Hyndman Peak - 12,009 Feet

Like last year, we decided to combine a hike/climb with picking up Dylan from church camp. This year the plan was to add to our Idaho 12er's list by climbing Hyndman Peak outside of Hailey.

Tam joined us but we couldn't talk Taylor out of attending the Boise Music Festival, so the total count was four, including Shadow the mountain dog.

We arrived at the trail head at 7:30 and started hiking in 47 degree temperatures through sagebrush meadows and aspen groves. We maintained a brisk pace for the first few miles until we reached the base of Mt. Cobb when the trail took a steep turn. At this point the sun was out in full force and it was starting to get warm.

After a couple of steep pitches it was time for Tam and Shadow to remain by the creek at roughly 9,000 feet while Dylan and I continued toward the summit.


The trail took us by a couple of small ponds and meandered through high mountain meadows before a little pitch took us to a saddle between Hyndman and Old Hyndman peaks. At this point we were at roughly 11,000 feet.

We took a short break admiring the views, then started up the south side of the ridge through large talus toward the summit. This section posed numerous route finding challenges, was steep with a lot of loose rock, and was fun. Dylan was feeling really strong (probably because he had backpacked 22 miles the previous week) and led the way. In a little less than an hour we were on the summit.
After a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some Gatorade and a few chocolate chip cookies we started down. Rather than reverse our ascent route, we decided to head straight down. We spotted a great snow gully where we figured we could save time by glissading down. Unfortunately, the snow was too soft, so we had to continue rock hopping our way down. The rocks were too large for scree skiing and too small for descending without being extremely careful, so the descent took some time. Four hours after we had left them, we were back with Tam and Shadow where we cooled our feet for a bit in the creek.

From this point is was a short two hour walk back to the truck in 80 degree sunshine. Or to sum it up, a long hot march. All in all we hiked roughly 12 miles and gained 5000 feet elevation in a little over 9 hours.

Lost River Peak - 12,078 Feet

So this was it, the climb we have been buying the gear for, the climb we have been practicing for: the snow filled "Super Gully" on Lost River Peak (as seen in the above picture). Dylan and I took off on the afternoon of 4th of July to Mackay to spend the night at the base of the peak. The alarm woke us at 4:30AM for an early start. The goal was to climb the Super Gully before the sun came out and started melting the snow. The trail started out straight up, and up, and up. After an hour we reached the Super Gully and stopped to put on our crampons and grab the ice axes. The fun was to begin! The snow was nice and crusty as the temperature was hovering around freezing. We made good time climbing the roughly 1000 vertical feet up the Super Gully and exited into the sunshine. At this point all we had was a relatively narrow finger ridge to make it to the summit. This was handled with no problem. The views on top were phenomenal! It was a bit windy and cold on the top. After searching in vain for a summit register and having a light snack we bailed off the summit. The good part about doing a snow climb is the glissade on the way down. We made quick work of the 1000 feet of snow that we had climbed up earlier. The sun had softened it just right. Now I know where the term "numb nuts" came from! We did a total of 4500 vertical feet and climbed our second Idaho 12er!

Here is a video of Dylan glissading down the gully. The video doesn't really show how steep the gully is.

Smokey Dome Peak (10,095 feet) - June 27

In continued preparation for our climb of Lost River Peak we took a short jaunt north of Fairfield to climb Smokey Dome. Every time we drive by Fairfield I comment that we need to climb it and today we finally got around to it. We had seen Doug the day before and invited him along. So after a short drive the three of us and two dogs took off up a draw.


After going up the draw a bit, Dylan and I decided to head to the summit while Doug decided to continue up the draw to the ridge. The plan was to meet up there. The scramble to the summit took us through a couple of snow fields where we put on our crampons for some more orientation with their use.

Here we are on the ridge with the summit behind us.

Upon reaching the summit at 10,095 feet we had a quick lunch, signed the register, and took off before the wind cooled us down too much. Since we planned on meeting up with Doug at the head of the draw we traversed a fun ridge that allowed some scrambling. Since Shadow was with us Dylan did all the "fun" stuff while I rock hopped below with the puppy.



Here he is at the summit of a great scramble.
A great trip where we did about 7 miles round trip and a couple of thousand vertical feet.