- May 31, 2008
- Team: Bob and Tom
- Summit: 11,306'
- 7.5 miles round trip, 4100' total gain, 5:45 hours car-to-car
Note: click images to see a larger version in a new window
After reading the local weather predicting a chance of thunderstorms, I decided to check the weather further south. Mostly sunny in Wells. Tom chose Hole in the Mountain Peak, and Bob quickly found some sort of excuse to skip family stuff. We were off at 5:15am the next morning, following the directions in the Trip Report from Idaho Summits. Dan's directions were perfect, and we were walking at 9:45 (a rather leisurely start for a snow climb). |
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| We didn't drive up the road as far as had Big Dan, but it was a beautiful day and it felt good to stretch our legs. Here we are gaining Lizzie's Basin. There is a faint red line that shows our route. |  |
| If you look at the skyline in the center of the picture, you will notice a sharp point. Under that point, there is a hole called Lizzie's Window. The window is the hole of Hole in the Mountain. |  |
It was quite warm--around 65--and we were very concerned about the snow. On the first patch, Bob went out and jumped up and down on it. Pretty firm! We hiked across Lizzie's Basin and found a dry spot to have a snack while we put on our crampons. Then it was up into the gully, with slightly soft snow. But not bad, so we made great time. |
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| As we got near the top of the gully, the wind picked up. We had been dressed very lightly (me in just shorts and a t-shirt), so it was time to batten the hatches before we gained the ridge. Here Bob approaches our dressing spot. |  |
| Tom could not resist tackling the headwall at the top of the gully. I thought it seemed a bit slurpy for such steep shenanigans, so found a slightly less steep exit. |  |
Once on the ridge, we removed our crampons and boulder-hopped for a while. Then the ridge got quite narrow and offered up a bit of exposure. Here's a shot of the summit from about 200 feet below. Notice the cliffs in the foreground, which we were crawling up and around. Just after this section, there was a steep snow traverse across a gully just under the rocks. Tom managed to get the gully to slide, wall to wall. We determined to be careful. |
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Right after that, we attained the summit plateau, which is a big flattish area. 1:30, time for lunch. It was quite warm, and almost no wind. |
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After a relaxing lunch and lots of rubbernecking, it was time to carefully reverse the narrow ridge back to the upper snowfield. Here I am skootching around a rock that blocked the traverse. In the background, you can see the gully that slid. Ya don't wanna go there! |
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Here Tom works on his balance, with a dropoff on either side. Did I mention that snow can make rocks seem slick? The little red arrow shows our gully. There is an upper snowfield hidden behind the rocks that are between the arrow and Tom. |
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From the top of the upper snowfield, we slid on our butts into Lizzie's Basin, about a 2500' elevation change in about 10 minutes. My, but my butt was cold. The last bit- the walk down the awful road- took longer than we expected. But it was uneventful and we had a fun drive north, dodging thunderstorms as we headed west from Twin Falls. |
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