Celebrating Di(ad)versity on Rainbow Peak- Glacier National Park

The concept of starting a blog or web page or any sort of medium to open and share conversations, ideas, and adventures, has been on my mind for quite some time.  Despite completely missing the “wave” of blogs and not coming to a complete picture of why I am choosing to start one and musing to where the desire was born, I finally decided there was no better time to start than now.  Why now?  Well, for one I’m completely shattered from a big day in the mountains yesterday and resolved to give recovery my best attempt (for those of you that know me well, enjoy the chuckle).  And usually when the big man suggests something, I vacillate on it so long that He loses interest and I miss whatever opportunity I had presented.  So without fully nailing down where this blog will roll, and what sort of personality it will take on, I’ve got to tell you about the incredible day I experienced yesterday.

A few weeks back I made the rare attempt at a “cross-country ski” on a flat and heavily timbered road in Glacier.  While the travel was fairly boring, the company was great, and as we stood at the foot of Bowman Lake and took in the theater of massive peaks that make up the Livingston Range, I couldn’t help but visualize climbing and skiing Rainbow Peak, a 9,891′ giant that rises nearly 6000′ up from the shore near the head of Bowman.  I wasn’t sure it had been climbed or skied in the winter before (though local legend Pete Costain has put tracks down her large north face in the spring), and I wasn’t sure it was possible in a day.  That generally is more than enough of a reason to give it a go in my book, so with the high pressure holding on I called up young Carl Kohnstamm, a local athlete/great guy in general who is going to make waves in ski mountaineering in his bright future.

Getting off shift from a shockingly restful night at the Fire Department, I rallied to a trough of espresso from Montana Coffee Traders and hit north to Polebridge.  Normally when you want to stack your chances for a successful epic, hitting the trail at the bright and early time of 9 a.m. is considered an “alpine start”, is it not?  As we skinned away from the car donning our super euro one-piece skin suits, I quickly realized that without windproof briefs, there is one critical fail in the otherwise highly functional spandex superhero costumes.  Fortunately, i realized I had a spare Buff, which I subsequently used to insulate my stuff (note- you may not want to ask to borrow my Canadian Buff from here on out).  A few hours later we arrived at the bottom of the small creek that dissects Rainbow Peak from it’s little brother Square Pk.  A thousand feet of relatively smooth booting through downed timber got us to deep enough snow to don the skins again.  Two thousand feet of skinning through more timber and across multiple tempting slide paths brought us to the base of the couloir we would follow to the summit.  The conditions were more or less ideal for being on a giant alpine face in the middle of winter.  Firm to very firm snow was covered with a few inches of soft snow that allowed fairly efficient travel with the aid of an ice axe and a pole.  The real adversity came in the final 500-1000′ where the snow continually alternated from bulletproof to bottomless.  We had been shrouded in a small evaporate cloud the sun had manifested and couldn’t see the top, and I swore my altimeter watch was lying to me.  After several internal debates whether my ego really needed my body to keep wallowing at 5 vertical feet a minute just to get to some stupid cloudy summit, I dug in and pushed on learning to read where the snow would support my weight and where it would allow me to sink to my nipples in mank.  Then the blue started to poke through, then the earth began to flatten, then there was the enormity of Glacier National Park displayed right before me with the smooth blanketed white sheet of the Rainbow Glacier flowing from my feet.  We had done it! Again we were reminded that just as in life, the more challenging the journey, the more rewarding the accomplishment.

After attempting to drink in the enormity of the view while realizing we were hours away from the car and the sun was getting dangerously close to the western horizon, we snapped a quick shot and started down a LONGGGG thigh burning and gripping descent back to the lake.  Turns were anywhere from slide for life to surfy pow, and way better than summer travel options (ie. 4000′ of scree).  As we descended through the cloud, we were greeted with some of the most amazing lighting as the setting sun was illuminating everything from snow to sky to trees in what could only be described as “technicolor”.  We couldn’t help but stop to soak it all in as we whooped and hollered with elation and kept asking each other, “Can you believe how freeeeeking amazing this is?!?!?!”  To cap it all off, our twilight skate back along the 5 miles of lake travel was enhanced with the haunting echoes of wolf packs and lake fractures pinging and thwooping.  Back at the car with aching feet and plunging temps, we pointed it south and made it back to cell phone reception 15 minutes prior to my “Call Brandon, something went wrong” deadline I had given my (lovely, understanding) wife.  After my third dinner at 10:00 p.m. and a tall IPA, I finally was able to calm my senses from 11 hours of surreal mountain freedom to fall asleep and wake to the thought this morning of, “Did that really happen?”

Take-Aways:  Reminded again- if you can conceive it, you can do it.  It’s possible to find greater adventures in your back yard than across the globe.  We can pass on daring dreams to the youth, who will likely pass on even more daring ones in the future to a new generation, accomplishing even greater things.  And finally, it’s so comforting to come home to a warm house with a loving partner, instead of jumping into a sleeping bag in the middle of a frozen lake with wolves howling at the moon.

Stats:Total time- 11.0 hours, vert- 7,200-, mileage- 12 on snowy road, 10 on frozen lake, and 6000′ in no more than 3 miles to the summit.  Climbed and descended southwest face of Rainbow (9,891′)

Feel free to contact for any questions or suggestions! Cheers!