Hyalite Canyon Ice Climbing Trip - Nov 24-26, 2023

Leader:  Forest Dean

Participants:  Jim Semmelroth, Alec Cottrell, Joe Wagner

Jim and I both drove our van/campers over to Hyalite on Friday morning, arriving at the Grotto Falls trailhead around noon.  We got settled, then geared up and hiked up to the Genesis 1 area to get our first swings of the year.  We spent the afternoon toproping a couple of different routes then headed back to the vehicles.  Had some turkey leftover dinner and drinks then hit the bed at a decent hour.  The next morning was cold so we got moving slowly.  Alec drove up from town and met us about 9:00.  Joe and a couple of his friends came up slightly after that.  We once again headed up to G1 and climbed a few laps on that.  Joe and his friends went up to G2, Alec and I followed a little after that.  Jim decided to hike up the Canyon to check out The Dribbles.  The rest of us climbed G2 then went over to Hangover and climbed that.  Back to trailhead about 4:00.  Alec took off.  Joe and crew (all members of Gallatin County SAR) got a call about a fallen climber (on Dribbles co-incidentally) shortly thereafter, so they geared up to go perform a rescue operation.  I volunteered to give them a hand (along with a couple of other climbers who were in the lot).  Jim had actually seen the fall and called it in.  We hiked up to Dribbles, attended to the climber.  Two Bear Air helicopter eventually evacuated the climber around 8:15pm, we were back to parking lot a bit after 9:00.

After all this very unfortunate episode, nobody really felt like climbing on Sunday.  Jim went home in the morning.  I decided to take a hike up the East Fork to just look at ice.  Hiked up to Emerald Lake then ran back down.  Took about 3 hours.  Forest Dean