Mt. Borah

I really have not been finding the time to blog this summer. At least it's because we've been busy having fun. The last few weeks have included swimming, a trip to Lagoon with friends, and the demolition derby just to name a few. Yes, Lagoon and the derby in the same week. It's hard to say which brings out the stranger, most scantily clad crowd. There I consider those things blogged, but I really do need to give a little detail about last weekend's adventure.

Boyd (Jer's dad) got the idea of climbing Mt. Borah which is the highest peak in Idaho. Jer and I have already done a few highest peaks (King's in Utah and Gannett in Wyoming--way intense), so we were both excited to do it. This was my first hard hike/climb since having kids. We headed up to Mackey, Idaho to camp with Jer's parents, TJ and Amy and fam, and our kids. We headed out early Saturday morning and Cid and Amy's sister Jamie tended all of the kids while the rest of us hit the slopes. (Yes, they are saints and I think their day was tougher than ours. At least our sweet RV park had a tepee that provided hours of entertainment for the kiddos.)


This is actually not a picture I took but this is Mt. Borah from a distance. It's 12,662 feet. I have been at a lot of trailheads but never one quite like this. It was a zoo! The parking lot was packed and there were hordes of people hoping to summit that day. I guess that's what you get when a peak this big is only a day hike, and it's a nice summer day. The round trip is only around 7 miles, but it is straight up and straight down--you gain over 5,0000 feet of elevation. Yea, that's like a vertical mile in 3.5 miles. It was a steep 'un.

Our group was varied in its preparation for this hike. Boyd had been hiking in preparation and Jer, Amy, and I have all been running or biking a lot this summer. TJ on the other hand is not a big fan of exercise and was hitting it off the couch. Ouch, but he made it.

Before going I knew of a section called "Chicken Out Ridge." It is so named because lots of people get sketched out and turn around at this point. I was prepared for that but kind of thought it would be a short segment. It turned out to be quite exposed for a long time. It is not very technical, Class III scrambling, but you look down and see only air...for a long time. We saw lots of turnarounders at that point (some who looked like they belonged at the derby not climbing a mountain), but we pressed on. It is a real knife-edge outcropping of rock that reminded me of a stegosaurus back. Once I got to a point I could get my camera out I took some pics of Jer who was right behind me followed by Amy. (Amy had never done anything like this before, and I must say she did awesome!)


Chicken Out Ridge


I thought once we got off the yellow rock of Chicken Out Ridge we would be done with the exposure, but no. You then get on some black rock and the fun just keeps on coming. The girl of a couple near us called her boyfriend a bleepity-bleep at this point and I guess they turned around because I never did see them again.

Physically I felt great but my mental state took a bit of a turn for the worse when we got almost to the downclimb in the picture below (this was actually taken on the way back across). Right as we were reaching the top of that little cliff you have to climb down we hear this lady yell, "oh no." It sounded serious, and we came up on top of the rock to see this man sliding down the snow slope pictured. He was scrapping and fighting but picking up serious speed. At one point he got turned head down the hill, and I thought for sure he was dead. He did get his feet first again just before slamming off a huge pile of rocks and continuing to slide. He stopped after about a 50o+ foot fall at about 40-50 mph (my guesstimate). It was totally freaky to say the least. He did wave his arms when he stopped and a person in his party downclimbed the 60+ degree slope to him on the rocky sides fairly quickly. It was unnerving to say the least. (It turns out he was a scout leader from Boise who made a very bad choice. Instead of going across the crossing on the top of the ridge (see pic below) where there is a footpath stamped he (against the advice of others) ran across the snow at a lower point, quickly losing his footing, and nearly sliding to his death in front of his scouts. Can you say, not smart? He ended up spending the night with a broken leg and tailbone and getting rescued by a helicopter the next day.)

After seeing that, Amy and I in particular wanted to take a look for ourselves at this snow crossing before deciding to proceed. After a jittery downclimb we decided it was okay if you stuck to the route, and we crossed without looking to either side too much!

This is a pic we took after coming back down. Near the top you can see the snow chute that guy took his fall down. If he'd gone much further he would have reached a sheer rock cliff. I guess it wasn't his day to die.

Once you get past the nerve wracking stuff you have about 900 feet of vertical scree to climb up. Joy! At this point, we all went our separate ways and paces and got to the top. There's not really much of a trail, but it's just a really steep hike. Thank goodness for trekking poles.

Here are Boyd and Amy covering the last bit of ground to the summit.

There were plenty of people at the top to take our picture...not exactly secluded but an accomplishment nonetheless. We spent quite a bit of time at the summit waiting for everyone to arrive and regroup to head back. Jer even went back down and gave TJ a little moral support for that last stretch. I was totally impressed by this group of four 50-something women who did this climb. They were pretty slow, but they made it. I never do things like this without Jer along! There were also some 10-12 year-old Scouts up there. We saw them on the way back down and they made me super nervous. My mom instincts came out big time, and I could hardly watch. In my opinion this hike is not Scout appropriate. In fact, earlier in the month a scout fell 600 feet without his troop noticing and wasn't found until 17 hours later. Really?

Here's the whole gang at the top. I did not enjoy downclimbing all the exposed sections but after that it was just a knee-jarring descent. We all ditched each other and headed down at our own pace after the climbing sections. Boyd got a wild hair and was even running at one point. It was a great day, and I'm really glad we did it. I may just check Borah off my list and be done with this one forever. I would probably let my boys do this with their dad if they were old enough, but you will not catch them going up there with their scout troops anytime soon...make that ever!