in collaboration with Montana History Fest 2026

“A Night on the wall”

Meet our storytellers

presented by Stonetree Climbing Center & Helena Climber’s Coalition

From first ascents to decades of exploration, these climbers have helped shape Montana’s climbing culture. We’re honored to welcome them to Stonetree and provide a platform for their stories, experiences, and lessons they’ve gathered from a lifetime on real rock to be shared and appreciated.

Tom Cladouhous

Tom’s climbing career began at age four when he scaled the roof of the family home, planning to climb down the chimney to see how Santa did it. After his older brother squealed on him, his mother quickly ordered him to "come down the way you went up, NOW!"

Undeterred, Tom graduated from chimneys to trees, and eventually to rock scrambles and steep walls whenever he was safely out of his mother’s reach. He furthered  his vertical education while attending Montana State University from 1966 to 1970, learning to tie into 3/8-inch Goldline rope with a bowline-on-a-coil and use the classic body belay. Over the last 50 years, Tom has enjoyed mountaineering, traditional climbing, backcountry skiing, mountain biking and paragliding adventures, sharing decades of exploration, thrills, and laughter on new as well as classic routes with great friends while living in Butte, Denver, Kalispell, and Helena.

Terry Kennedy

Terry Kennedy, 72, is a fourth generation Montanan who grew up in the Columbia Falls, hiking and scrambling the mountains bordering the Flathead Valley. He became "serious" about climbing as a teenager, which led to crude technical climbing, and eventually pioneering routes in Glacier Park, the Beartooths, and Montana crags.  He has also climbed in the Tetons, the Canadian Rockies, Colorado, Yosemite, and Alaska. He has lived in at least nine Montana cities, several of them twice.

Douglas Mccarty

After flunking out of college his first semester at Montana State University, Dougal eventually received a geology BA and MS from the University of Montana, and a PhD in geology from Dartmouth in 1993 with a specialty in clay mineralogy. He received The Clay Minerals Society mid-career scientist award for scholarly research in 2011 and was the Society’s president in 2017-2018.  In addition to academics, Dougal worked as a ski patrolman and avalanche forecaster in the Rocky Mountain west and Alaska and always kept a hand and foot in the climbing world. Dougal grew up in Bozeman and tied in with Montana legends Gray Thompson and Pat Callis while he was still in high school. The day after graduating from Bozeman High in 1972, he and fellow Bozemanite Brian Leo hitched hiked and hopped a freight train to Seattle where they met up with Fred Beckey to spend the summer driving and climbing from the Cascades to the Canadian Rockies.  This was the first of many Beckey adventures.  His presentation intends to reveal some of Montana’s early modern climbing history and culture.

Join us Friday, June 26, 2026 for a storytelling night that you’ll hang onto forever.