Boise Foothills Snow

I couldn't find anyone wanting to ski the ridge road, so this time I went solo. I've done it lots of times before, which was a good thing because the road was hard to follow due to the very deep snow. In the picture on the right, do you see a road?

For reference, here is the same outing in a trip report from 2005.

The recent wind events left their evidence everywhere. The hillside is littered with big blocks broken from the cornices.

And agaain... has anyone seen the road?

For the most part, the early part of the ridge was lots of fun. The wind had packed the snow firmly, and the day was looking pretty nice. I made great time on violet wax for the first half of the trip, only taking two hours to get to Daggett Creek.

And about that road...

From there, it went downhill. The conditions, not the road. When I got into the trees, it simultaneously warmed up. There was boot-top snow with the consistency of mashed potatoes, but I had to put some blue wax on to reduce the icing. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to ski to the top of Hard Guy, where I had lunch and applied some more blue wax. The skis were icing less, but now I had no grip. I put on skins and headed for Eagleson Summit, hoping to finally find some snomo tracks. When after another hour of punishing work I finally got there- no tracks.

At Dave's trail, I finally found snomo tracks, but the warm temps had turned the snow sluggish, so it was a slow trip down 8th street. Bob called and offered to pick me up, which was good because they had plowed to the gate. I walked for bit, then there was Bob's car...a blessing, because I was pretty wiped out. Thanks, Bob!

Later that evening, Big Dan called. The road to Fairfield was still closed(!) so we opted for a foothills adventure. I used my mountain-bike knowledge to select a series of trails off of 8th street.

It was a great morning- sunny and warm. The early going was a little strange because the millions of lumpy footprints on the trail from the day before had frozen. But as we got higher, the snow quality improved and we finally donned our snowshoes.

Near our proposed turn-around (the Three Trees on Devil's Slide) we had to detour to avoid bothering a herd of about 70 elk.

Then we did a cross-country descent into upper Hull's Gulch, dropping about 1500'. It was quite steep, but very direct.

The only real obstacle was crossing the creek at the bottom. Usually I am not this lucky, but when Dan fell in I already had the camera out.

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