BORAH PEAK
12,662 ft.
August 22, 2004
By Tim Briese
In late August I went on a trip to climb Borah Peak and Kings Peak, the highest points in Idaho and Utah. I left home in Colorado Springs at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning and drove to Salt Lake City, where I picked up Brian at the airport a little after 1 p.m. He had flown in from Minneapolis that morning. It was good to get together with him for a climbing expedition once again. We discussed numerous mountaineering adventures as we drove north on I-15 to Blackfoot, Idaho. From there we went northwest across a barren expanse of desert to Arco, and continued up the Lost River Valley on U. S. Hwy. 93 toward the trailhead. In the tiny village of Darlington we stopped to eat and enjoyed an outstanding Mexican dinner at the unpretentious Ramshorne Restaurant, an unexpected treat in such an out-of-the-way place. We continued northwest through Mackay, and 21 miles north of town reached a signed turnoff for the Borah Peak Trailhead. We followed a gravel road for about three miles east as it climbed gently through sagebrush to the trailhead. Borah Peak towered above the valley to the east, and we previewed our route up its long, sinuous southwest ridge.
At the trailhead we found several vehicles and a dozen or so people milling about, several of whom were preparing to camp there for the night. A man coming down the trail was just completing a climb of Borah, and he informed us that it took him thirteen hours to do so. A sign at the trailhead proclaimed that a typical roundtrip climb takes ten to twelve hours. The climb is not exceptionally long, entailing seven miles of roundtrip hiking, but it requires a brutal 5200 feet of elevation gain on a steep trail that includes some Class 3 scrambling.
We considered camping at the trailhead, but were concerned about noise and lack of privacy at the informal camping area there, so we decided to go back down the road a few hundred yards and then went north a short distance on a primitive use road where we parked and camped for the night. This spot was indeed quite a grand, albeit desolate, place to spend the night, with a commanding panoramic view of the broad valley spread out below.
This part of Idaho seemed rather barren and bleak to me, at least at this time of year. Dry valleys were rimmed by mountains that held a comparatively narrow zone of forest, which quickly gave way to rough volcanic slopes above timberline, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet. Borah Peak was jolted by a magnitude 7 earthquake in 1983, and the fault line where the earth shifted several feet is still clearly visible running horizontally across the entire base of the mountain. The fault line lay just a hundred feet or so above our camp, and we walked up to examine it. During the night I observed some distant lightning flashes in the sky to the west, and I wondered if they were an ominous portent for our climb in the morning.
We rose a few minutes before 4 a.m. the next morning and drove back up to the trailhead to embark on the hike. We wanted to get an early start in order to outflank a questionable weather scenario, and also to get ourselves in position, if possible, to climb Kings Peak in Utah the next day. We hit the trail at 4:20 a.m. with our headlamps and soon overtook two other hikers who had started a few minutes before us. We never saw them again and assumed that they must have given up on the climb at some point. The fine trail climbed briskly up a valley through the woods for about a mile before sharply switchbacking up a steep slope toward the crest of the ridge above. We were pleased to gain about 1800 feet of elevation in the first hour of the hike. We were aided in part by the relatively low elevation of the climb, for the Borah Trailhead lies at an elevation of only about 7400 feet, which is much lower than the Colorado climbs we were used to, which often start at an elevation of 10,000 feet or more.
The first light of dawn appeared about the time we climbed out of the trees and reached the crest of the ridge at 9800 feet. The trail turned to the right and climbed steeply along the crest of the rocky ridge. We arrived at a gentle saddle at 10,600 feet and stopped for a few minutes to take a break and put our headlamps away.
The ridge above to the southeast looked very steep and intimidating. At about 11,300 feet we reached the infamous section called AChicken Out Ridge.@ This rough section is about 200 yards long, as the ridge climbs from 11,300 to 11,600 feet. The trail became undefined here, and multiple routes were feasible. We initially stayed to the right side of the ridge in order to avoid sheer cliffs on the left, and made our way without much difficulty with some fun Class 3 scrambling on nice solid rock. This section might intimidate inexperienced climbers, though, for there is some exposure on both sides of the ridge, particularly to the north.
We switched to the left side of the ridge part way up and soon came to a dirt gully that dropped steeply away to the north. We did not see a reasonable route to descend into the gully and cross it, so we climbed up rocky steps beside the gully to the crest of the ridge and found ourselves confronted with a nasty 20 foot downclimb to reach a small saddle on the ridge at the top of the gully. This move is the crux of the entire climb. We carefully negotiated this obstacle and reached the saddle, which lies at an elevation of about 11,700 feet. While coming back later on our descent we found that this obstacle can be easily avoided by crossing the gully about 100 feet below the saddle, on a route that is easy to find on the descent but hard to see on the ascent. It should be noted, however, that this dirt gully is likely to be filled with snow until mid summer or later, and might be quite hazardous to cross below the saddle without an ice ax. At such times the downclimb would probably be the safest and simplest route to follow, and care should be exercised in crossing any snow at the top of the gully in order to avoid a dangerous slip.
At this point the ridge mellowed out and we followed a nice trail that traversed gently along the north side of the ridge. At a broad saddle we paused to inspect the steep 800 foot climb to the summit that lay above us. We were presented here with a fine view of other summits of the Lost River Range that lay off to the south.
A stiff wind buffeted us as we began the climb up the rough slope to the summit. There was an obvious trail toward the left, but it appeared to harbor unpleasant loose scree and dirt, so we stayed to the right closer to the ridge in order to stay on more solid rock. We found a nice route up through some smooth slabs and eventually crested out on the summit ridge and followed it left for a couple of hundred feet to the summit.
We stepped on top just before 8:30, for an ascent time of just over four hours. We were greeted with spectacular views all around, enhanced by the early morning light. The rugged Lost River Range lay off to the south, and the brooding Bitterroot Range on the Idaho/Montana border was silhouetted against the hazy sky toward the northeast. The trailhead was visible in the valley far below to the west. Someone had placed a set of deer antlers on the summit, an artifact I had never seen on a mountaintop before. The register showed that the peak is visited by hordes of climbers, a great majority of them Idaho residents. Colorado summits, in contrast, seem to be visited by a higher proportion of out-of-state climbers. Apparently Borah is often climbed by church, scout, and family groups. There was even a banner rolled up in a watertight tube that someone had brought up to celebrate their successful climb.
It was cold and windy on top, and my thermometer registered a chilly 36 degrees. We sought refuge behind some rocks in the sunshine on the leeward side of the summit. I thoroughly enjoyed gazing about at the grand panorama surrounding us in this place where I had never climbed before.
After enjoying the summit for nearly an hour we left at about 9:20 and began our descent. Shortly after we left the top, a gust of wind knocked me off balance while I was trying to negotiate some loose scree, and I twisted my knee a bit, which made for a somewhat painful descent the rest of the way. Nevertheless, we quickly descended on steep slopes of dirt and scree. A few hundred feet below the top we met another pair of climbers coming up, and then a solo climber shortly after that. Continuing down the ridge, we encountered four more climbers coming up near the dirt gully, and we stopped to watch a pair of them come down the tricky 20 foot downclimb. While we were waiting I noticed a picturesque view of the mountains off to the south. We found a nice route back down Chicken Out Ridge, initially on the right (north) side of the ridge and then on the left. This route required nothing harder than a short 30 foot stretch of easy Class 3 scrambling. I thought it was unfortunate that that route was not more well-marked. The cold wind grew even stronger and dark clouds invaded the sky, making us glad we had reached the summit when we did. More climbers were still on their way up, though. We saw a total of about a dozen climbers bound for the summit as we came down.
We pressed on down the steep trail, taking short, steady steps in order to maintain our footing as well as to preserve our knees. I have seldom been on a trail as consistently steep as this one. We returned to the trailhead a few minutes before 12:30, for a roundtrip climbing time of about eight hours. It felt good to accomplish our climb of Idaho=s highest peak. A few minutes later we left the trailhead and drove down the highway toward Utah.
