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11/10/2025
Mountaineering expedition earns international recognition
Spencer Gray and his team walked for eight days just to reach their base camp in the Himalayan mountain range along the border between China and Tibet. At base camp, they faced their mountaineering goal: to summit Kaqur Kangri, a 22,500-foot-tall peak along a route relatively unknown to climbers.
Gray, who hails from Great Falls, reached the summit with a climbing partner in October 2024. The effort earned the team a prestigious Piolets d’Or mountaineering award, which will be given in Italy next month.
The Kaqur Kangri climb was Gray’s fifth trip to the Himalayas, but this was a special accomplishment.
“Every other time we ended up climbing some other backup option because something didn’t work out with the thing we wanted to climb,” Gray told Montana Free Press last week from his home near Seattle. “And this was the time everything lined up.”
In mountaineering, some combination of weather, rock quality, equipment and team condition will threaten an expedition in some way or another. Gray wrote in an account of the climb that he recalled 23 times when “the risk ticked up.” Gray and his team — Bozeman-based Ryan Griffiths and Matt Zia — had numerous complications, though none of them scuttled the trip.
At one point, the team’s cooking stove failed, and they had to double back nearly 2,000 feet to retrieve a backup. They suffered through a snowstorm. A tent pole broke. For some of the climb, Gray superglued his fingernails back on as they began separating from the extremely dry and cold conditions.
Those were minor setbacks for a climb like this. A major blow struck the team when they learned via satellite-enabled text that a close friend of the team, Michael Gardner, died while on an expedition in Nepal. The news hit hard enough that Zia decided to sit out the rest of the climb.
More broadly, the team’s biggest challenge was that their particular route up Kaqur Kangri had very little climbing precedence. A Japanese team reached the peak using a different route in 2002. For some sections of Gray’s team’s route, there weren’t even good photos to study.
“To climb repeatedly in that part of the world when you’re attempting new things, every new thing you try has some level of uncertainty around it,” Gray said. “Is the rock good? Is the weather going to be OK?”
After a couple of weeks of scouting the area, they ultimately chose a route that Gray “thought was objectively pretty safe.” They found the technically challenging climb that they sought, and the rock quality turned out to be ideal.
“It was really amazing that the rock was as good as it is, that it hadn’t been explored very much before by climbers,” Gray said.
Gray spent his formative years scrambling up and down the mountains around central Montana. He said that freewheeling background helped shape his professional climbing endeavors later in life, which now include an award-winning expedition in the world’s tallest mountain range.
The Piolets d’Or website summarized the award jury’s judgment of the climb:
“Jury members agreed this was a technically difficult ascent of an elegant line, carried out in good style, and with a traverse of the mountain. It featured a high level of exploration and provides a pointer to other alpinists that many challenging unclimbed objectives still exist in little-visited regions of the Himalaya.”
Read Gray’s firsthand account of the climb here.
Commission OKs baseball stadium repairs
The Great Falls City Commission last week approved spending $425,000 to repair the box seats and safety netting at Centene Stadium, home of the Great Falls Voyagers.
But the approval at the commission’s Nov. 4 meeting came with some debate. Commissioners discussed whether the city-owned stadium was an appropriate expense for the Park Maintenance District Fund, from which the stadium repair funds will be allocated.
The fund raises $1.5 million annually from city residents and was originally meant to address a backlog of park facility upgrades and repairs. Since its creation in 2018, the fund has spent about $700,000 each year to repay debt for the Aim High Big Sky recreation center while addressing the maintenance backlog across the parks system.
Commissioner Shannon Wilson, who was the lone vote against the funding, said that the limited park maintenance district funds should go toward public park maintenance.
“We have a lot of incredible community assets besides Centene Stadium that we have to maintain,” Wilson said. “And that’s what the park maintenance district is for — maintaining things like the irrigation systems and the River’s Edge Trail.”
Commissioner Rick Tryon said he was reluctant to approve the funding because it wasn’t clear what future projects might be moved down the priority list in favor of stadium repairs. But he ultimately voted in favor due to the potential risks posed by crumbling box seat concrete.
That sentiment was echoed by Commissioners Susan Wolff and Joe McKenney, who cautioned against more deferred maintenance that could lead to the demise of the town’s minor league baseball program.
“The long-term cost of that ghost town will be much more than $425,000,” McKenney said.
Mayor Cory Reeves said the stadium, which is owned by the city and leased to the Voyagers, is an appropriate park expense. He pointed to the Aim High Big Sky center and Electric City Water Park as other paid-entrance park facilities that receive funding from the park maintenance district.
Scott Reasoner, president of the Great Falls Voyagers, told commissioners that management plans to lower box seat prices in 2026 to keep the amenity affordable. He added that Centene Stadium is among the country’s oldest baseball facilities at 80 years old.
“It’s one of the last places left in the community where your grandparents came and your grandchildren will also attend,” he said.
Candidates sound off after election
Mayor Cory Reeves won re-election while Casey Schreiner and incumbent Joe McKenney won the two open city commission seats in Great Falls’ municipal election last week.
Voters also approved a new ordinance that will limit the use of most fireworks year-round.
You can see quick election results here and read the Great Falls election roundup coverage here. Over the past week, winning and losing candidates thanked voters and reflected on the election on social media.
Re-elected Mayor Reeves wrote on Facebook: “I promise to continue leading with honesty, integrity, and a genuine love for this community. My goal remains the same: to ensure Great Falls grows responsibly and that I represent all of our citizens.”
Reeves and his opponent, Jasmine Taylor, exchanged messages of congratulations over social media. Taylor wrote in her own post: “Wishing Mayor Reeves all the best these next two years, and thank you to the wonderful people and orgs that covered this election!”
Commissioner Joe McKenney had this to say about another term ahead: “To everyone who voted, volunteered, or simply cared enough to be part of the process, thank you. Our city moves forward because of you.”
Casey Schreiner, an Alluvion Health administrator who will join the city commission, wrote: “I am truly honored to earn your trust and be given the opportunity to serve on the Great Falls City Commission. This community is full of people who care deeply about our future, and I am ready to get back to work for you.”
5 Things to Know in Great Falls
The third-annual Night Without a Bed event is Nov. 20 at the University of Providence Student Center. The event aims to raise awareness about the issues faced by unhoused individuals and identify available aid services. Medical students from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine will present information on how to approach someone who appears to be in distress. The event is from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The Portage Route Chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance is continuing events despite the government shutdown and closure of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. A presentation Nov. 13 will cover the efforts of the Spanish government to sabotage the Corps of Discovery by capturing Meriwether Lewis. Return lecturer Hanna Tarum will present the story at the Sunrise Presbyterian Church at 7 p.m.
The Great Falls Library Foundation’s 36th annual Book-A-Thon fundraiser is underway and will kick off with a PSA created by Great Falls High School video production students. The annual fundraiser garners around $50,000 and supports the purchase of children’s books and events. The foundation’s website is here.
Great Falls Fire Rescue has asked city commissioners to consider code changes that will, among other things, give the fire chief the ability to enact burn bans within city limits during dangerous weather conditions. Currently, the city must wait for county officials to enact such a ban, according to a city presentation. The changes would require commission action, but they haven’t yet been put on an agenda for a vote.
A proposal to annex 24 acres of east Great Falls property into the city for a mobile home neighborhood is moving ahead before the city commission. On Nov. 4, commissioners approved the proposal on its first reading and set a public hearing for Dec. 2. The developer, Nine Blessings LLC, has proposed 154 mobile home sites on the land, which is along Seventh Avenue North and 42nd Street.
