Saturday afternoon I scooted away from the IS spring outing
as soon as I could, to meet up with Dylan and his GF Bailey, at Amy Lou’s, in Mackay. After a nice bacon cheeseburger, we loaded
their gear into the truck for the drive to the Leatherman Peak trail head, on the
West Fork of the Pahsimeroi River. After
the long, bumpy drive, we reached the trail head and set up camp in the dark. Without much negotiation, we settled on a 5AM
departure and tried to sleep. I’m not sure if it was being dead tired (me), the
anticipation (Dylan and me) or the creek (all of us), but sleep was hard to
come by.
Dylan woke me out of a sound sleep (huh?) at 4:30AM, and
after a quick bite we were heading for Leatherman peak with our skis on our
back. We found the two log “bridges” in the
dark and were soon moving quickly up the trail.
Well, he was moving quickly. I
was struggling to keep up with his pace, but was doing my best. Knowing how bad the snow was on yesterday’s
climb, we were hoping to be off the mountain by noon.
As it lightened up we came to the only other creek
crossing. Unable to find a way across in
the gloom, we headed to our right and started to bushwhack. As we moved up we eventually hit snow. And wouldn’t you know it, as the wet mushy
snow became thicker, so did the trees.
Nothing beats bushwhacking, except bushwhacking with skis strapped to
your back in snow!
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| Yours truly bushwhacking |
After 30 minutes or so, we gained a rocky ridge, and then I
heard him shouting with glee. We had
reached the upper cirque and were out of the trees! At this point Leatherman was towering above
us with the top in bright sunshine.
We took a short break at the base. I was feeling pretty puny at this point, as the
bushwhack had taken a bit out of me.
Looking up at the scree that needed to be climbed made me feel more
tired. I didn’t want to say anything to Dylan as he was really feeling good, so
good he was hooting and hollering about the views.
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| Dylan heading up |
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| Looking back down the valley |
We started up, zig zagging through the steep scree before
we eventually reached the snow.
Surprisingly, this snow was relatively solid and allowed us to move
upward a little easier.
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| Transitioning with Leatherman lit up |
Once we reached 10,000 feet it appeared that the snow was
more contiguous, so we transitioned to skinning. Skinning up the mountain was much easier than
walking up and we made good time.
We eventually reached a point where it was too steep to skin
and transitioned to booting. Dylan took
the lead as I struggled to stay behind him.
Unfortunately, the warm temperatures the past few days hadn’t allowed
the snow to set up, and we were sinking to our knees as we booted up the final
1000 feet.
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| Looking up |
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| Dylan nearing the summit |
The bright sunshine and lack
of a breeze made it feel like we were in an oven, but we eventually reached the
summit at 10:30AM. The views from the top
were phenomenal with Mount Borah and Mt Church looking like you could reach out
and touch them.
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| Hero shot! |
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| Mt Borah (high point on right) |
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| Mt Church |
We took a short break, snapping photos and pounded out a
platform to transition to skiing mode.
After getting all our gear in order, we shouldered our packs, clicked
into our skis, and smiled at each other.
Afterwards, we talked about how both our hearts were beating in anticipation
and fear. The mountain wasn’t too steep,
but we knew the conditions weren’t too good either.
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| One last look down |
With a, “WooHoo!”
Dylan was off for his first turns and they didn’t look too good with the
sloppy snow.
After he stopped, it was my turn and I pushed off. Yep, the snow definitely wasn’t in too good
of shape, but this is what backcountry skiing is all about. You take the good with the bad, and being out
with my boy on a gorgeous day in the Lost Rivers at 12K feet, skiing in June is
a pretty damn good day!
We yo-yo’d down the mountain, doing our best to stay on our feet in the mash potato snow. At one point I caught an edge, lost my ski and did a short roll down the mountain. Thankfully, I couldn’t go too far in the mushy snow.
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| Dylan way down there |
We quickly made our way down to where we had left our hiking
boots, loaded them in our packs and then picked our way down the remaining snow
patches. We eventually ran out of snow
at about 9400’ feet.
We were all smiles as we transitioned back to hiking boots
and loaded our skis back on the packs. Looking back up the mountain, we could just
make out our tracks, they weren’t the prettiest, but they were ours!
We followed the trail out and found a great log to cross the
stream, seeing where we went awry during the hike up.
We made it back to camp and Bailey at 12:40. Smiles still on
our faces!
1 comment:
Very cool.
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