The weather had been wet and I hadn't been climbing for several weeks, but my schedule and the weather finally aligned and my friend Kurt and I headed down to Mill Creek with Hamilton, another friend of Kurt's.
I hadn't done any climbing in Mill Creek except on No Sweat Arete, so I was looking forward to seeing what the routes closer to the trailhead were like. We hiked in to Tick Wall and went to work. The wall can be pretty hot, but as the day progressed it got more overcast and it worked out pretty well.
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| Tick Farm | Crack Trilogy (lower right) |
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| Looking Down on Mill Cr. |
All of the routes on Tick Wall appear to be bolted. We started out on Tick Man, 5.9. From the anchor for Tick Man we could do Ticked Off, 5.10c.
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| Harrison on Tick Man | ||||
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| Harrison on Ticked Off | |||
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Then we moved over to Birthday Tick, 5.10a.
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| Kurt on Birthday Tick | ||||
It was getting a bit warm so we moved over to the Crack Trilogy area which was in the shade. All three cracks are trad routes; We did the leftmost one in the big fat corner, Didn't See But It's There. It took everything from small stoppers to a #4 Camalot, and if I had brought my Big Bros we could have used them too. There is a double bolted anchor at the top.
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| Harrison on Didn't See But It's There | |||
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| Kurt on Didn't See But It's There | ||||
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| Gary cleaning | |
We rapped down from a different anchor with chains up and around the corner to the left. The rap goes over a big overhang (Give and Take, 5.11-) with a crack that leads across and then over it. Harrison gave it a go but went for a big swing; I didn't even try, as I thought the tendonitis in my hands made it pointless. In retrospect I wish I had at least tried once. Next time...
We decided to call it a day; there were clouds moving in and it was already raining on the east side of the Bitterroot Valley. It started to spit just as we got back to the parking lot.
This page last updated on 2017-05-20.
