Brief report:
On Saturday May 10, 2008, I flew to Boise, Idaho to meet with my friend Kevin Donaldson who lives in Boise. We've been planning for weeks to climb one of the most notable long, moderate snow and ice routes in the state of Idaho: the North Face Direct (5.7, 55 degrees AI2, II) of Borah Peak.
Kevin picked me up at the Boise airport shortly after 12 noon. We stopped at an Albertson's to get some food for the climb and we were on our way. I had been to Idaho before when I was in college (northern Idaho) but not to southwestern ID. Such beautiful countryside sceneray. It reminded me of Marlboro Country. The 3 1/2 half hour drive to the trailhead went fast as Kevin and I catched up talking about our lives. We got to Rock Creek trailhead (the trailhead for Borah's N Face) shortly after 4:30pm mountain time. We organized, packed our packs and did a one hour recon trip up Rock Creek Canyon to orient ourselves in the dark the next day. Came back, had something to eat and turned in early at 7:30pm. Alarm went off early at 2:30am Sunday. I had my hot chocolate with 2 croissants for breakfast while Kevin opted for a banana, an enery drink and don't remember what else. We were on our way at 3:20am. We hit snow in earnest at approx 8,500' and it sucked as it was sugar snow. Kevin took his snowshoes but in the interest of weight I ditched mine at the trailhead. I cursed and cursed and didn't help.....I just had to plow through this stuff....at times I was crawling on my knees and legs to provide a larger surface area so I wouldn't sink on the shitty sugar snow. We stopped for a snack break shortly after sunrise. By 9:30am we got to the base of the climb at ~ 11,000' and geared up. Kevin and I agreed we'd simulclimb, so just before 10am I led out placing pickets every 15 meters. Two hours later I was at the crux of the North Face Direct couloir. To the left supposed to be 5.7 rock/mixed (on shitty, unprotectable rock) and to the right 5.5 rock/mixed through a small cornice. I went right and burned yet another hour of daylight leading this pitch...took me awhile to fight my way through the cornice. I place two pickets just below it to protect the 10 foot 5.5 rock/snow move through the cornice. Once above this I was greeted with blasting 40+ mph winds. I set up a snow anchor with my two tools and belayed Kevin up all the while being blasted by winds and blowing snow. It took what seemed another hour for Kevin to come up. Kevin got past the crux and was equally greeted by the strong winds. I led out and traverse across the SW face on mix class 4. The wind was strong enough to rip out on my planted pickets......oh well, there goes the snow pro. I place another picket just under this short low 5th rock section and finally reached easy ground. It was 3:30pm when Kevin and I finally stood on Borah's summit.....frozen and wind-blasted. Now the descent. I envisioned the descent to be easy.... was I wrong!! The SW ridge (aka Chickenout ridge) is the usual regular route and in summer is a dry class 3/class 4 route. However, with snow on it, it's a different world. We had to carefully downclimb many times and in fact the knife edge Chickenout ridge section was corniced. Now what? I remembered attending one of Ed Viesturs slideshows at Adventure16 in LA where he straddled some snowy knife edge in the Himalayas. So, Kevin and I did exactly that....we straddled Chickenout ridge. After that we encountered one more technical difficulty (again careful downclimbing) and then reached easy class 1/2 terrain. We cut across X-country and finally got the car at 8:35pm........17 hrs 15 min on the go. Phew......what a day! What an Idaho adventure!
Here are my pics.
Additional info about climbing Borah Peak can be found here.
