Pine Mountain - 8648'

As I sit here contemplating what to put down from our trip to Northern Nevada two weeks ago, I'm a bit bummed.  It's the first week of February and it was above 60 degrees this afternoon.  Big storm coming in, but it will rain down low and if we're lucky, wet snow up high.  Winter seems to have passed us by before it even got started... oh woe is me.

A couple of Saturdays ago (Jan 23rd) , John, Michael and I took a road trip down to Northern Nevada.  The plan was to climb an obscure P2K peak that Michael had on his list - Pine Mountain just NE of Wildhorse Reservoir.  We were hoping it wouldn't turn into just a road trip, since we had been unable to obtain any information on the road conditions.  But it turned out to be all good, as Michael's FJ Cruiser didn't have any trouble through the 9 miles of snow covered road to Gold Creek Ranger Station.

We were walking up the snow covered road a little after 10AM in an unsettled sky that was spitting snow.  After a short while we started punching through the snow, so it was time to put on the snowshoes.

We cruised up the road for the first couple of miles, only gaining a few hundred feet, before we took a sharp right and started up an aspen covered slope.

John is known for leading us on some wicked, downfall filled, showshoe adventures and we talked about the most epic one as we weaved our way through the dense aspens.  http://fadgenfamily.blogspot.com/2011/12/bull-mountain-utah.html

After the initial dense cluster of aspen, the terrain opened up and our objective came into view.  At this point, the sun decided to break through the clouds for it's only short appearance of the day.

Pine Mountain

Though the sunshine didn't last too long, it didn't bother us too much, since it was plenty warm without it.  As you can see, we are hiking in long sleeve shirts on the last week of January.

The slope became a bit steeper as we neared the summit.

We all reached the top about 1PM, and after taking some photos we found a place out of the wind to have some lunch.

Summit stake

At this point Michael's Mexican food from the previous night was acting up, so he decided to re-trace our route back to the car.

So after saying our good-byes, John and I made the long trek down Pine Mountain and across a broad plain to Rosebud Mountain.  The red dot in the photo below is Rosebud.

From the top of Pine Mountain, Rosebud seemed like a long ways off.  But we kept up a steady pace and reached the base of it in less than an hour.  After a short, steep grunt through a rocky section, we were on top.

J Platt photo

The wind was blowing pretty good at this point, so it was time to get down.  We could just barely make out Michael walking back to the FJ along the road.  This spurred John on, and I did my best to try and keep him in my sights as we descended the steep slope.   We were back where we started in a little less than an hour, smiling from ear to ear.  A great day to get out of the seemingly constant Boise inversion and climb a couple of obscure peaks!

Stats:
Time: 5:45
Distance: 8-9 miles
Elevation: 2700 feet