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.