Hailey Trip - June 2008

Lucky Peak Release

Nothing special here, just some photos below Lucky Peak Dam while they were releasing a lot of water.

Photos

Camas Lilies

Pretty cool day at the Centennial Marsh near Hill City, Idaho. This was around 7am on my way to work in Hailey.

Photos

Della Mountain 6772'

The new company I work for is headquarted in Hailey. From time-to-time it is required to travel up there. On this particular trip, I decided to stay overnight and hike up a few peaks.

On Thursday evening I headed out to Della Mountain. Della sits just west of Hailey and has a very steep face when viewed from town. A road goes to the top and I set off in hopes to follow that road to the summit. Last year you could drive from the east side of the peak (starting in Hailey), over the Wood River on a bridge, and all the way to the summit. However, this winter, that road washed out when an avalance off of Della Mountain damned the river and caused a new channel to be created and thus washed away the road. I thought that made for better hiking anyway, since it limited cars to coming in from the west only (I didn't see any).

About 1/2 a mile into the hike I caught up with Gary from work and his 2 dogs. This meeting was not planned, but we decided to hike to the top together. This would turn out to be a good partnership, as Gary joined me the next 2 days on my hikes as well.

The summit view was impressive. Hailey feels like it is below your toes as they dangle over the steep east face of Della. The hills were green and flower-covered in all directions. The higher peaks were still covered deep in snow.

Time: 2 hours
Distance: 4 miles
Elevation gain: 1500'
Class (difficulty): 1

Photos


Looking straight down at Hailey from the summit.	Looking north up the Big Wood River Valley.


Looking southeast from the summit.	Looking east from the summit.

Peak 7174'

On Friday evening, Gary and I ventured out to climb the high point in the mountainous are south of Croy Creek Road. This peak is unnamed Peak 7174. It might seem lame, but it does have 1500+ of prominence. We only had to drive about 5 minutes from Hailey for this one, as we headed west on Croy Creek Road and turned left onto Croesus Road. We followed Croesus into the drainage until we reached a private residence and a sign basically stating no trespassing beyond that point. So we parked and headed southwesterly up out of the canyon. This got us on a high ridge with several points sporting windsocks and even prayer flags. We could also tell this ridge was attainable by vehicle, as there was a car parked at a saddle about 1/4 of a mile from us. We hiked to the car and found out that area was huge with the hang-gliders and other flying enthusiasts.

We continued on the ridge until we reached the highpoint, which sits essentially at the head of Croesus Creek. After some photos, we hiked out of the ridge on the east side of Croesus Creek, making for a nice loop hike.

Time: 2.5 hours
Distance: 4.2 miles
Elevation gain: 1600'
Class (difficulty): 2

Photos


Looking at the ridge we gained. The high point is the far left bump.	Prayer flags and the Boulder Mountains.


The Pioneer Range.	Flower display on a Hailey hillside.

Peak 10292' Attempt

On Saturday, we headed up the East Fork Road, past Federal Gulch Campground and nearly to the base of Jaqueline Peak. Here we were intent on climbing up Peak 10292. We headed north up steep slopes and gained the ridge coming out of Paymaster Gulch at around 9000'. Here we could see the peak and a good route through some basins and easy slopes to get us to a saddle at around 9700'. During our hike over, we eventually got on snow around 9200', but it was very supportive of our weight and we cruised to the saddle.

At the saddle, we re-grouped and starting looking at the route. There was a nice snow gully going to the summit, but the area below the gully was very steep. We had no crampons with us and feared that if we slipped in the gully, the terrain below it was fairly dangerous. We then eyed the rock that was exposed directly on the ridge. This looked like a go, but closer inspection revealed a rock wall at the base of the ridge, blocking access to the higher portion. Neither of us wanted to push our luck that day and we had already had a good hike and earned great views of Big Basin, along with Cobb Peak and Old Hyndman. So we just snapped some photos and headed down. Even though the terrain through the basins was low-angle, I was still able to pull off one seated glissade of a couple hundred feet.

And just to show us that winter hadn't yet given up, it snowed on us lightly a few times on the way out. C'mon summer!

Time: 3 hours
Distance: 4 miles
Elevation gain: 2200'
Class (difficulty): 2

Photos


Jaqueline Peak.	Peak 10292 from around 9000'.


Peak 10805 near PK Pass.	Grays Peak to our south.


Cobb and Old Hyndman.	Looking toward the Smokies and Boulders.


Another flowery hillside as seen on the drive home.