Borah Peak - Idaho's Highpoint (Hardwear Sessions)

View Photographs of Ryan's trip on Flickr.

By Ryan Riggs, MHW International

We've got to stop doing trips this way...it's just not healthy to spend 22 hours in a car over the course of two days. Throw in a little jaunt to 12,662 ft from sea level and it is almost guaranteed to have subtracted a year or two off the back end of life...all in the name of fun.

It was mentioned in a previous blog entry that my buddy Brian and I are attempting to highpoint the US. We are definitely going to give it a go. Neither of us wants to take 25 years to do it either so we are trying to be as consistent as possible. To keep things going we headed out to Idaho and Borah Peak two weeks ago. This time we dragged Brian's brother Trevor along. He found out where we were going as he was loading his gear in the car.

You can get to Borah Peak's trailhead from Portland in 11 hours. If you leave Portland after work at 5:00pm...yes, your math is correct...you can arrive at the trailhead at 5:00am (you lose an hour when you cross the time zone). The idea sounded a lot more fun than the execution turned out to be. We were absolutely exhausted when we pulled up to see other climbers throwing on their headlamps to get an early start. That wasn't going to happen so we threw down our sleeping bags next to the car and tried to sleep for two restless hours. That seemed like more sleep then it felt like when we woke up. We were lucky to wake up to a beautiful Idaho morning or else we might have slept into the evening.

Borah Peak is located in the northern section of the Lost River Range just north of MacKay, Idaho. It's not the greenest part of the state, and it was actually quite dry during our visit. However, the setting is quite beautiful. I read somewhere it being referred to as "Marlboro Country." Funny, I didn't see any smokers, but I did see some cowboys.

Once we passed through the stock gate to keep the cows out we started up an old jeep road that narrowed down to a trail after a mile or so. It didn't take long to realize that we could have used a little more sleep seeing as we were all feeling a little dizzy. The route gains about 5500 ft over 3.5 miles and I could count on one hand the number of switchbacks provided. At about 10,500 ft the trail leaves the trees and heads up an exposed ridge that forms a horseshoe shape with the actual summit ridge. The section connecting the horseshoe is called Chicken Out Ridge.

We had read a little about Chicken Out Ridge, but none of it seemed to shed any light on what really to expect. It definitely wasn't what we expected. None of us have rock climbing skills above a beginner so free climbing a few class 5 routes with huge exposure was fun but a little sketchy. There are tamer routes across (exposed class 3-4), but route finding is difficult to those unfamiliar with the traverse and it's easy to get off onto more difficult lines. By now Trevor was really questioning his decision to blindly follow us to Idaho. We all agreed that our wives wouldn't have appreciated that section. It did add some spice to an otherwise straightforward trudge up the mountain. After Chicken Out it is a short climb to the top and a great view. Unfortunately, I made the stupid decision to ask the guy using a wind up disposable camera to take some shots of us on the summit with my digital. Then I made a second stupid decision to not check the photos he "took". It wasn't until the next morning I discovered that he hadn't taken a single photo of us on the summit. That was a huge bummer, and a mistake I'll never make again.

After climbing back over Chicken Out, the descent was your typical slow-paced knee-breaker with few switchbacks. As we neared the car the lighting on the hills around us was amazing as the sun set across the valley over some rolling hills. It's a shame that I never feel like stopping to take it all in when I'm so near the car. We were wiped out and ready to hit the road. On the way back we made it just outside Ontario, Oregon, before pulling off on some farming road to sleep for the night. I don't know what was worse, listening to the semi trucks flying down I-84 all night or worrying about a herd of cows stepping on us. Sunday morning we finished the drive back to Portland.

I was pleasantly surprised by the views and location of Borah Peak. It had a lot more to offer then we had expected. Just make sure if you venture out there that you get some sleep.