Two birds with one stone.
I’m at all times amazed at how summer time trip goes by so quick! With my days numbered, I felt a way of urgency to climb another mountain earlier than heading again to Hays for the beginning of the varsity 12 months subsequent week (college students begin on Thursday 8/18). I’ve additionally been craving a cheesesteak sandwich, in all probability due to current publicity relating to the return of the Pickle Barrel signal that was stolen 20 years in the past. Spouse’s permission granted, I set off for Bozeman late Friday afternoon. The plan was to eat a sandwich, drive to the Ross Move Trailhead 20 miles north of Bozeman, sleep in my Outback, after which stand up actually early and climb Ross Peak (7 miles round-trip with 2,400 ft of elevation achieve).
Beneath: Photograph of the Bridger Mountains courtesy of Wikipedia.
Get this celebration began.
I arrived on the trailhead round 8 pm Friday night, took a brief stroll to stretch my legs, then sat and visited a couple of cool youthful of us who had been there to work the Bridger Ridge Run the subsequent morning. The arrival of a thunderstorm broke up our circle, and everybody retreated to their autos for the night time. I awakened at 5:30 am, gulped down a caffeinated smoothie, and began mountaineering at 6 am.
Clear skies!
The primary time I climbed Ross Peak was with 5 buddies on Labor Day 2013. It was enjoyable, however the air was muddied by smoke from wildfires, so we couldn’t see a lot past the Bridgers. This time the climate was good; sunny, calm, cool, and the air was very clear. It took me two hours to succeed in the summit (3.25 miles one-way) – an hour of that was spent negotiating the steep rocky remaining half mile. I adopted a reasonably discernable climbers’ path that eradicated many of the route discovering, but it surely was nonetheless difficult. If scree, scrambling, and publicity aren’t your factor, then you definately may need to take a go on Ross Peak.
That did the trick.
I reached the summit at 8 am the place I loved an hour of good summit time with nice views of the Bridger Mountains, the Gallatin Valley, and plenty of distant mountain ranges. However don’t take my phrase for it – try the picture tour (hyperlink beneath). I’ve additionally supplied a hyperlink to the 2013 album, which incorporates a number of pictures that present a number of the sketchy components of the climb. In case you do the climb, I like to recommend utilizing some form of app that tracks your route. That observe might turn out to be useful as you make your manner down. I scrambled right down to Ross Move and hiked again to the trailhead, ending my journey round 10:45 am, earlier than it bought scorching . . . feeling a bit of extra mentally ready to begin 12 months #41 of my instructing
profession.
Beneath: This map marks hikes which have been featured on bigskywalker.com to date, together with a number of in Glacier Park – Choose full display to develop, zoom in for extra element, or click on on a marker for a hyperlink to the put up.
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