Epic poetry: Climbing still an adventure on Dragon’s Back near Homestake Pass
By SEAN FORBES Chronicle Outdoors
I’m as guilty as anyone, of telling climbing stories that begin with, end on or somehow involve the word, “epic.”
Like many other four-letter words, it’s versatile. Depending on the placement or inflection, “epic” describes everything from grandeur and pride to embarrassment and failure.
The resulting allusions are oddly appropriate as I discovered after my first encounter with a real epic – in a literature class in Italy. I mean, despite having bested a few monsters along the way, Odysseus still needed 10 years to escape the Mediterranean Sea. Although, I’d be willing to concede that might not have been entirely his fault.
Just as surely as the idea to approach the rock climbs on the Dragon’s Back from the railroad tracks wasn’t actually mine.
Surrounded by boulder-strewn hillsides in a notch next to the westbound lanes of I-90 as it rises up Homestake Pass, the Dragon’s Back is a rather rugged and imposing golden granite fin. With a touch of imagination the scale-like sections do seem a bit reptilian. And behind it, the faintest line drawn rigidly across the arid landscape, are the tracks.
The climbing was rumored to be excellent, and despite not having been there before, I figured it would be easy enough to disregard the guidebook’s directions. All that got me was a nice look at the top of the formation from a sequestered spot on a neighboring mound.
There was a consolation prize though – sampling the slippery sport climbs rising on soot-colored stone over the railroad cut, with just enough bolts to keep from hitting the deck during a fall. But after about four hours walking and being nearly back to the road to Delmoe Lake, stopping again felt like torture.
That’s the kind of misadventure that makes for an “epic” delivered through gritted-teeth and a forced smile.
“I remember it being really fun,” Tyson Roth, a fellow climber and Bozeman resident said. “The first pitch was climbing these big, kind of blocky steps. A little bit of vegetation in there, but fun none the less. And then you worked up the side of the Dragon’s Back onto the top proper. Excellent views of the surrounding area. It’s really steep off both the east and the west sides, but not too scary. The exposure is manageable.
“I had a lot of fun.”
So in spite of my first attempt and the dreamlike, well, nightmarish memories of previous “epic” adventures – such as an ill-fated jaunt up the central Cascade’s Mount Stuart, which crammed a failed summit bid, traversing ice tunnels, hiking a circle in the woods in the dark and seeing a Spanish galleon hanging between some trees into a 27-hour thrashing – I couldn’t avoid taking another try at an icon so close to home.
According to the sign at the parking area/pullout near mile marker 238 on I-90, the Dragon’s Back is the inspiration for the Great Divide Trophy that has been hoisted by the winner of the ’Cat-Griz football duel.
Inevitably, in both fictional and factual “epic” stories, something has to go right. With the Dragon’s Back, I didn’t even have to wait for that charming third time.
Following the directions in Dwight R. Bishop’s “Butte’s Climbing Guide” turned the approach to the Dragon’s Back route Proboscis (5.8+) into a manageable mile momentarily wending beside the interstate. As my friend Roth had said, the first pitch wanders over some bulky features and around a couple bushes while aiming for a boulder just out of sight. It’s a lot of wedging fingers in a crack buried back in the seam where slabs of stone meet at nearly right angles, like open books.
The belay before the second pitch is almost even with the top of the pine forest.
After an awkward few lurches to the top of the boulder, the ensuing moves wander haphazardly over a low-angled slab to the steep beginning of the final ascent.
“This is the crux and the demise of many climbers,” Bishop’s guide says.
The crack to the top is continuous, but varies in width from fingers to forearms. Only occasionally is there a knobby protrusion to relieve the scraping and groveling involved with jamming a body part between pieces of rock until it sticks – usually with the sacrifice of some skin.
When the steepness finally relented, the raw wounds no longer mattered. Even though I was more firmly planted on the rock than at any previous point, I felt weightless making the last few easier moves.
“That felt like 5.9,” said my climbing partner, Lyra Leigh-Nedbor, a little out of breath and smiling after reaching the summit.
But if conquering a dragon – a feat fit for any “epic” – wasn’t some sort of trouble, would it be worth it?
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