The SW Buttress of the Bear's Face

The SW buttress is the right skyline.

Bridget and I had a fairly successful time in the East Rosebud this last week. We climbed the SW buttress of the wall above Elk Lake (its been climbed prior). We managed to make a mostly free ascent of the upper headwall- I pulled on a cam on a friction traverse (The original rating is 5.9 A2, and Daniel Burson and Ari Greenburg made a free ascent of the buttress a few years ago at 5.11) and we topped the monolith out around 1 in the afternoon. The unsuccessful portion of the climb was the descent. We totally went down the wrong gully (the gully below the first wall). It was the most chossy place I have ever been (and that's saying something). It was a place you didn't want to linger in as it funnels rocks from high above and they come exploding past like bullets and missles. It was like a game of Russian Roulete in there, you knever knew if the next rappel had your name on it, and pulling the ropes caused a whole new barrage of rockfall. The gully was pooring water and we were soaked, leaving nuts and slinging blocks for anchors. Five hours later we stumbed out into the evenging light at five mile creek happy to be alive. Aside from the descent the climbing was great and, as always, the scenery was amazing - just never descend down that gully!