By Eric Hardwick

Date: April 24th, 2022

E-gul Canyon

watching the small frozen screen spell out “see cashier” at some small gas station on the outskirts of Helena Montana. Awesome, the account is under $100 again, I just loved being a resident advisor for a university. 

Well, I went in, put 20 on station 3 and walked out back to my car. Sitting in there was my friend Kian and behind him in their own vehicle was Oliver. We were planning on attempting a winter first descent of a canyon in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness. It was 7 PM and we needed to be up in 10 hours and still had 2 hours of driving left. 

Click.

Oh yay the gas was done, it was time to go somewhere none of us had gone. Good thing snow was in the forecast, we didn’t want to be that comfortable. 

A couple hours went by and we decided to camp at a pull off right next to the end of our canyon. Time for dinner. Kian and I decided to make some snacks since we had a burger on the way there, Oliver however brought shrimp…

Frozen solid, he had to get creative, especially since it was 20 degrees outside. Luckily for him he brought a butane blow torch, which worked well as warming up your hands while also dethawing your shrimp. Funny enough, that trend still continues today, every time we are going to participate in type 2 fun, you can expect Oliver to bring a shrimp platter. Oh to be in your 20s…

Eventually, we got cold enough and went to bed. Waking up at 5am was unpleasant, especially to the view of snow falling. 

Well, time to throw on some warm clothes and go walk up a drainage to see what we were going to find. Our reasoning to go up the drainage rather than go down it was due to snow.  The upper section of the canyon was about 1,200 feet above us and my car wouldn't pass the snow banks which sat about 2 feet deep. Great for a truck, not so great for a Honda Element. 

So up we went, the walls of the canyon soared thousands of feet above us. All limestone. The canyon floor however, was quite tame. About 200 feet wide and boulder walking, it was obvious that the spring tears the area up. 

Up we continued. Soon the trees became thick and the canyon walls narrowed. A small 8 foot climb brought us to the only section of narrows in the immediate area. They were not very long. Maybe 70 feet? But they were easily 100 - 200 feet deep. It felt very familiar to the Virgin River Narrows found in Zion national park. Just with no water flow and more snow. 

Further up the canyon, the ground drainage became steeper, and soon we needed to take a right to go up a side drainage that looked somewhat promising on a map. 

The gully ended up becoming filled with dead fall. Gradually it became steeper. We soon found a small climb. Maybe 2 moves to 5.7. Then it was time for a lunch break. We sat there, wondering what the hell we were doing while sitting in the snow. 

We pushed on.

The gully became steeper and the snow got deeper. A quick bank to the left to move around a large boulder felt a little exposed but was manageable. Above us stood 1,000 foot limestone walls, packed with small nooks and cave like structures. 

We kept pushing up. Soon the brush cleared and an up climb showed up. Without snow, and with flowing water. This looked like the only promising feature all day. It was about a 15 foot slide. The polished limestone made this climb very hard, we had to completely rely on the deep snow for foot holds. After about 4 minutes. We were all out and found a nice long drainage filled with 2 foot deep snow and downfall. 

We fought this for the better part of an hour until we finally hit the plateau and found the road my car couldn’t handle.

We walked the road back, looking at all the limestone peaks. That day we all learned a lesson. It’s better to go down then up.

Oh and maybe canyoning in Montana's winter isn't as romantic as we thought it would be.

Eventually we got to the cars and called it an adventure. Back to college we go.