Trip Report
Zach and I started making plans for a hike late Friday afternoon. This is late even for us. Zach was hinting at some big peaks, but I had social plans and knew I would be out until late and that a big drive and big climb the next day probably wasn't the smartest choice. So we went with Jumbo Mountain near Featherville. Not that it is a slouch of a climb, as we gained 3200' to get to the summit. But close to Boise and nothing crazy as far as distance or elevation go.
The drive to the trailhead was very scenic. We saw lots of green landscape, blue rivers and reservoirs, and lots of deer and elk. We hopped out of the car just over 2 hours after having left Boise. The sky was blue, the forest nice and cool, with a gentle breeze. Damn near perfect!
We headed up an ATV track along Jumbo Creek. The ATV trail turned into a hiking trail after about 1 mile. In places, this trail was steep!
Our plan was to reach the fork in the trail at 6000' and follow the left branch that circled a ridge northwest of Jumbo Peak and then wrapped around to ascend Jumbo via the north ridge. We knew the right fork was grown over. Since I hadn't looked at the map, I was fine with this plan. However, when I looked at the terrain and map on our first break, I lobbied Zach to reconsider our plan and just hit the west ridge. The other route seemed long and gained and lost quite a bit of elevation. Zach agreed. So we followed the overgrown right fork trail up Jumbo Creek about another 1/4 of a mile. It got a bit ugly as we fought a steep hillside and brush, but eventually we hit the west ridge. Had we left the trail a bit earlier in the hike, we could have avoided this. Once we were up the ridge a couple of hundred feet, the grade eased and we made great time. Views had been nice all day, but when we crested the ridge at around 7400', we were treated to splendid views of deep, green, forested valleys and high, snow-capped peaks. The Trinity Mountains and Soldier Mountains were incredible from this vantage. Especially Iron Mountain, which when snow covered, looks like it belongs in a higher and more rugged mountain range.
From 7400' we finished our stroll to the top. We touched the top after 3 hours of hiking. The summit is spectacular. It is dome shaped and has tremendous views to the south, east, and west. Only the view north is blocked, but you can still see Two Point, Gunsight, Ross, and Newman peaks in that general direction.The view of the south fork Boise River valley and the north side of the Soldier Mountains are memorable. We found a cairn and a register.
We took the southwest ridge down and made it to the car after 4 hours and 50 minutes of fun hiking.
There are a few very small burn areas on this hike from a late season fire in 2008 that was allowed to burn. Other than a few small areas, the fire didn't even get into the tree crowns and simply cleared out brush and low hanging limbs. There are some massive fir trees along the west ridge.
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