grizzly sightings send us scurrying in our Chacos to the hardware store for food-hanging rope, despite the fact that we plan to camp above the tree line for the next two nights. If nothing else, the potential for encountering a large predator in the Crazies adds to the allure and general air of mystery implied by the name. “The Crazy Mountains are so different and so peculiar,” says the venerable Roadside Geology of Montana, “that a frustrated geologist might have named them.” It’s more likely, though, that the name comes from the region’s original inhabitants. The Crow Indians called them the Mad Mountains for their spiri-
Rock Lake at the base of Iddings Peak. Our plan is to climb the north face of Iddings in the morning and then ski back to camp before packing up and continuing east up and over the pass due north of Iddings to our second camp at Pear Lake. From there we intend to climb the west ridge of Crazy Peak and ski off the north aspect down to the Big Timber Creek trailhead, where my truck is parked. Deep snow still blankets the Rock Lake basin, and ice covers the lake, but we find a rocky bench with an exposed trickle of snowmelt. The wind rips out of the east as we dig a tent platform in the rotten snow and cook dinner in the
tual power, and legends tell of chiefs and elders seeking guidance from the spirits on their highest peaks. A bartender at the Clyde Park Tavern (who identifies herself as VickiVicki-Can’t-Forget-Me) recites another popular naming story for us—that of a white homesteader woman whose family was attacked and slain by Indians. She was so enraged, the legend goes, that she killed the attackers and lived out the rest of her days in the mountains, insane and alone. The story, which appears in the 1960s Vardis Fisher novel Mountain Man, is loosely based on the life of a real character, but the tale is hardly definitive. Vicki also informs us that the Crazies are a hub for UFO traffic. The late-season snowpack, meanwhile, allows us to drive within a mile of the Cottonwood Creek trailhead, where our climbing begins. Five miles and 3,000 vertical feet of mostly easy skinning gets us to our first camp above
lee of the outcropping. It feels good to be surrounded by big peaks and to have survived day one without encountering a single bear, madwoman or extraterrestrial.
DAY TWO I’m only half asleep when my wristwatch alarm goes off at 5 a.m. The thermometer reads 36 degrees. My inflatable sleeping pad has leaked air all night and the now unfrozen snow under the tent has long since soaked through to my down bag. No more than 30 minutes ago I’d awakened to the sound of rain hitting the fly. Neither of us is scrambling to get out of the tent. Indecision plagues our morning as Ryan and I watch menacing, rain-laden clouds move across our patch of sky. Over breakfast and coffee we indulge in some epically circular speculation on the variables affecting the snow conditions and the potential of a particularly entic-
Montana Headwall
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