Two brothers scale Glacier Park's highest peak - in March

Two brothers have "pantsed" the tallest peak in Glacier National Park.

"According to my brother," Isaac Mohler said, "it was like we caught the mountain with its pants down."

In March, Mohler, 24, and his brother Josh summited Mount Cleveland and might be the first people to do so in the winter. The brothers grew up in Bigfork and now live in Whitefish and Missoula.

Josh "Bones" Mohler, 31, has a long history with the mountain south of Goat Haunt, which reaches 10,466 feet.

As relentless as Mohler has been in trying to conquer the peak, it has perpetually kicked his butt.

"He calls it getting spanked off the mountain," his mother, Jan Mohler, said.

Throughout the years she and her husband,Tom, have heard of Josh's numerous mountaineering adventures and of his frustration with Cleveland.

"Eventually the butt-kicking just added up," Josh Mohler said, "and I decided I was going to do it no matter how long it took."

Ultimately it has been weather that's kept Cleveland off Mohler's successful summit list. But a window of mild weather in early March let him finally reach the top.

Mohler has tried three times since the late 1990s to reach Cleveland's top, but blizzards and whiteouts stopped him at base camps. Mohler typically set aside 10 days for a winter ascent each year, when his schedule allowed.

"In the past," he said, "the schedule would be the dictator."

But this time, good weather meant making

the mountain his priority.

Mohler's frequent climbing partner, Steve Hughes of Eureka, called him to tell him the weather looked promising and he had the permit for the climb. Hughes opted out of the climb as the weather began to look less promising.

At the time, Isaac Mohler who now lives in Whitefish, was planning to visit his brother in Missoula, where Josh Mohler is a student of English and fine art at the University of Montana.

The brothers quickly changed plans, rounded up gear and headed for the park.

Josh Mohler has been mountaineering for about 13 years and has made winter summits in the past.

Isaac Mohler, who works for a Seattle-based company that deals with wind-power equipment, says his experience is limited to "weekend mountaineering kind of things," although he has done a lot of rock climbing. Cleveland was his first winter mountaineering venture.

The brothers parked their car at the gate of Chief Customs Highway on March 5 and began biking to the Belly River, which they were able to ford. They hiked the Belly River trail and stayed the night between Cosley and Glennis Lakes.

March 6 put them at White Crow Basin, which they reached by a drainage near Glennis Lake. The snow was light enough that the Mohlers made it about halfway up the basin before donning snowshoes.

The brothers woke at midnight on the third day and began climbing the southeast face of Mt. Cleveland. They chose a route Josh Mohler had taken to summit the mountain one summer.

"None of it resembled what I remembered," he said. "The snow doctored it enough to make it nothing like it was in 1996."

As the brothers climbed, the snow came down and the wind picked up.

Mt. Cleveland isn't a spectacularly difficult mountain to climb - in the summer.

"It's not a technical climb per say," Glacier National Park Wilderness Manager Kyle Johnson said, "but when you throw the winter conditions in, it ups the degree of difficulty."

"Its main struggle is to overcome the approach and the conditions," Mohler explained.

He estimates Cleveland as a fourth-class climb.

"That means you have no room for error. It means firm hands," he said. "But with winds and snow, upper fourth can be pretty entertaining."

The snow came in at about a 45- to 65-degree angle and the wind howled at speeds that likely reached 100 mph, Mohler estimates.

"Pins and needles," his brother said. "It was like tiny ice crystals whizzing by."

"Earlier on in my climbing (experience)," Mohler said, "I would have turned around far from the top."

But the conditions were better than previous attempts, and the brothers continued on. They reached the summit about 11 hours after leaving base camp. The feeling was satisfying, but short of monumental.

"It was the anti-climactic feeling of getting on top of a mountain," Isaac Mohler said.

His brother agrees, even though he's been after that summit for so long.

They headed back down and reached camp about 14 hours after they left.

They broke camp and began the trek back to their vehicle, which they reached March 8. The next morning Josh Mohler was back in class in Missoula.

Glacier staff haven't yet been able to document if the brothers are the first to successfully conquer the mountain in the winter.

"As far as we know, and I've tried to call other rangers and so on," Johnson said. "We don't know anybody who has done Cleveland in the winter."

The mild weather this winter is the kind that favors climbers throughout the park, he said.

"We had such a shot of weather," he said, " that I'm really surprised we didn't get more climbers."

But with poor weather or avalanche conditions, "it can be fatal real quick," he said.

For five young men in 1969, that was the case. The men tried for a winter ascent of the mountain's north face, but all perished in an avalanche.

The Mohler brothers are subdued about the possibility of being the first people to summit Cleveland in the winter.

For Mohler it was more about settling a personal dispute with the peak than it was about potential history making. For his brother, it was more about a spur-of-the-moment adventure. The brothers joke that Isaac is riding on Josh's shirttails for making his first attempt at Cleveland a successful one.

For Josh Mohler, tackling Cleveland once is enough.

"I told my buddy Steve he's going to have a hard time getting me to go back up," he said. "He's going to have to get another partner."

Reporter Camden Easterling can be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at ceasterling@dailyinterlake.com