It’s interesting to see the different opinions over the snow conditions in the Lost River Range. I guess it’s a matter of where you are.
Last year, I took a group of friends up White Cap Peak. This year, the same group, plus a few new comers, wanted me to take them up again. Greg, Shayne, brothers Max and Keith from Salt Lake City, and Tom and myself made up this year’s group. The date was set, May 10th, and six of us piled in to my Suburban Friday evening for the trip. As I was passing the INL site, my wife called me from Pocatello to tell me it was raining, almost snowing, there(code speak for “YOU’RE NUTS”). Indeed, while we were driving through the Arco desert it was snowing on us. But, the weather forecast was favorable and I felt confident we would have good conditions.
We drove up the Sawmill Gulch road as far as we could, busting some drifts before finally coming to one that definitely spelled the end of the road for us. We repositioned the Suburban, set up our tent and campfire, and proceeded to tell lies around the fire. Around 10:00, just before we turned in, we were amazed to see headlights approaching our camp. It was Michael from Boise, and I believe he was as surprised to see us as we were him. We made plans for a joint venture, leaving at 6:30 in the a.m..
Saturday morning dawned crisp and clear. Having done this climb now a few times, I knew right where to go to get on the snow chute. The snow chute the IdahoSummits gang got on to a few years ago to go up actually reaches clear down to the sawmill gulch road, and that vein allows on-snow climbing almost the entire way. Our snow was like Styrofoam all the way up to the false summit. Absolutely perfect crampon snow. In fact, the conditions were designer perfect all the way to the top.
The snow bowl we used to descend was a blast. We dropped on our butts and knocked out 2000 feet in mere seconds. This is a fun, fun mountain to climb.
There is definitely an abundance of snow in the LRR. Last year, we did this gig in April, and nearly had no snow. This year, there was snow everywhere.
Michael, it was good to have you along. Hopefully I can sneak up to the LRR and bump in to a few more of you over the next few weeks.
Summit Dawg
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