I hadn't hiked with John and Dylan for a while. I knew that John was trying to get out more, so when the weather looked decent for Sunday, I asked him if they were interested in going. Not only were John and Dylan, but so was John's wife Tamara.

I had been watching the Willow Creek area for a while and I was pretty sure we could get far enough up the road to access Liberal Mountain via it's east ridge. Liberal Mountain sits a bit back of the Soldier Mountain front that you see when driving between Fairfield and the ID-75/US-20 junction. Before the climb, I wasn't sure where the peak was. After the climb, we were able to spot the peak from the highway.

I had social plans the night before, so I convinced John on a late start. We left Boise at 8am. Turns out this was a good move, as John also had done some entertaining the night before.

The day was beautiful... little haze and sunny! We had good conversation on the drive over and then enjoyed the scenery as we drove up Willow Creek. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to convince John and Dylan not to change plans and go for Buttercup Mountain... that peak is very cool looking from Willow Creek. Eventually we reached our trailhead for our Liberal Mountain climb. John wanted to drive up the road a bit and see if we could get closer. So up we went. The road was crappy, but it was going up and toward where we needed to be. After 1 mile of driving, we hit a patch of snow. We decided this was good enough anyway. John's driving saved us a lot of walking and 600 feet of elevation gain.

We loaded packs and were on our feet. We followed the road for a bit, but then hit the ridge. It was initially brushy and filled with deadfall. It wasn't a lot of fun, but we knew we'd be in snow soon enough. Eventually we reached the snow and it was supporting our weight. Other than some ice on a north facing slope, the snow was smooth sailing. We had a "spicy" section at one point where we traversed across the south aspect of a spur on a ridge. Then just after that we reached another point on the ridge which required some class 2/3 scrambling to get up and around. This brought us to the plateau below the summit.

Now seeing the summit, we were excited that it was rocky and would be a fun finish for this hike. When we reached the base, it was indeed a quick, but fun scramble to the top of the rocky summit.

We enjoyed our time on time, snapping pictures and re-fueling. A sudden wind direction change sent us down.

The way down was great. We avoided the ice and other challenging sections from the way up. The snow held up and we only punched through in a few short sections. It turned out to be a great day in the mountains!

From US 20 east of Fairfield, turn north onto Princess Mine Rd. This turn is about 10 miles east of Fairfield. Follow this road north, turning right onto Baseline Road, then left onto Willow Creek Road. We followed Willow Creek Road for about 10 miles to the point where Wine Creek comes in from the west. We took the unimproved road shown leaving Willow Creek road just north of that point. We followed it to approximately 6200'.

We generally just start hiking in a westerly direction. The ridge gets more defined as you go up. You won't see the peak until you reach the 8000' mark on this route.