Ride the Future

posted by Christopher

I've seen the future of Human-Powered Mountaineering, and it's hot white and surly.

That's right, I got a new bike.  And not just some new bike, but the Hummer of all bicycles; the Surly Pugsley snow bike.

If you haven't heard of a snow bike, or fat bike, it is a bicycle with extra large super fat tires.  These tires are so fat that it makes me want to piss and giggle when I ride it.  The tires are huge and they hum on the pavement at high speed.  The idea here  with the extra fat tires is for flotation on snow or sand or whatever medium that comes your way.  The tires are made to be able to ride at incredibly low air pressure; as low as 5-30 psi.  Super Cool!!

The traction is amazing, and yesterday was my first test ride with the new machine.  I rode from my house to work at Bridger Bowl ski area.  A 16 mile ride, up Bridger Canyon Rd, and in a bit of snow storm.  The tires worked amazing on the slick and icy roads.  I've ridden for years in the winter on mountain bikes, and I've ridden with studded tires on my bike before too.  The performance and traction yesterday on the Pugsley (with non-studded tires) was far better than I've experienced before with any other bicycle.

I left for work at 6am and started riding by headlamp out of town and into the canyon.  By sunrise I was out of the city lights and enjoying the peacefulness of the morning ride.  Once up into the canyon, the winds started to howl, and the visibly became difficult as the snow swirled into my eyes as I tried to hide my face behind the hood of my jacket.  I love this type of masochistic nonsense.  My feet froze, I was hot sweaty and cold all at the same time, and the ride was brutal on my poor tender bum from months of not sitting in the saddle, but I loved it.  I grinned, I howled out loud, and I felt like a crazy man on a mission.  Then I got to work for the day, taking people out skiing...  ( i love my job at Eagle Mount )

The ride home was equally exciting.  The wind was blowing harder, and I was forced to peddle the whole way back down the canyon road.  My bum hurt, pellets of snow stung me in the face, and the traffic on the road was a constant reminder that I must be crazy to be doing this.

But I'm so excited about the idea of being able to ride up snow-machine roads, and access backcountry ski terrain totally human-powered, that morning rides, and suffering a little, are just a small part of becoming the human machine.

Can you see the beauty in the irony here?

Knowing your limits is more about failing than succeeding.
Just try...

The stoke is back.
That feeling of madness mixed with divine purpose.
It's the way of the peaceful warrior.
The modern language of the climber, surfer, or ski bum.
It's the way we show the world who we are,
what we want,
and that once the stoke comes boiling up from the inside;
we'll do anything.
Anything that comes to mind.
Whatever we imagine.
Proving to ourselves,
and to the world;
that nothing is impossible.
Just keep trying...

The poster on the wall says it all

I've entered the Equinox Ski Challenge March 24th in West Yellowstone.  This is a xc-ski, snow bike, or run challenge, for 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours.  I'm super stoked.  I haven't entered a competition is 20 years.  The Equinox Ski  Challenge sounds awesome, and is fundraiser for non-profit organization here in Montana that focus on community health; mental and physical.

I've entered in the 12 hour challenge category, and while I'm not worried about placing, or winning, I'm stoked to try.  I'll be stoked to just make the finishing line, with or without peeing in my uniform.

Wish me luck.

Hyalite Canyon's New Era

posted by Christopher

Here is an article that I wrote for the Bozone called;

Hyalite Canyon's new era

A number of years ago, a famous Canadian ice climber moved to the Bozeman area and changed everything.  Turns out he wasn’t even Canadian, but had grown up right here in Big Timber.  Little did that matter because every ice climber in the world knew the name Joe Josephson, and his name was sin-ominous with hard Canadian ice climbing.  He is also the author of ‘Waterfall Ice, Climbs in the Canadian Rockies’, one of the best climbing guide books ever written.

Shortly after Joe Jo moved back to Montana he produced another stunning guide book called ‘Winter Dance’. This time for the ice climbing areas of south western Montana and northern Wyoming; namely Hyalite Canyon and Cody, Wy.

The new guide book was awesome and right away more people started climbing in Hyalite Canyon.  But the access into the canyon was a big problem for the majority of the winter, because once the winter snows came the road became impassable.  Then the unthinkable almost happened.  The County and the Forest Service almost closed the road to winter traffic.

Joe Jo and his friends knew this couldn’t happen, and in a four year effort of working with the County and the Forest Service, and starting the South Western Montana Climbers Coalition, along with a 501c3 non-profit called Friends of Hyalite, Joe Jo made history again.  In came the New Era of Hyalite Canyon.  

For the last four years, because of Joe Josephson, Bill Dockins, and the ice climbing community of Bozeman; the road into Hyalite Canyon is being plowed .  Open to everyone, including backcountry and nordic skier, hikers, kite skiers, ice fishermen, sledders, and families looking for that perfect Christmas tree.  Hyalite Canyon boasts many things besides being a world class ice climbing destination.  It is the most used canyon in the state of Montana, and now Bozeman’s favorite backyard is open to everyone all winter long.  And all this is thanks to a bunch of people passionate about climbing frozen waterfalls.

Now that the road is plowed, Bozeman and Hyalite Canyon is on every North American ice climber’s radar.  Hyalite Canyon has become a reliable destination, offering the most accessible and longest season of any ice climbing area in the United States.  There are 230 established routes in the canyon, and some of the hardest routes in North America.  Hyalite is a spectacular place, and the canyon its self has created the ice climbing community that lives here.  This is because right next to some of the super hard routes that are making Hyalite famous, are nice easy beginner climbs.   And everyone gets along.

As Whit Magro says, “There’s no drama in Hyalite, everyone is super supportive of one another”, and that is one of the reasons Hyalite is so special.  Without this type of attitude of support from a greater community, the sport of ice climbing would not be where it is today.  And Whit is at the fore front of the New Era of Hyalite ice climbing. 

Whit started climbing here back in 1998 and remembers chasing around the likes of Jack Tackle, Doug Chabot, and Alex Lowe.  Fourteen years later, Whit has helped establish some of the hardest routes in Hyalite, and he has done this in the same bold style the original pioneers used.  It takes a special kind of person to be really good at hard ice climbing, and Whit has that special knack for climbing really hard, scary, and totally dangerous routes with confidence, style, and good old fashioned Montanan humility.

Whit is also an advocate for the new trends in ice climbing, and he sees the growing popularity of Hyalite Canyon as a way to further the evolution of the sport for both beginner climbers and those people out there pushing that standards of what is possible.

Having the road plowed into Hyalite has put Montana on the map as a world class climbing destination, but it is not only the ragged and crazy ice climbers that are benefiting from this road access.  It is the town of Bozeman and our economy; it is the skiers, the ice fisherman, the families that want to go for a hike in a pristine winter wonderland.  It is everyone who calls Bozeman home that has benefited from the work being done to keep access into Hyalite a reality.  So the next time you run into one of your crazy ice climber friends, say thanks, and find out how you can help and become one of the Friends of Hyalite.

Christopher Bangs has been climbing ice for sixteen years and is the owner of Human-Powered Mountaineers here in Bozeman.

Having the road plowed has opened up some of the best backcountry skiing
in Montana.

Climbing through heavy spindrift is like trying to swim and climb
at the same time 

Early morning sunrise from the parking lot trailhead on another special
day.

Snow Storms

some of my best days,
are storms days

those days when being outside in the cold,
somewhere on a mountain side

i feel the most,
of what it is that i would call life

i feel the most of myself,
and the most of what the world has to give to me

the snow flakes,
the wind in my face

the motion of my skis across the snow,
and that silent voice from the mountain that speaks to my heart

some of my best days,
are snow storms

when the world inside my mind,
needs to be let free

to scream like the wind around me,
and fall like the peaceful snow

to be outside on the side of a mountain,
in the turbulence of a storm...

are some of my best days

Alaska, the early days

Walking to highway near where I lived outside Valdez, AK.

posted by Christopher

Some things happen by accident, and some things happen all on their own with no rhyme or reason except that it is exactly how they should happen.  Alaska was that place for me.  Where I found myself and lost myself all at the same time.

I was young and I was opinionated.  I knew what I wanted in life, but I did not know how exactly to get it, or what to do in those desperate times when life demanded that I pull it all together and prove myself to my family and my peers.  (Sound familiar?)  Yes well, like I said, I was young.  20 years old to be exact, when I found myself living in a tee-pee outside of the town of Girdwood Alaska.  I was a ski-bum, and I was damn proud of it.  The world around me didn't make much sense, but skiing did.  The motion of my skis against the mountain, the feeling of weightlessness against the constant tug of gravity.  I was living my life for those ephemeral moments that I was able to capture on skis.  And this made sense to me then.

My tee-pee that I lived in was a couple miles from the town centre.  Each night I walked home with my trusty dog Rio leading the way through the forest.  Rio knew the trail well and he knew my commands, and each night we walked home with out headlamps or flashlights because Rio would just lead the way.  Some nights we encountered Moose on the trail and we would have to detour or wait for out turn to proceed.  These were the golden years of my life.  Where I learned the most about who I am, while at the same time, I was just looking for that next big rush, that next peak to climb, and that next meal to fall into my lap.

We didn't have much money, Rio and I.  And we scavenged what we could to keep the dream alive and keep the search going for those ephemeral moments that marked my life like constellations on a clear night.  I could have looked harder to find a job during my first winter living in Alaska, but I wasn't looking to find a job.  I was looking to find myself.  Like some far off meaning that my school teachers had  forgotten to write into the curriculum.  I wanted to know the real me, and I wasn't going to give up and turn myself into someone that I couldn't identify with.  This was the stubborn independent side of Chris Bangs.  The side of Chris Bangs that thought if I took a job that wasn't perfect for me, than I would turn into a version of me that I didn't like.  Like I said, I was young, and I was learning the art of ski-mountaineering, Alaska style.

I was also learning how to ice climb, and this too I was learning all on my own.  I don't know which is more desperate, learning how to ice climb by ones self; or the total search of self discovery.  But for me the two came hand in hand.  Ice climbing taught me how to do one thing at a time.  How to pay attention to one thing with all of my attention, while at the same time, total chaos was happening all around me.  I'd be up there, on a frozen waterfall, plenty high enough that if I fell, I'd be dead, and the whole world of chaos would be screaming in my ears, "Chris, Christ, your a fool man, the shit is falling apart all around you, your getting hit in the face by plates of ice so stop smiling and grinning; your on the verge of death you fool,,," and I'd keep going, like a deaf composer, writing my own tunes, singing louder than those voices of reason and sanity.  Those weren't me.  Those weren't my fears.  I'd found something that I can only now look back on and consider.  I'd found Zen.  Zen in the midst of all the chaos.  That was when I moved to Valdez, the epicentre of skiing in America.

No heli required!!!!

The little black dot in the centre of the photo, (is a skier). 

That's Thompson Pass behind me.  In three years I climbed and skied everything
close to the road.  The same terrain that put Valdez and heli-skiing on the
world map.

For the price of lunch, you too can steel runs like this away from
high priced heli skiers that don't know zen.

My last day in Alaska, self portrait from the summit of Hogsback.
 Earning my degree in Alaska Mountaineering. 

Downtown Anchorage!!!

19 mile wall, directly above the cabin that I lived in.

Ride the Wild Bago

posted by Christopher

In following with Joshua Tree traditions, as soon as I heard the loud diesel engine puttering through the campground, I started running.
"Get the camera Justene!", "there's a bago coming!" I yelled in mid sprint, tearing through the campground in my flip flops.
It was 7am and we where packing up to leave the monument after a week of rock climbing and lizard lounging. I had the tent about half packed when I first heard the motor of a Winnebago idling past our camp site.  So as the Hidden Valley rock climber's campground tradition entails; when a RV drives through the camp, your'e supposed to drop whatever your doing, chase that thing down, climb up the ladder, and surf it;  without getting caught by the people that are in the Bago driving it.
Now I don't know exactly who started this tradition but it dates back about 40 years.  In fact there is a climber's route in Real Hidden Valley called "Ride a Wild Bago" and it was first done in the early 1970's.  Rock climbers in those days had a penchant for being crazy.   You had to be if you wanted to be a rock climber back then.  First the gear was not nearly as good and safe as it is today, and second; the non-climbers, which was everyone, told you that you were nuts to begin with.
All this makes for things like surfing wild bagos seem totally natural.  I mean this is Hidden Valley Campground.  There are no spots available for  RVs.  All the desert rat climbing bums from every part of North America have holed up here like protesters on Wall Street.  And the loop through the camp is slow and windy, with some small hills and knolls that make driving a Winnebago through here a mistake.  So we take advantage of this unrealized mistake by the RV driving tourist and get a free ride out of their little mishap.
There are a few techniques involved with getting a good ride and surfing wild bagos.  One of my favourite techniques is chasing the thing down which sometimes means that I'm running straight at the RV while it is driving towards me.  The people inside wearing their casual american apparel probably have no idea why this person is running through the camp ground in an all out sprint, and it's probably even further out of their mind that the reason I'm sprinting straight at them is to get on their vehicle.  At first I felt a little unsure about this.  Like the driver was telepathic and he knew that he was my prey and that I was about to mount his wild steed.  But then I thought about this one day while surfing a large grey whale of a motor home through our quaint little desert rat oasis.
"The last thing on their minds," I thought,  "is that I'd be running towards them because I want to surf this behemoth."
Other techniques are surfing topless; getting on with two or more people; or climbing up one that doesn't have a ladder.  These all add points to your surfing ride and sometimes if there is enough of you on the roof, swinging you shirts in the air, you'll get a group of people taking your picture by the time you get back to the front of the loop.  This gives you even more points because the people driving will wonder for days why there is a small contingent of people waiting for them at the front of the campground, laughing and pointing and taking their picture.
Then of course it's time to climb down. This is not exactly easy in flip flops on a moving land whale, but it's a must do before you get the edge of the campground and the whale slips back into the deep sea.

For me, riding this particular wild bago on my last morning here has made my time in Joshua Tree complete.  I can now leave feeling totally fulfilled.   The climbing has been amazing and since it has about 4 year since the last time I climbed here I realized that this is one of my favourite spots of the earth to go climbing.  The rock is featured and amazing.  It's a coarse granite and the friction for your feet while climbing gives it that magical 'I'm walking on air' feeling.  That and the whole experience and ambience of the desert itself makes this space as special as each individual Joshua Tree.  I love this place!!!

A birds nest in the thorns of a prickly pear.

 Jr. Banger posing after his send of 'Heart of Darkness'  5.11b

On our last day in Joshua Tree, we see our first tarantula.

Symbol of creativity and the balance of life.

David Miller and his faithful guardian Max.

We met David and Max on evening while driving back up into the park.  David is on a year long journey that have him cross the USA four times by bicycle.  Don't worry Max only runs up the hills when David is going really slow.  I used to say that I am the slowest bicycle tourist that I've ever met. Now David Miller has that title from me.  He is towing 2 trailers behind his bike. One for Max to ride in, and one for all of his stuff.
We had the pleasure of helping David and Max on this day and we really enjoy there their company at our campsite that night.  Max is five years old and David just turned 50.  His web site is bike50at50.com.
David may also take the title of being a guy on a bike that is crazier than me too, but when he woke up that morning in the campground and I was still all fired up after having just surfed a wild bago, it's a tie and that we share that title together.  Go David!!! And please root him on.  This guy is awesome!!!

Well as you can see, Justene was not able to get a photo of me surfing a giant land shark, but that is OK. The story is full to tell and will be sure to become a campground tradition that you will tell your kids about.

We are just finishing up our time in So Cal.  Yesterday we gave a slide show at Citizens of the World carter school to 60-some second graders.  The photos of glaciers and wild mountains and the animal that live there had this class of kids screaming and howling. The teachers of these three classes had told us the last year the kids had been taught a little about sustainability and we were happy to help them see places on this earth that kids in LA don't usually get to see.  A lot of the initial questions were about how we got the photos of the water?  At first I didn't really realize what the kids where talking about and then it dawned on me that they hadn't seen that many photos of glaciers and glacial tarns, those little lakes that form on the edge of glaciers.
We really enjoy the kids, and our time in So Cal.  So it's time to keep on keeping on.

Post Climbing Report

posted by Christopher

I didn’t know what to expect.

Or what I would find.

Or what I would do.

I knew only one thing.

The Bugaboos are Rad.

More Rad than me.

And in two months, 

I was going to scare myself silly.

Wear myself thin.

Dig down deep.

Reach for the heights.

As I ask the mountains, 

to show me the way.

It’s not easy to turn back the time.

It’s not even easy to slow down enough to find a sense of that lost peace.

So I’ve approached the mountain,

slowly and carefully. 

I’ve asked her for her real name.

I’ve asked her to show me the way.

The way through,

to another place. 

A place of peace.

A place without time,

or a place that hasn’t forgotten its memories. 

photo courtesy of Steven Gnam

My life is one that has been marked by mountains.  This is were I live and it is where I thrive.  

“Some things are meant to be secrets”

she whispered to me from behind the clouds.

“On clear and calm days, everyone is welcome to tread here upon my breast, but it is only on those brutal windy and frigid cold days that I reveal my secrets, and only to the kind hearted and peaceful warriors that endure and enjoy the test of my moods.”

As a climber we all know those days that test a person’s metal.  

The days when the mountains are doing everything they can from letting the world destroy it’s self, and you. 

The difference here, and the forgotten memories that have been all but erased from the minds of men, is the mountains are our mother and the giver of life.  

It’s not the mountain that is trying to destroy us.

It’s not the mountains that we are doing battle with.

And it is not the mountain the we are attempting to conquer.

It is only ourselves that are trying to destroy us.

Our own egos.

Silly in its attempts to be greater than the world, 

and separate it’s self from the breast of our mother.

The Misty Mountain, and the frozen labyrinth of time.

Ancient cultures knew all about this.  They new thousands of years ago that the mountains are these perfect beings of impeccable strength that hold this world together.  

These primitive peoples knew that it was the mountains that protected them from the sky crashing down upon them.  It’s the mounains that hold the tides in check as they are the backbone of the their Mother Earth.

It is the mountains that turn chaos into order,

and piles of rock, into a perfect summit pyramid.

Christopher on the summit of Crescent Tower after soloing the
Ears Between Route
photo courtesy of Steven Gnam

Dr. Muse and the Mountain Oracle

posted by Dr. Muse

Dr. Muse consultes the Mountain Oracle.

Did you know that questions are the beginning to all the answers?  Hmm...
I often get asked, "So what kind of doctor are you Dr. Muse?"   Well, I am a doctor of Anthropology of Imaginistic Studies.  A rare field of science that is now seeing a resurgence of activity and I am the doctor in charge.  Me and Dr. Suess anyway.
What is the anthropology of the imagination I ask you?  Remember please the famous quote by Albert Einstein when he said, "imagination is more important than knowledge."  And remember what is really meant by this.  That knowledge tends to be limited by its own definitions.  Knowledge is a way of seeing things in one way and defining them by one definitive point of view.  Where as imagination is infinite; which is the nature of the universe.  So to understand the universe (that which is infinite by nature) requires not knowledge, but the imagination.  This is my field of study; the centre of my universe so to speak.

Now onto my story and the task that I have been given.  This is no easy task, and no easy subject to broach, so I will ease into it slowly;
The other day as I sat quietly with the mountains by my side and the wind in my hair.  I heard a small voice.  As if the tiny rock at my feet where trying to talk to me.  I was astonished by the seeming impossibility of this situation.  Pulling my mind back and forth from one reality to another, I began to listen to the little normal looking rock and what she had to say to me.
"Dr. Muse, you must direct these climbers, those people that are close to the mountains, in how to honour the mountains properly. To educate these climbers about how to make the sacrifices that the mountain spirits asks for if they want to receive again those blessings that man-kind once did."
I couldn't believe it, the little unassuming rock's tiny voice was barely audible.  But she gave directions in how to find the Mountain Oracle of the Bugaboos and then fell silent.

Wow! I've been assigned a task from a little rock that looks almost no different from all the other little rocks.  I had to think back to my early years of Anthropological Imaginations Studies at the Hidden Valley School in Joshua Tree National Park just to get my bearing.  During my first season, err semester there, I learned all about the imaginary magic of the desert.  Of the seemingly impossible symbiotic relationships that exists in the desert.  Like the relationship between yucca moth and the joshua tree, and how the joshua tree may go for years without blooming, and then when it does bloom, it produces this amazing looking fruit that sends out only one tiny pink little flower only one night a year, and how that tiny pink little flower is only capable of being pollinated by the one yucca moth.  I was so enthralled with this tale of desert magic that I had stayed up night after night to hear the song of the tiny little pink joshua tree flower and then witness the sexual magic of this mysterious yucca moth.  Of course all of my contemporaries (except Dr. Suess) thought I was wasting my time and telling me how the joshua trees are dying and the desert is getting dryer every year, but I waited.  I waited because I love the idea.  I loved the idea that a song like this could exist and that something so far reaching really was a reality.
Those where the early years, and they where very good to me.  I did hear the song of the tiny little pink joshua tree flower that is only sang but once a night on those rare years that the tree produces its fruit.  The song is so amazingly soft, supple and alluring that for a brief moment during that night I was lifted out of my trance of reality and into world of desert magic.

Back in my present situation I knew I had to find the Mountain Oracle, as I knew that my task was not one that I could wait on.  I readied myself for a long journey through the mountains.  My directions were complicated and I had a sense that this was going to be a bit of wild goose chase.  But the little rock, that did at first glance seem almost ordinary, had mentioned something about sacrifices.  And apparently finding the Mountain Oracle was going to take more than my imagination, as I was given specific directions about which mountains to climb over and over.  First from the south then from the north, then back again.  This was going to take sacrifice all right, but all in the name of science.

The first few days where the hardest, because I seemed so far away from reaching any sort of "destination."  I already knew the nature of these Oracles that dwell in the mountains, at least from stories if not from personal experience.  I knew that they often tended to be a bit of a trickster and were always testing the people that dared to seek them out.  I thought of this in all the harrowing places I had to tread.  The times that I found myself stumbling around in the darkness trying not to get lost or lose my will.  Or the many times that I was clinging with mere fingertips to the side of one of the remote peaks that my task had bound me to climb.  I thought about these things and why I had become a doctor.  But it was the little rock of unsuspecting nature, with the tiny little voice that told me to go, that kept me going.

After days and nights of climbing these immense rock faces, risking my life, over and over, I made it back to camp and there was the Oracle, waiting for me in silence.  As I pulled up a seat on the ground in front of her; a loud buzzing sound overcame my whole body and I drifted off into another time and space.  The Oracle was with me as my guide, along with her protector, the unassuming, non-suspecting, little rock with a tiny voice that I had met earlier.  The three of us moved through a landscape of mountains and clouds that were inhabited by thousands of god like beings from the past.  I saw things not as they are, but as I imagined them to be.  Giants, maidens,  monsters, saints, and mountain sentinels.  All strangely looking at me as if waiting for something.

I asked the Oracle about this.  I asked her why they were all looking at me so strangely, and if I had done some thing to cause this.
"It's been along time since a man has traveled through this realm and they are not sure you are even capable of seeing them yet," the Oracle replied.
Well I do see them, and it seems that are becoming aware of this fact.  In fact they were all staring at me closer now.  Turning there attention towards me, getting ready to speak.
"There is power here in these mountains," said one of the cute cloud monsters.
"It is the power of the gods," said another.
"This power is available for all those who seek it and all those that visit the high places of the mountain," continued one of the mountain sentinels.
They're ability to communicate with me was like nothing I had ever witnessed before.  They spoke to me telepathically. One after the next, continuing  each others sentences, with seamless rhythm and understanding.  As if speaking from one individual mind.
"You must make the people believe as they once did; that the mountains are alive, and that this is a place where great spirits dwell." This was the last thing that I heard before I was returned to my camp by the Oracle and her little rock protector.

Only I was returned to my camp to the moment before I sat down with Oracle and left with her on the journey through space and time.  And this time the Oracle was gone from my camp and all I was left with was this absolute feeling of deja vu.  Like some thing amazing had just happened to me, but that I was about to lose it because of my own sense of reality.

THINK Dr. Muse, think.  No better yet, imagine... I said to myself... imagine.... So I began to imagine about all the tails of the past.  About Moses on Mount Sinai, about Lord Shiva on Mount Kailash, about all the warriors who sought their visions on Chief Mountain so they could bring back sacred medicine to their people.  I thought about all the times some one in a small mountain town looked up at the mountains and exclaimed "This is gods country!", as if they had just seen a glimpse of one of the gods riding a chariot of made of clouds.

No this was no deja vu.  And for the first time in my professional life as a doctor I can say with double blind certainty, that I was there. In the presence of gods, riding the wings of the wind, sailing through time and space to a place that was once forgotten.

Once again Dr. Muse possesses photographic evidence of mystical science.  This time it's the Virgins Sentinels; Mary, Eva, and Ariel.