Climber says he bagged Cleveland

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK - A Whitefish mountain climber claims to have summitted all of Glacier National Park's 10,000 foot peaks after he bagged Mount Cleveland in a 17-hour round trip Feb. 23.

Jason Robertson said he left Waterton about 1 a.m. that morning, skied the 7.5 miles down the Waterton Lake into Glacier and then began his ascent up the massive mountain on the southwest buttress from Camp Creek.

While the weather was favorable - he had bluebird skies and the winds were relatively mild - the snow was less than ideal once he left his skis.

"Snow conditions were horrendous," he said.

Robertson, 31, explained that the snow had no base and he'd punch through the crust only to slide down where he started from.

It was one step forward, two steps back at times.

"For 800 feet I was on my shins," he said, clawing his way up the slope, worried about avalanches because of the unstable snow.

Robertson had climbed Kintla a few weeks prior and thought he had a route all scouted out. But scouting out a route from one mountain and climbing it once you get there can be two different worlds and that proved true with Cleveland.

He said he ended up climbing a route that he didn't think he could do from his earlier reconnaissance.

"I climbed the line I didn't think I was able to climb," he said.

Once on the summit ridge, Robertson said the climbing became much easier. He said he made the summit about 1:30 p.m. - he has no idea of the exact time. The battery in his camera went dead on the way up.

He said he spent all of 30 seconds on the peak before he began his descent. He was worried about avalanches.

"It was sketchy, mentally," he said.

Once at his skis, the trip out was fast. The wind picked up and blew the snow off Waterton Lake. With a stiff wind at his back, he made the trip down the lake in about an hour. He was back to Waterton at 6 p.m.

The journey marked an end to his winter pursuit of Glacier's highest peaks. He summitted Mounts Jackson, Merritt, Siyeh, Stimson and Kintla over the past two years. He did Kintla twice, once last year and once this year, because the first ascent, while it was in December, wasn't a few days prior to technically being winter.

Robertson said he's going to take it easy.

"I'm going to do a bunch of easy stuff for awhile," he said. "Easy stuff is fun too."

Robertson is not the first climber to bag Cleveland in the winter.

Isaac and Josh Mohler of Bigfork climbed it in March 2005. Glen H. Milner, Robert L. Talbot and Richard Olmstead summitted the 10,466-foot Cleveland from Waterton in February 1977.

Cleveland is also the site of one of Glacier's greatest tragedies. On Dec. 27, 1969, young mountaineers Jerry Kanzler, Clare Pogreba, Ray Martin, Mark Levitan and James Anderson tried to climb the mountain's north face.

Kanzler, 18, originally from Columbia Falls, Anderson, 18, of Bigfork, Levitan, 20, of Helena, and Pogreba and Martin, students at Montana Tech in Butte, all died in an avalanche on the mountain's west face. Based on the evidence, park officials believe the five men changed their route and were likely killed by the avalanche on the way up, not down. Cameras recovered from the debris in June did not show photos of the men on the summit.