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.