over the 11,000’ Beartooth Pass. It had Yellowstone as its neighbor, winter sports in every direction, and some amazing hiking and climbing – our kind of town! From here we only had a 34 mile drive to the seasonal town of Alpine nestled on the shores of East Rosebud lake and our starting point for the weekend’s adventure.

The round trip from the Phantom Creek trailhead was twenty four miles with an elevation gain of almost 6700’. Our research described the hike as being not too bad, but nothing is easy with full backpacks. At least our packs might protect us from the abundance of bears known to be in the area – a ranger we had met in the parking lot confirmed this and asked if we had our bear spray. Of course this made Andrea feel a bit anxious knowing he had a pistol for protection and we only had a can of bear spray between us! We hit the trail around noon and knew it would give us plenty of time to make the plateau and decide from there how much farther to go – fortunately, we met a couple of other people on the trail who insisted that if we planned on heading to the summit the following day then we should get to the far end of the plateau, a short hike away from the base of Granite Peak. The hike to the plateau was seven continuous uphill miles, but that turned out to be the easy part! The plateau had over four miles of the most exposed and rocky terrain we’d ever encountered. On top of that, this area had a bad reputation for its daily afternoon thunderstorms, something we definitely did not want to get caught in and did I say, the trail was not marked!

After lots of complaining and a few wrong turns, we eventually arrived at a walled campsite about an hour before dark, far longer than expected. This was mainly due to route finding across the plateau where we had read not to follow the cairns as they are everywhere! The terrain was so bad it would almost have been better to navigate in the dead of winter when at least everything is snow covered for easy snowshoeing. With reasonable weather it’s not easy to get lost on the plateau, but you could walk an extra 1-2 miles trying to find your way.

It was so nice to be in such a tranquil location far away from the lights and sounds of civilization – our closest neighbors were a group of guys with the same goal in mind and a family of mountain goats. This night around 2am we discovered something new, that mountain goats in their hunt for salt will dig up the ground where humans have urinated. The sounds and shadows alarmed us but to see them only a couple of feet from the tent was awesome – thankfully neither of us peed too close to our sleeping quarters! Andrea was thankful that bears don’t hunt on the plateau!

The morning came faster than we hoped and instead of crawling out of our sacks for an early start we bummed around waiting for the warmth of the sun. We were also concerned about our lack of water after breakfast used up almost every spare drop. We decided to head to the base of the peak where surely we’d find water along the way. Unfortunately, this wasn’t such an easy task as we ended up backtracking almost to the previous night’s camp to fill up. We knew that water would be scarce; I guess we didn’t take that as serious as we should have!

First we had to head down, something that always frustrates me in the mountains, by following a vague pathway across a rock laden face. This is where we came across the closest campsite to the beginning of the steep ascent section, a small flat outcrop barely large enough for a single tent – three people had made the summit the previous night returning well after dark at what must have been a snail’s pace. Unfortunately the oldest of the group was suffering with altitude sickness and could barely motivate himself to start heading back down – we did finally see them move which was a good thing.

From this point we could see the vague route up the exposed south face and east ridge – Andrea was not having any of that! She refused to carry on and found a nice rock in the sun. Neither one of us thought making the summit was possible because we didn’t have the proper gear so I told her I would only be an hour or so when we had already heard it was at least a 3.5 hour ascent. I wanted to see how far I could get and now that I was alone I could set the pace! I left my backpack and water with Andrea and in no time I found myself at the snow bridge – this obstacle can turn back a lot of hikers when the snow is too much to wade through, although on this day it was a mere half dozen steps across it. Now the fun begins!

Exposure was the name of the game from this point on with a number of class IV/ V moves where a misstep would be the end. Fortunately I love the adrenaline bought on by this. I could see a handful of other summit baggers scattered throughout the face, some ascending, some descending, and a couple roped up, obviously a guide bringing his client down. After three or four narrow chimney sections I was standing at the bottom of the notch, the final section looming up above – I knew at this point I had made great time but unless I turned now there was no way I could maneuver through the toughest sections and be back in one piece for Andrea waiting far below. Time to err on the side of caution and turn around. The worst part about this was knowing that when attempt number two occurs in the future there will be the miserable Froze-to-Death Plateau to cross once again!

We decided to at least make it back across the plateau before stopping to camp, leaving us with a relatively easy seven miles downhill. Hopefully Going Broke was still waiting patiently in the parking lot. The weekend spent in the Montana wilderness was very fulfilling with great weather, unfortunately not quite providing the ending I would have preferred. Next time the highest point…

July 31st – August 2nd 2015