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Saturday, September 20, 2014

Frog Rock 'Dark Side' climbing

I moved to Bozeman in 2005 and have been staring at the biggest most obvious chunk of climbable rock around town for almost 10 years now with zero attempts. Well Sam and I changed that on Saturday. We hiked over to the Dark Side to climb Servus. We climbed the first pitch of Servus then climbed Amber. Totally worth the hike. Even though its only 2 pitches of climbing you seem to be way up on a cliff. When you look across the canyon you are way above the Bozeman Pass climbs. The rock is spectacular pocketed limestone. Im not a huge fan of limestone sport climbs but I do enjoy climbing pockets and climbing in places I have never been before so I was peachy keen. Great views of town. There are dozens of routes that are not in the 3rd edition guide that we walked by on the way to Servus that looked like fun climbs so post Servus, we tried onsighting 3 of 'em. We got humbled after the first bolt on the first route we tried. We sent the second route without many issues besides it being harder than it looked (just like the first route). Sam decided he wanted to swap a crappy bail-biner from his harness for a nice bail-locker dangling from a route a couple of bolts up. I told him I would give him a catch only if he tried to get beyond the locker and he made it two bolts further. I made no attempt on the route but would definitely go back and try.
First pitch of Servus... pockets galore!

View from the base of Amber.
Looking down from the top of Amber.
The first route that shut us down.
This low angle slab is harder than it looks; 2nd route.
Suicidal carabiner.
The 3rd route with bail-locker.
Looking at the Bright side of Frog rock and all the wafers. I know there is a route up the largest one but are there any routes on all the sister wafers?
 

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