Idaho Adventure: Part One

July-August 2021

This idea of a trip was kind of spur of the moment planning. I had thought about possibly doing one for before the year was over back in mid-July, just wasn’t sure if I was going to pull the trigger on it yet. I was doing some light training in preparation in case I was going to go thru with it. Late July, I was looking around at some state high points to determine what one I wanted/could do yet. The longest highpoint I know of is in WY at 50-mile roundtrip. I figured that one may be a little too much for how little training time I have allowed myself, so the search continued. I had remembered a conversation I had with my wife after our last trip earlier in the year, “you should probably be doing some these harder climbs soon rather than later, we can save these ‘drive-up’ high point when we are a lot older.” Since the last trip had 5 highpoints that were 25 feet to 1/4 mile away from the car. So, with that in mind I got out my highpoint list and started looking at which points could be possible. I knew at this point I shouldn’t do a long and strenuous hiking trip, 1) didn’t have enough time to train and 2) I still had some adjustments I wanted to figure out yet with my backpack and what I should be packing in it. So looking down the list of the “shortest” distance/higher difficulty was…. Idaho’s Borah Peak. Peaking at 12,662’ with 5500’ of elevation gain, all wrapped up in 6.8 mile round trip. (depending on what sites you look at*)

INITIAL ASSESSMENT . This process has always been a struggle and takes MANY days to work through. First is to figure out when to go, I typical go to the Summit Post website to see when the best/safest time to climb is. Looking into this I got lucky, the most popular time to climb is late summer. Based off of previous climbs, I believe this is because most, if not all, of the snow has melted off from the peak. OK, so its late summer already and I want to do it before Labor Day and due to scheduling and training time I have decided to do it the weekend before Labor Day, this is also nice since I can still have a day off and be with family the next week. So, the day is set and I can figure out a training schedule. 

TRAINING. For myself I like to do running to get mileage under my feet and some strength in my legs. So, for the next 4-ish weeks I have to train, I look at the weeks and figure out what days and distances I want for running and fill in the some of the other days some variation of HIIT and strength workouts. The goal is to be able run 14 miles before the trip, granted by running I mean a run-walk approach to be able to complete these longer distances. And to find a good youtube series to do my workouts to, this helped take some of the thinking about what to do next for workouts. Training has now been scheduled and put in the calendar.

ROUTE WORK. Now pen to paper to figure out how to get from destination X to Y. With first glance this is a 21+ hour drive from where I am in Wisconsin to the Borah Peak Trail head. I like to keep these as budget friendly and a quick in and out. So, the day I want to hike, I want to be there the day before at a reasonable time, to be able to have dinner and prep for the Peak day. It is just that easy, work your way back from there. NOT. Ok, I do it that way but I end up looking for convenient and “safe” looking rest stops to sleep at and figure in gas/stretching stops along the way. Ideally these would be around 3-hour increments to keep the drive broken up along the way. And to fill up the coffee too. Home to peak has been tentatively planned, how long will the hike take? After reading a couple of sites this hike could possibly take 9-12 hours. This is going to be an all-day event. Where will this day end? I decided to find a hotel about an hour away to be able to clean up and sleep in a real bed. Now for the drive home I kept the same route, but with a few different stops since the start was a little different and it’s a “race” to get done for a full recovery.

ROUTE ANALYSIS. Putting all this info in word and it looks like there will be 2 days of driving there 1 day of hiking and 2 days of driving home. Talking this over with my wife she had mentioned, “You should do something else since you are all the way out there and just hiking one day.” So, I thought, you are right I should find another hike and do a camp too. “That’s not what I meant.” She said. But after a couple days of thinking about it, it seemed like a good idea to do a short hike in, camp, and hike out, just to become more acclimated to the elevation. Since the elevation I live at is 925’~. It is a hard task to find a short, cool, backpack camping trail that is on the route. That is a lot of specific items to find in a hike, but after a couple of days searching, I landed on Sawtooth Lake. Which was only about an extra hour out of the way from the original route, not too bad of a find. Websites say it’s about a 10 mile round trip, so 5 in and 5 out. Just need to work it into the existing route, which wasn’t too hard but it did change the start/return dates and resting locations.

FOOD PLANNING So food planning for this trip was a little tricky. There are like 3-4 different categories to plan with. 1) The initial drive away from home. For this trip, to get to the first camping destination at a reasonable time, I am having to leave right after work to get 5 hours down the road. I am having to plan what I would like to have for lunch that day and what to have either at home or on the road. I am opting to eat on the road, which give me more time to pack “Wanda.” (Yes, we did decide to name our vehicle. Its way more fun that way rather than just saying a vehicle model.) This dinner is a couple of sandwiches and road snacks. 2) What to eat while on the road. The next day and half I will be driving 16+ hours and I will be starting and stopping a day at rest stops along the way and ending at the Iron Creek Trailhead. That’s a lot of sitting…and with all the sitting I do not want to have big greasy or hearty meals. So, I am leaning towards lighter and smaller meals. i.e. Overnight oats for breakfast, this one is easy since I can make it before I go sleep and make a quick exit to get on the road again. For a lunch will probably order some kind of sub sandwich at one of my gas stops. And finish the night with a salad kit. This worked out really well on our last trip, because everything you need is in the bag. No need to bring all separate ingredients and just need to bring a paper plate and fork. No mess, no hassle and just throw everything away once your done. 3) Backpacking food. Not camping food, there is a difference. I am limited on cargo space in Wanda and space in my backpack. All of these items do not require any cooling and are very small to pack. This trip is a little easier that previous ones, only because there are actually only 2 meals that will be away from the car. But I kept the concept the same just to make things easier. My next 5 meals will all be on my camp stove. Some meals are harder to clean than others. (anything with noodles is hard to clean.) That said, I do like my tuna mac but this time I will make that at the car instead of on the mountain, along with any other labor some cleaning meals. Otherwise, I am going to try to keep the mountain meals to just heating up water and putting in a Ziploc bag with the food. I haven’t tried this yet but we’ll give it a try and see how it works. 4) Summit Day. Well actually the night before, I planned to have some form of carb meal. Ok now Summit Day. Research says this could be a 9-12 hour hike. So I have to get up and go, guess what I had….if your guess was overnight oats than your right. But this time I put some protein powder in. May need a little extra oomph. There won’t really be a lunch of sorts, but I will be bringing along jerky, trail mix, protein bars and some peanut butter pouches. Oh, and can’t forget about the “Summit Wine.” 5) In town meals. I’ll probably stop at some familiar restaurant for dinner and a grocery store to pick up some of the next days travel food. 6) The drive back HOME. This is going to be very similar to the “initial drive from home” however some of the stops are different and there weren’t any convenient places to stop, so the night before I should pick up a sub sandwich for lunch and another salad kit for a dinner. And on the last day/stretch home will be any of the left over snacks. If there is any left, ha good one, whenever I go a road trip there has always been an abundance of snacks that would have worked for a trip twice as long. Alright, so I ended up numbering these 1-6, but do 5 and 6 count? Oh well.

CONT. ROUTE PLANNING. Our last trip we ran into a problem with backpacker parking. I won’t go into it too much, but let’s just say more planning and further understanding was needed. This time around further planning was taken and followed through on. There is a parking lot at the Iron Creek Trailhead and there is also an Iron Creek Campground, with first come first serve and camping fees. Well, I am not ‘really’ camping at the campground so I called a nice lady at the Sawtooth NRA office in Stanley to help me understand the correct way to operate this area. To my surprise the ‘Iron Creek Trailhead’ parking lot is separate from the ‘Iron Creek Campground’ and yes, the parking lot is first come first serve but there are no fees to park or to backpack hike in. At the end of our conversation, she let me know, and everyone she talks to, “No Fires, be Bear prepared, and pack out what you pack in.” The second parking location is at Borah Peak Trailhead, this is in a different district which required another phone call. I called another nice lady at the Lost River Ranger District. She informed me that there are 5 sites there with a fee, but they fill up quickly. However, since I am just staying in my car there, there would be no fee, but parking would still be first come, first serve. She did also let me know that if I were to stop by the ranger office, there is a little kiosk with pamphlets that give other camping locations along the way to the trailhead.

PACKING AND STAGING. This is a tricky timing situation. On one hand you want to start early enough ahead of time to make sure you have everything you need for camping and any grocery items that you need to get. However, on the other hand you don’t want to start to early because you will probably take up a couple of rooms to lay things out. Oops, I have had things laid out for maybe a week or more. For any PACKING there is STAGING, but for staging you need a check list. Throughout this process I have gone over this list many many times, for gathering items, making actual checkmarks, redlining things in and out. Using it to pack all the things in the backpack, just to make sure everything fit and if I need to remove anything. This is one of the tricky timings, do it to early I ended up taking most of the things out since some of the items shouldn’t be compressed for so long of time, initial weigh in was at 42#s. Using a checklist to plan out your meals and lay them out into there days. I like doing it this way because once its finalized I can sort out the items into 3 different areas. 1) a box for the items on the way to Idaho 2) packing the food bag for the backpacking portion. 3) another box for the items on the way back home. Day of, or night before, printing a new/refreshed check list for meal plans, backpack and car packing lists, and an itinerary for the entire trip. OK this is it, the final PACK, one of the more stressful days in this whole process. Not much is more frustrating than forgetting something that was on the checklist, I looked at that list and made more checks than I did all the times before. (Note: I did forget something on a previous trip, it wasn’t on the list but come on. I FORGOT MY HIKING BOOTS!! You know, probably one of the most important things for hiking. Anyways it’s on the list now) But the main three I would always have are: Phone, Keys, Wallet. Other than those three you can always make do with what you have or make a pitstop along the way and buy something to replace what was forgotten. (I got lucky with my boots, another store had the same exact size and style)