Guffey Butte

Recently my friend Matt had hiked up Guffey Butte and taken some cool pictures, which inspired me to visit out here. I had been to Celebration park quite a few times, mostly back in the 80s, and always on my mountain bike riding down from Swan Falls. So this was the first time I had hiked here. Or driven here.

We followed Matt's direction to get here in about 42 miles from my house. Note that on the way home we went an entirely different, "scenic" way that ended up being the same mileage.

You start out hiking across the bridge, then follow one of the many trails through the scrub.

In the picture above, you can see a tiny spire on the right-hand skyline. Here it is up close, with Tom about half-way up on the left. Note that this 'rock' is more like compacted dirt and should be considered to be quite dangerous.

Tom was interested in this thing because he had actually climbed it many, many years ago. Here he is looking for any sign of the old bolt ladder they climbed, sans-hangers. He said it was the scariest rappel he ever did because he was convinced the bolts were going to pull.

Here's a different perspective with Tom on the ground on the right.

And this shows the downhill side of the thing.

We had had enough of the turkey neck, and set our sites on Guffey Butte proper. For the first section, there was a good trail climbing the ridge that rises center to right.

Then the trail mysteriously disappeared. It's easy terrain to walk, but we disliked the fact that being off trail exposed us to the stickery weeds that seem to invade our socks.

We weren't sure where the high point was, so we decided to simply traverse the whole thing starting from the right, moving left.

As we moved from the right toward higher ground in the middle, we spotted this immense cairn. As Tom guessed, some Boy Scouts had probably been quite busy.

From this vantage point, there is an amazingly good view.

There is also a lot, I mean a lot, of wind. At least this day.

We swung off the left (east) end of the butte and followed a trail through a ravine that looped us back to our original trail. Very scenic walking through the rim rock, etc. In the bigger version of the pic, you can again see the bridge. "Where's that confounded bridge?" (Led Zeppelin).

We decided that we're going to come back on a hot day so Tom can chase the rattlers.

I mentioned earlier that we took the scenic route home. Part of the return route was visiting Kuna Cave. Apparently I missed a rite of passage for Treasure Valley youth because I had never been here.

But we spotted a teeny sign on the road and Tom insisted we visit. It's a big lava tube that runs across the desert. Looking down, it was unfortunately full of trash and smelled like a campfire. Pardon me, but people are pigs. So we didn't bother investigating further. But we did get a nice jolt when, as we leaned over the hole, a couple of pigeons exploded out from under the lip. Yow- made you jump!