Ice Climbing Montana: California Ice in the Beartooths

An all time classic deep in the heart of the Montana mountains. A fairly involved approach with 1500' of gain up WI1/2+ steps leads to 700' of beautiful steep ice climbing with difficulties up to WI4/4+ that tops out on the Beartooth Plateau up at 10,000k of elevation. We tried to take a shortcut to get down, but dropped too low into a cliffed out couloir before reversing and traversing to find the descent proper! Great full value day.
It took Jackson Negri and I 2:45hr to get to the base from the car and a roundtrip time of ~11hr car-to-car. Beautiful climbing with long rope-stretching pitches, some mountain goats and a grizzly bear scare made for a classic Montana backcountry ice outing!

[@ChrisMeegan-cz3yu]

That's a gorgeous climb, and a perfect day for it.

[@speakingout6345]

That looked fun. Your attitude inspires others 😁

[@entreadapt]

Looks like some real good ice climbing !