Nathaniel Bowen and I originally planned to climb the Abbey-Shock, a long 5.11 free climb from 1999 up the 1,800’ west face of the Upper Doublet. We hiked in from the East Rosebud trailhead on the evening of October 1, in the dark. After getting pretty lost on the 3.5-mile approach through continuous deadfall and loose talus, we ended up bivying somewhere below the Lower Doublet, with plans to wake up early the next day. We both somehow slept through our 4:20 a.m. alarms and didn't mobilize until about 7:30. 

We also discovered that the night before we had somehow gotten sucked into a steep drainage, and so we spent the first couple of hours that morning soloing several hundred feet of loose slab to get back to the standard Upper Doublet approach. By that time, the idea of climbing the Abbey-Shock was a distant pipe dream. We spotted a smaller formation on the right side of the Upper Doublet which looked to be about 500’ tall and appeared to have steep, clean rock with several corner systems on its northwest face. We opted for this instead. Later, talking with Beartooth local Justin Willis, we learned that this formation is called the Throne and has only one documented route: a four-pitch 5.10 climbed by longtime Montana climber Chad Chadwick (partners not known) back in the day. That route goes up the most prominent of the corner systems on the northwest face. 

We contoured below the Upper Doublet to ascend a gully between it and the Throne, which brought us right to the base of the latter. We ended up topping out the Throne after five pitches, with difficulties up to 5.11-, left of the main corners on the face. On the third pitch, while figuring out a difficult sequence involving transition from one crack to another, I took two 20’ falls on a 0.2-size Black Diamond X4 cam—in marginal rock, no less. Third time was the charm, though: I was able to stick the move and gain access to a 100' finger crack that proved to be the crux of the route. Mentally and emotionally drained after the whippers, I resorted to aiding off green and purple C3 cams for a brief section near the top. I built a belay on a sloping ledge at the base of a splitter hand crack. While following, Nathaniel freed the pitch and suggested a grade of 5.11a/b. He then took us to the top of the formation in two more pitches.

We dubbed the route The REM Cycle—named after our leisurely start to the morning. We descended the aforementioned gully back to our packs and hiked out that evening. 

— Owen Silitch