Kepros Mountain

With our planned climb of Mount St. Helens a little over a month away Tam and I decided to get out and put in a few miles to get in shape.  Our objective was Kepros Mountain, one of the Boise Mountains "Grand Slam" peaks.  I had climbed Kepros with Dylan and his buddy Max a couple of years ago from the Lucky Peak (shorter) side.  This hike was from the "traditional" side.

Tam, Shadow and I arrived at the Three Point Mountain parking area a little after 8AM and had the parking area to ourselves.  A bit surprising, since we could hear the motorcycles tearing things up close by.  It was a gorgeous day, mid 50's, no clouds and a slight breeze.  The balsam arrowroot flowers were out in full force.

We didn't see much wildlife, only a single deer and a few tent caterpillars. But those caterpillars sure are cool!

We quickly made headway up the initial steep portion of the trail and gained the ridge in no time.  Once there our objective was in sight, though a few miles away.

Kepros on the left

Tam and I had tried to mountain bike this trail last summer and beat ourselves up pretty good on the sagebrush single track before turning around.  Turns out that once you get past the single track there is an old two track road to the summit.  Looks like this would be a good ride.

Tam looking back on the trail (two track road)

We made the summit in a little over 2 hours, not bad for the 4.5 miles journey.

Summit Splattski with my babe and my new RX sunglasses

After a quick PB&J sandwich, it was time to motor back.  We made great time on the return trip even though it was starting to heat up into the high 60's, and arrived back at the car in 2 hours.

Great day to be in the hills with two of my three girls.

Stats:

Distance: 9.5 miles

Elevation: ~2500 feet (cumulative)

Time: 4.5 hours car to car

2013 IdahoSummits Spring Outing/Mt. Breitenback Redux

Dylan and I have become pretty good friends with some folk we have met via the Internet and attended the latest bi-annual gather this past Saturday - the 2013 IdahoSummits.com Spring Outing.  A couple of obscure peaks in the Pioneer range called Rosencrance (10,273) and West Rosencrance (10,380’) were selected based on an online poll.  We rolled into the campsite around 8:30PM Friday night after a 4 hour drive and greeted some old friends (Dan, John P, Steve W, Margo, Steve M, George, Michael, Julie and Leslie).  Our buddy Steve Weston cooked up some grub from his cookbook (http://www.amazon.com/In-The-Wild-Chef-Recipes/dp/1927458064).  The spaghetti carbonara was fabulous, especially after the KFC we had consumed on the drive over.  As we sat around the campfire having a few adult beverages and swapping lies, we were joined by a half dozen newbies (Todd, Deb, Ryan, Tori, Wes and Mark), for a total of 17 folks anxious to climb the following morning.

Saturday morning was sunny, relatively windless and reasonably warm as we started up the hill.  It was quite a sight watching 17 people trudging up the hill.  More than one of us wondered out loud what others might think as they drove by. 

It wasn’t long before we hit the snow and almost immediately started postholing.  The snowshoes were then put on allowing us to progress upward with minimal problems.

 

Dylan taking the long route

We all moved at our own pace as we progressed up the 3200 feet to the first summit at 10,273.  Soon the majority of us were enjoying lunch while gawking at the promised extraordinary views.

The view of the Pioneers from the summit

After a half hour or so we all decided to head over to the second peak via a long connecting ridge.  Dylan volunteered to shuttle us from the exit point back to the parking area (about 1.5 miles between the two) so after stocking up on goodies from whomever would give something away, he quickly hit the connecting ridge to the next peak.  His plan was to run over, touch the top and then come back down the way we had come up.  The rest of us would travel down a different route.

 

The snow had melted on the south side of the interconnecting ridge making for easy traveling and everyone quickly progressed to peak 10,380.  Here we stopped to eat and gawk a little more.  The afternoon was phenomenal, with a little bit of a breeze but sunny and warm.  Unfortunately, as Frosty knows, sun and snow don’t mix too well.

 

The walk back down the mountain was tough.  As we started down, we quickly had to don snowshoes to minimize the postholing, but after a bit even the snowshoes couldn’t keep us on top of the snow.  Finally Michael and I took turns barreling through, creating a route through the knee to thigh deep sugary snow. 

Fortunately the snow wasn’t too thick, and after what felt like an hour of trudging, we were back at the road with the promised shuttle driver waiting there to move people back to their vehicles.  He had beaten us down by over an hour.

 

Leslie enjoying a major post hole!

That evening was spent around the fire again accompanied by a few adult beverages and some more great food.  But unlike Friday night, everyone hit the sack by 10PM with different plans for the next day.

Stats:

Elevation Gain: 3800 feet

Distance: ~7 miles

Sunday - Mt Breitenbach

 

Our objective (photo from the March trip)

We woke up at 5AM Sunday morning and quietly broke camp.  With the early morning temperature above freezing, we were concerned that the snow on Breitenbach might be as bad as it was during our climb yesterday.  We needed to travel about 30 minutes to Upper Cedar Creek road to reach the dreaded Pete Creek.  We struggled for a bit trying to find the trail head through the maze of roads and after 15 wasted minutes we finally arrived at 6:30.  With packs on we hit the trail at 6:45.

We had an unsuccessful summit bid, but a great ski on Mount Breitenbach back in (http://fadgenfamily.blogspot.com/2013/03/mt-breitenbach-attempt-12140-feet.html) March, where Pete Creek kick our butt.  Today was going to be redemption.

We quickly progressed up the Pete Creek drainage and didn't encounter any snow until we were above treeline at 8800 feet.  This was after 45 minutes.  Back in March this had taken a couple of hours.

View down Pete Creek back on March 17th.

Dylan standing in almost the same spot - we still weren't really in the snow

Once on the snow we put on our crampons.  Surprisingly, the snow was hard and fully supported our weight.  Feeling great, we scooted up the snow field as the wind picked up and the skies started darkening.  With the wind and clouds came the cold temperatures, but we were liking it since it kept the snow from softening.

We made the 10,000 foot mark in another hour and took a quick break.  I was a little surprised by how good I was feeling after climbing 3800 feet the day before.  

At roughly 11,000 feet, we made the decision to go straight up the face rather than take the easier, but long route to climber’s right.  Last time we made the same decision and the soft snow killed us. 

Dylan heading up the face

Dylan led the way up the steep face, alternately kicking steps and front pointing depending on the snow hardness.  With us not sinking in, we made the false summit at 11,800 by 10:30.  We were cruising, but so were the clouds.  The wind was really whipping by this time and it was getting a little dark out west. 

Summit "view" from just below the false summit

False summit "Splattski"

The 1/2 mile knife edge ridge separating the false from the actual summit looked a little tougher that than it had the previous month.  The east side was corniced and the west side still had quite a bit of snow.  But we were both feeling good and decided to take it slow. 

We had a couple of spicy sections where we had to down climb some steep snow while closely watching our foot placement. But other than that, we alternated between following the faint trail in the scree and walking on the snow and reached the summit at 11:15AM.

Down climbing a "spicy" section

Cruising along the ridge

Summit views

Summit shot!

After a high five, a hug and a few quick photos and we started down to get out of the wind.

Going back, the spicy sections weren’t too bad and in no time we were off the ridge and plunge stepping our way down the less steep left drainage.

Heading back down the ridge

Here is a short video where you can get a feel for how windy it was up there:

As we progressed down, the snow softened up some to where we had to put on our snowshoes to stay afloat.  A little bit lower and we actually got in a few low speed butt glissades before we exited the snow. 

The climb down through Pete Creek wasn't too bad and we were back at the truck by 1:45. 

Total time: 7 hours
Altitude: 4500 feet
Distance: 6 miles

Mt. Breitenbach Attempt - 12,140 Feet

Our planned ski area (Friday evening)

This past week there had been a little chatter on IdahoSummits.com about skiing the south face of Idaho's fifth highest peak.  I mentioned it to Dylan on Tuesday and he immediately said "I'm in. When?"

After the 3.5 hour drive from Boise on Friday afternoon, our objective in the spectacular Lost River Range came into view just as the sun was setting. Our first try to get to the trail head was on Upper Cedar Creek road, but we were turned back due to a snow drift.  We then took an alternative route that got us to within a 1/2 mile of the "trail" at Pete Creek.  We made a quick camp and hit the sack around ten with a planned wake up time at 5:45AM.

We woke to clear skies and little wind with temps hovering around freezing.  We had a quick bite to eat, shouldered our packs and headed up in the dark.

Packs ready to go

Since we had never been up Pete Creek we had little to go on other than some terrible descriptions that John Platt had given in some of this previous trip reports.  (http://www.splattski.com/2004/end_of_summer/index.html and http://www.splattski.com/2007/breitenbach/index.html)

In one of these TR, he uses the phrase, "flood ravaged stream bed," which if you added rotten snow to the description would detail our trip through the lower canyon.  We were hoping to make quick time up this lower section, possibly even skin it.  Since it hadn't gotten too cold the night before, the snow hadn't frozen much resulting in a lot of post holing.  This was the best kind too, where you took several steps before the snow collapsed and you sank to your thigh! We took two hours of this fun before we reached a point at 8500 feet where we could finally put our skis on.


Dylan enjoying himself



Looking down Pete Creek

Still wishing we had our skis on our feet!

The White Knobs across the valley

With our skis on we quickly progressed up the canyon hoping to get into the sun.  Though it wasn't too cold at camp, it was very cold in this canyon.  Ice was forming in our water bottles - which were in our packs!

After another 45 minutes or so we curved to the left and our objective came into view.  Well, not the actual summit, but a false summit.  Breitenbach was another 1/2 mile behind this summit.  If we could only get in the sun!

Finally after another 20 minutes of skinning we stopped for a breather in the sun at around 10,000 feet.  As we were eating, several small rocks started careening down towards us, with one actually smacking into my pack which was at my feet.  At this point the helmets were put on.

Here is a short video of the beautiful placed we stopped:

We both commented how good we were feeling at this point, 3 hours into it.  We continued to skin up on the hard snow, admiring the views all around us.  After another hour we reached a point where Dylan was having a bit of trouble slipping, so he decided to start booting.  My skins were working great, so I continued up another couple of hundred feet before I transitioned.

Rather than keeping to the right and trying to obtain the ridge through a shallow bowl I had the idea of heading straight up next to a band of scree.  Dylan, being the animal that he is, didn't talk me out of it.  So up we went.

and up...

and up...

This face had been in sun since 8AM or so and it was now past 11AM.  It was very soft at this point.  Dylan did a masterful job of leading the way, but there were several places where he sank to his thighs and I sank to my waist.  With us being at a 45 degree angle, trying to get our feet under us on some solid snow took a bit of effort.

After what felt like an hour we gained the ridge at 11,800 feet.  Only another 1/2 mile and 400' to go to the summit.  We stopped and dropped our skis and had a quick bite.  It was a little after 1PM at this point (Where had the time gone?) and we had planned a 2PM turn around time. 

Dylan took off up the ridge while I slowly followed. 



Dylan leading the way up the summit ridge.  Breitenbach is the on the left.



I didn't have much energy left after the steep climbing we had just finished. With the prospect of further post holing along the 1/2 mile summit ridge, and concerns about the steep ski descent, I called Dylan back and told him I didn't have the energy to make it to the summit.  He turned back, and we dropped down to our skis to prepare for the descent.

Our wide open, steep ski run

A not quite summit Splattski

The turns on the upper part of the mountain were tense and tough.  Steep terrain and hard packed snow, but we made the most of them.  Once down the first 800 feet we had some great corn, allowing for more relaxing turns.

Our turns

We hooted and hollered our way down the mountain, stopping to film ourselves along the way. Here is a short video:  

Before we knew it we were back at the rock where we had stashed our hiking boots at 8,500 feet.  3,300 feet of skiing the south face of Mt. Breitenbach!  Little did we know the fun was about to begin.  Dylan was determined to ski down Pete Creek as far as he could and I sheepishly followed.

Dylan looking for more fun

Pete Creek's finest

We were able to make our way down several hundred vertical feet more without killing ourselves until it became too dangerous to continue.  So we loaded the skis on our backs and started down.  By this time the snow was completely rotten and the goal was to not slip off a log or rock and break a leg.  

When will the misery end?

After an hour of struggling through the "creek," the truck finally came into view.  That last 1/2 mile was a bugger.

Even though we didn't make the summit, we had a blast on our first Lost Rivers trip of 2013.

Stats:

Time - 9 hours

Distance - 9 miles

Elevation Gain - 4400'

Jughandle (Ladybug)

Tam, Dylan and I hooked up with John and his buddy Art for a Saturday tour of the Ladybug area of Jughandle Mountain.  With all the warm weather we'd been having we didn't expect much, but were pleasantly surprised by the good conditions up high.

John and Art were skiing touring gear (3 pins), while the Fadgens had our fat skis.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vOzsoPMzOQ&feature=youtube_gdata

A Copper Weekend

A couple of weeks ago during our avalanche awareness class with Sawtooth Mountain Guides, Tam and I talked about doing a ski weekend based in Stanley.  When John Platt brought up the idea of doing the Copper Mountain traverse this weekend, we jumped at the chance.

Since the traverse was supposed to be an 8 hour, 10 mile climb/tour with some downhill in between, Tam and I opted to do laps on Copper while Dylan, John and Mariel (John's daughter) did the traverse.  The three of them were off at 8:30 Saturday morning with clear skies and the temperature hovering around 5 degrees.

Tam and I spent a little time sitting in the car, eating turnovers and drinking tea, hoping for the temperatures to warm up some.  Even though the temps hadn't increased much, once the sun hit us, it was time to put the skis on and start up the trail.

Tam with the summit of Copper Mountain above her

We progressed relatively quickly up the ridge trail, and after little over an hour stopped at the Lunch Counter for a quick bite to eat before continuing on up.

As you can see, the weather was so bad that we had to put on caps to keep the sun off of our foreheads!  On the way up, Tam asked if the 8966 foot summit was, "imperative."  My answer was, "Of course!"  Her next comment was that she wouldn't have another lap in her if we kept going up. 

So we opted to get off of the sun baked snow and head down a NE facing slope.  The snow was a mixture of sun crust and mashed potatoes and we struggled for some good turns for several hundred feet before traversing back to the Lunch Counter.

Here we stopped for a bit longer, eating, gawking, and enjoying the weather before we started up again.  This time we didn't talk about the summit, we just went for it.



Tam contemplating the summit

Along the way we spied some ski lines in a bowl across the valley that looked pretty good.  Unbeknownst to us, these were from the traverse group.

Soon enough we made it to the summit (Tam's first time!) and wandered around a bit trying to get out of the breeze that was now blowing and seeing if we could see John, Mariel, and Dylan.  After all, they were supposed to come up this way.

The Sawtooths from Copper Mountain

After standing around and enjoying the views for 15 minutes, we pulled our skins and headed down the south face.  The snow was a bit crusty on top, but silky smooth down below.  The sun had warm it up enough for some great turns.

John getting some turns

Once down in the trees, we had to find our way back to the car.  Let's just say that Tam's guide did not find the easy way out.  Luckily John and Dylan met us at the road and saved us a little bit of a walk.  As it turned out, their guide got them a little off-trail and they didn't complete the traverse and had beaten us back to the car by an hour

That evening we all enjoyed burgers at Bridge Street and then a great soak in a hot springs before calling it a day.

We woke Sunday morning to 3-4" of fresh powder and were all jazzed to get back up there.  We left the car around 9AM for a repeat trip up Copper.  The weather was a mixture of sun and clouds, with a whisper of wind.  Temps were a little warmer, around 15 or so.

We made good time up to the Lunch Counter, where again we stopped for a quick bite before heading on to the summit.

Mariel heading up

The sun and clouds provided a great backdrop for some skinning photos.  As usual I was bringing up the rear.

Once on the summit, where there was surprisingly little wind, we again enjoyed astounding views.

Mariel pointing out FD Bowl to Dad.

This time around the snow had a thin layer (2-3") of powder over the sun baked crust from yesterday.  It made for pretty good skiing as we all carved down the south face into the trees.  We then put the skins on and headed back up. 

At the halfway point to the summit our legs started complaining, so we shucked the skins and skied down the ridge.

Tam blowing smoke

Mariel carving it up

Dylan jumping a pillow

Dylan enjoying the day

With John leading the way, the trip back to the road was much easier than the one Tam and I did yesterday.  In a short while we were sitting on John's tailgate enjoying an ice cold Rainier reminiscing about the weekend with big smiles on our faces.

What a weekend!

John's trip report: http://www.splattski.com/2013/copper/index.html

Stats (John and Tam)

Vertical: about 2500 feet each day

Distance skinned: about 2.5 miles each day

Tam's summits: 2!! (+/-5,000 calories burned)