Ice Dragons (1200’, WI4 M5)

Beartooth Range, MT

Date: 11/27/21

Trip Report:

 A slow start to the ice season in Hyalite, dictated a trip to East Rosebud in the Beartooths in search of early season ice. My good buddy Ethan joined me who works a similar schedule and has a shared desire to climb hard on his days off. The Beartooths had finally experienced a string of nights with below freezing temperatures so I was hopeful Ice Dragons would be in. Thankfully, you can see the route from the lake. We rolled into Alpine the day after Thanksgiving with enough daylight to survey the route from the parking lot and take a stroll down the trail to scope the approach options. 

Once we turned the corner and Giant’s Belly was visible, it was immediately apparent that Ice Dragons was in. Even 6 miles away, the ice flow was visible to the naked eye. Excitement immediately ensued and we broke out the spotting scope to take a closer look and confirm our initial observations. We walked up East Rosebud Trail and surveyed our approach options. We decided upon ascending and descending the drainage just before Elk Lake. Thankfully, I had skied this gully the previous spring, so I was pretty familiar with it. On our recon hike, we ran into two buddies who had attempted Ice Dragons and shared that the chockstone couloir south of Bear’s Face was loose and had some ice in it, so it cemented our route choice. 

We started at 5 am and made short work of the trail miles. We left the trail and started working our way up “Dragons Gully”. Surprisingly, the lower section devoid of snow wasn’t too bad. We hit snow around the 7800 ft mark and were treated to firm, consolidated snow. We regained Five Mile Creek after passing the saddle south of Pt. 8975. Travel slowed down here but it still wasn’t bad. We hopped from sections of timber to snowy, boulder fields and eventually ended up at the base of the route. The approach took us 4.5 hours in total.

To our surprise, the start of the route was completely dry, and we were faced with some mixed climbing to get to the base of the ice. We somehow managed to miss this looking through the spotting scope from the lake. There were multiple options, so we picked the one that looked the easiest and went for it. I took the first lead and very slowly worked my way through a rope length of sketchy, insecure mixed climbing somewhere in the range of M5. The corner system I was following was very slabby and the corner was almost completely featureless. What would have been super easy in rock shoes was frightening in crampons. After what seemed like an eternity, I reached a grassy ledge and belayed Ethan up. The line I picked wandered right, so Ethan took the second lead which was a straightforward traverse on a ledge which took us to the base of the ice.

Once we reached the base of the ice, I was incredibly relieved as I was concerned the first pitch took us into no-man’s land with no way to get to the ice. The sketchy mixed climbing was a high price of admission, but we were handsomely rewarded with 3 pitches of spectacular alpine ice. Ethan took the first pitch which was the steepest and went at WI4-. The following 2 pitches of ice were cruiser WI3. We topped out the ice and knew we had some mixed climbing left to reach the plateau. I took the lead and was pleasantly surprised to find very moderate mixed climbing and I reached the plateau in one rope length. After calm conditions earlier in the day, the wind dramatically picked up on the last pitch. The substantial spindrift really added to the alpine feel of the day. We hit the plateau shortly before sunset and started working our way back to our approach route. There was just enough snow to cover the rocks in the steep sections which made the descent very manageable. Without much difficulty, we reached our poles we left on the approach track and followed our bootpack back to the trail. Using the same route for the depproach worked well and I would do it again if I climb Ice Dragons again. We got back to the trailhead at 9:00 pm, 16 hours later. I’m stoked to climb this classic route my second season on ice. I’ve heard a lot of talk of it but have never known anyone personally that has climbed it. I would love to come back when it it’s in fatter conditions and ice is covering the starting mixed pitches which would shave a few hours off the day.