Glacier Mountaineering Society

Sun, Sep 12 2010 - Sawtooth Ridge (View Original Event Details)

Coordinator(s):		Matt Marcinek
Participants:		Laurel R. Vielle, Katie Mattingly, David Schuler, John Oliver Ellis, Denise Davies, Kirk Mattingly, Larry Hiller, Matt Marcinek, Frank Wesolovski

Write Up:
A portion of our Sawtooth climbers met at a comfortable cabin at the base of Little Home Gulch on the Rocky Mountain Front west of Augusta and enjoyed a nice evening before the climb, including plenty of delicious food and treats, and a campfire below the beautiful reefs of the Front. After the rest of the climbers joined us in the morning we walked through pleasant open meadows and ridges toward Sawtooth in the distance, even seeing a bull moose along the way. Once we reached the north flank of the mountain we scrambled up to a bench above a prominent cliff band on the east side of the mountain, allowing us to enjoy the plains stretched out to the east. Continuing south above the cliffs we angled up toward another cliff band until we reached the handy ramp providing access to the upper slopes. From here we side-hilled our way to the north shoulder, with Frank finding some good rock to climb up to the ridge rather than circling around the shoulder like we did on our pre-climb. Once on the ridge our group worked our way along the ridge top and along the upper spires until we could gain the final ridge to the north summit. With temperatures in the 60’s, clear blue skies, and virtually no wind, our time on the summit was spectacular. We checked out the other two summits of the mountain located to the south, with the south summit being slightly higher than the one we were on. We understand the south summit has a technical section, so that will have to remain for another day. The descent was quite fun, we dropped down the northwest ridge to a game trail that took us to a large scree field that provided great scree skiing down to other game trails that took us back toward our approach route, and then back to the cabin along the open ridges. It was a very nice day in the mountains. Climbers included Denise Davies, John Ellis, Larry Hiller, Kirk & Katie Mattingly, David Schuler, Laurel Vielle, Frank Wesolovski, and Matt Marcinek. Big thanks to Frank and Laurel for the photos contained in the photo album posted for the trip! Thanks to Tom Kotynski for showing us this excellent route!

Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Tim Anderson at twamontana@gmail.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.