Fadgen's Adventures: Two Point Mountain

I'm heading back to Asia on Monday for a short trip and wanted to get out to stretch my legs before the long plane flight. I also hadn't seen Mr. Platt much this summer, so I sent him an email earlier in the week to see if he was available Saturday. He had the day free, but had to be back in Boise by 6PM for his daughter's engagement party. After a bit of back and forth we settled on Two Point Mountain, the highest peak in the Boise Mountains, since it was close and a short hike.

The a couple of hours of windshield time flew by as we caught up with one another, and we were on the trail a little after 9AM in sunny, though a bit hazy, skies. We were following both Sawtooth Sean and Dan's route - the short and sweet South ridge. The route started up a chewed up ATV trail to Tip Top Mine - tough going out of the gate. Once we reached the 7400 foot contour, we left the trail and moved right to obtain the broad South ridge.

As we started up the steep slope, John asked me to slow down a bit until he had warmed up. I think that this was a bit of a diversion, because as soon as I slowed down a bit, he seemed to move faster.

A glimpse of Two Point

As we moved up. the trees thinned, the temperatures rose and the sweat started flowing.

And, our destination came into view.

We took a couple of short breaks, but kept up the steady pace. We were thinking that if we moved quickly we just might have enough time to grab another connecting peak.

As we closed to within a few hundred vertical feet of the summit, the terrain became rocky.

Though it looked like we might get in some scrambling, it ended up being a walk up to the summit. The views could have been fantastic, but the distant peaks were obscured by smoke from an unknown source. Oh well, it can't be fantastic all the time.

We had covered the 2 miles and 2900 feet to the summit in an hour and forty-five minutes. Not a bad pace for a couple of old guys. It was now 11AM and what to do?

We thought that we could traverse the ridge over the shorter North summit and then cruise the adjoining ridge to try and obtain Ross Mountain. It was an ambitious goal as Ross was over two miles away.

We had some fun scrambling down off the summit on a knife edged ridge that had considerable exposure to our right.

We moved down, up, and around the rocky ridge but it was slow going. Every time we came to a place where we could see the north summit, the more we realized that there wouldn't be enough time. After another 15 minutes or so of slow going, we decided to just head down since it was obvious we couldn't make Ross Peak.

The ridge to the North summit

Ross Peak

Once down off the steep loose rock, we stopped for a leisurely lunch under a couple of old White Bark Pines before following the path of least resistance back to the truck.