I'm back, had a great time. Nothing really went as planned, but that's just fine, because it wound up being a heck of a trip anyway. I managed to get everything packed and loaded in time, which was a fiasco, but worked out well. I did forget my bushcraft knife
but with a Svord Peasant and a tomahawk I was really quite comfortable.
Left Boise around 4PM for Sun Valley, a tourist town with an exceptional ski hill, known for its population of famous people. Tom Hanks, Arnold, Bruce Willis, Sinatra and a long list of other actors and singers have/had vacation homes there. Along the way, we drove through an expansive high desert prarie called Camas Prairie, a parcel of land commonly fought after by Native Americans because of its diverse wildlife population, mild winter climate and easy passage around many gnarly mountain ranges.
We pulled into Sun Valley around 7PM, and the sun had gone down so I really had no clue what kind of terrain I was going to wake up to. I really haven't spent any time in this part of the state, the closest I've been being the Sawtooths Range and Frank Church Wilderness. We hit Elkhorn hot springs on the way to the trailhead and marinated for a few hours with some incredibly rich kids, who were a little obnoxious but couldn't ruin the awesome evening thus far. The springs were a shallow pool built up immediately alongside the Salmon River. Boiling water comes up through the sandy bottom and cold river water mixes in between cracks in the rocks to make for a 100 degree bath. The weird part was that the river ran maybe a foot and a half higher than the level of the pool. It was a pain in the butt to get dry in the freezing weather...
By the time we got to the trailhead it was midnight and both of us were too relaxed to make a midnight climb to basecamp happen. I tried to get a quick fire starting, but the trailhead was in an aspen grove and the words 'quick', 'aspen', 'winter' and 'fire' don't go together. Aspen's a heck of a fuel source because it burns hot and long, but when using it to build a fire, every other condition has to be perfect. Fuel was very limited because I couldn't bring myself to kill/hurt a live aspen tree, didn't want to burn up my PJCB's before we got up to the rough stuff, and all the deadfall was covered in 6 inches of snow. After 15 minutes of screwing around, I decided to bail on the fire and get some sleep before the big climb. Ate some summer sausage, a snickers bar and nursed a SpaceSaver full of rum and Seven Up until I crashed. Sleeping temperature was at exactly 0 degrees, with a slight breeze. I used my new Kelty Mistral -20, packed down some snow, stuffed a 5 degree liner inside, stuffed the bag in my Sierra Design bivvy and slept in that. It was very comfortable except for my feet-either I was squishing the insulation at the bottom or they were slightly sweaty when I got in the bag. My hands were warm in some Czech surplus wool gloves, so I managed to bury the first half of my feet in the mitts without getting out of the sleeping bag. After that I slept like a baby.
We were on the trail the next morning by 5. We both brought backcountry skis in case we needed them, but the snow was so spotty and horrible for skiing that we decided to just hike up with a sled. The sled was a real piece of work. It was designed and built by a fellow Anthro student who is doing research in Siberia. He stitched up the cordura nylon duffel cover with organization liners, external straps running laterally all the way around the bag, and a harness built with quickdraws and aluminum poles. I'm sure the experience is coming in handy, as he's spending the winter on the Tamyr Paninsula hunting caribou with the locals out on the tundra. For boots, I inherited my Grandpa's pair of USA-made Cabela's 10 inchers. Complete leather upper with quilted thinsulate liner, Goretex and stitched soles. They were perfect for the trip. I took the trusty Eberle Operator, mostly because the frame does a good job of keeping my fusing spine straight while under stress.
The hike up was maybe 7 miles. It started almost flat at the bottom of Long Gulch, which is, well, a long gulch. As we started up the saddle the trail turned into moderate-angled switchbacks all the way to the top. Made life easy with the sled. The snow was crusty on top and powdery underneath, which became a pain in the butt rucking through after a while, but was still easier than trying to plow up on snowshoes or backcountry skis. On the way up we saw hundreds of spruce grouse-with the snow this light they're still very active. We also saw brand spanking new wolverine tracks that meandered down the mountainside, and discovered an elk bedding area with dozens of urine spots, big clear tracks and the telltale musky, sweaty scent.
As we crested the ridge, the trail sloped along one side, and happened to be burried in about a 4 foot deep snowdrift. I suggested we take the ridgeline, which had been blown clear of snow, exposing loose sharp shale with intermittent pine scratch, and carry the sled. He disagreed and thought taking the trail through the deep snow would be easier, so I ran a 550 cord leash to the back of the sled so it wouldn't slide down the sloping drift. The going was freaking rough. I'd make it two or three steps on top of the crusty snow before one bootfall would punch through the top layer, and I'd sink in up to my waist. It was like this for maybe a thousand yards. One of these times, my knee found a piece of the shale, which was pointed upward at an angle, and it burried itself under my kneecap. Out of necessity we continued til the drift cleared and then I inspected my knee. I had a decent abrasion and some nice black and blue color developing around a swollen kneecap. After another 5 minutes on the cleared trail, I knew there was no way the knee would let me go any farther. We stashed the packs and the sled and scouted for a camp spot that was flat, wasn't exposed and had easy access to firewood. In these mountains that combination doesn't exist, so we settled for 'flat' and 'firewood', but were exposed on the top of a knob. The sky was clear, and at 10 in the morning and 9300 feet, the temperature was above freezing, so we figured we were in OK shape.
The initial plan was to make base camp and try for the tallest summit in the Pioneers Range-it would have been another 14 miles round trip. The peak is at 11,250 feet, and even after resting and icing the knee I knew there was no way I'd be able to make it up and back down with the 7 hours of daylight left. We wound up spending the rest of the day setting up camp, eating a huge pile of food, talking Anthro stuff and watching for elk along the treelines. It was very relaxed and very comfortable. The sun was a scorcher, so most of the day was spent basking in teeshirts.
Camp construction was pretty easy. I used an avy shovel to dig down to dirt in a 10x10 square. The snow was maybe 2 feet deep so it wasn't a huge task. I made myself a lincoln log bushcraft bed on one side of the clearing and a longfire on the other. About 100 feet away stood a dead Doug Fir that had been struck by lightning, and there was an endless supply of dry branches and large chunks of bark, all covered in yellow resin. Firestarting was a cinch. First I built a platform off of the cold frozen ground. To do this I took some 2 inch curved branches and buried one end into the snowbank, and then placed a large sheet of bark on top as my tinder platform. I used my Svord Peasant to make some shavings, and used the resin-covered bark to transfer the flame to the cold, dry Fir. The bark smoldered a bit at first but within 5 minutes we had a good fire going. By the time the platform burned through, the ground was warm, dry, and clear of any residual snow.
Even though we didn't bag the 11,250 foot summit, the view from the campsite made it all worthwhile. Looking down Long Gulch, there was a killer view of the entire Boulder Mountains range. As the sun set, the sky was very clear, and even though the moon was bright, the lack of light pollution made for a great show. I stayed up late drinking by the fire. I brought a little mini-bar with me- a couple 375's of Bacardi 151 and Canadian Mist, a few PBR's, and some bottles of 7UP and Coke. Not a bad way to celebrate a 23rd birthday, I have to say. Sleep came easy, as by the time 1AM rolled around, the temperature was STILL above freezing! At 9000+ feet! The wind had picked up though, so I used the whole liner-bag-bivvy setup. Sleeping was comfy on the bushcraft bed, which was piled with maybe 8 inches of pine needles. My hiking buddy had a large silnylon tarp set up as a teepee around the base of a tree. (Apparently there's an outdoor materials company here in Boise that sells silnylon by the sheet! 6 bucks per 6-foot linear yard.) He didn't have to clear any snow because of the branch cover, but he was sure grateful I went through the effort to set the fire up.
I was up at first light, and awoke to a mondo glowing pile of coals. I threw some of the thinner charred ends onto the pile and 5 minutes later had a breakfast fire going. I used my bushcraft bed as fuel to make a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and topped it with brown sugar, cinnamon and warm canned peaches. We decided to hike down early and spend the day flyfishing on the Lost River, so we dug up all the coals, smothered them in snow, stirred them up for 15 minutes, and spent another 10 breaking down camp. The snow had changed overnight, and the way down was a much bigger pain in the ass with the sled-the only way it wanted to go was straight down the hill, and running 7 miles of lateral switchbacks with a slipping sled became too much. We wound up using the sled as well, a sled... and descended maybe 2500 feet on top of the thing, steering with our feet and braking with the shovel. Used the beard of the tomahawk to self-arrest in a pinch, and it did a great job. When all was said and done we made the trailhead by 9:30.
We spent an hour or two downtown Sun Valley, and hit up the local thrift store, where all the well-to-do people dump their one-season-used gear. I picked up an Obermyer goretex jacket, a pair of Volkl Polar Bears with Marker AT bindings, a brand spanking new Fischer ski bag, a Polartec helmet, a St James Bay wool fisherman's sweater and three pair of Smith goggles for less than a hundred bucks. Happy birthday to me...
Fishing on the Lost River had to be my favorite part of the trip. The river is pretty small this time of year, but offered a wide variety of trout habitat in a very small space. There were gravel beds, plant-laden overhangs, deep pools behind boulders, slow-turning eddies and deep current channels. My buddy had been fly fishing on that river for 14 years and he taught me alot when it came to casting technique, winter flies and presentation. I went from 3/10 successful casts after a few months of being self taught, to maybe placing 8/10 exactly where I wanted them, with soft landings and always fly-first. I guess Saturday will be the day that goes down in my history as the day I really picked up flyfishing. The Cabelas insulated goretex boots made hopping rocks and wading a real cinch. We fished until 3PM and my feet were still warm and dry after standing in that river for three hours.
Even though we didn't do any sling hunting or major summiting, the trip was all in all a great success. Sometimes it's good to just relax and soak it all in. My camera broke on the ridge on the hike in, so I've got some taken with a Lumix FH20 and some taken with a 2mp cellphone...
All my tools are hair-popping sharp and I'm bringing the Lansky Puck in case I get into some nasty frozen resinous wood. Current conditions are 0 deg. F, 0mph wind, and clear. Supposed to be clear for the next three days and get down to -21 windchill at night. Pretty mild for a high mountain trip in mid January, should be very pleasant.
