Saturday, we hit the road to Boise so I could get my H1N1 flu vaccine. Boise Health Department had things very organized so although I had to wait in line a bit, it was a rapidly moving line and most importantly, I got it! Then Soph and I headed downtown to check out the scene down there. We shopped a few places downtown. Boise happens to be one of the few cities to host a Title 9 store so that was exciting to see that, although just about everything is much out of my price range. Then we hit up a massive mall that had every store you can imagine. So needless to say, we shopped til we dropped.
Sunday, we decided to head to the mountains for a long workout. We headed up towards Pioneer Cabin, a ski cabin up in the Pioneer Mountains. There was quite a bit of snow at the cabin and it was relatively new snow so we were post-holing all over the place. We intended to make a loop out of this workout and possibly summit a peak in the middle. Snow was covering the trail though so we couldn't see where it went.......looking around, we spotted a peak that seemed like it could be the one we intended on summiting so we just headed straight up it. This part wasn't too bad as we were on the south side so we could climb along the ridge without snow impairing our way. Upon summiting however, we could not see the trail at all and the north slope had a couple of feet of snow on it. Sophie had done this hike a few years back and we thought we could see a trail on what we thought was the ridge we were suppose to head back to the car on so we just went for it. Not the best idea or smartest..... We post-holed, somewhat dangerously down a rocky north face for a couple 1000 feet. I kept falling on my knee which was not ideal and our feet were frozen, not to mention that we had no idea if we'd actually be able to make it the whole way down and find a trail. We made it down to the tree line and that snow was a little easier to go down on, however our feet were so numbed, I don't think it mattered. Then the snow turned to a sheet of ice down a steep slope, straight into a creek. We just slid down on our butts and fortunately didn't fall in the creek. Then we had to climb up the other side just to see where we were and figure out our next move. We saw the ridge we thought we wanted to be on, but not the trail we had spotted from way up high so we decided to just traverse along the side of the ridge until we could get up on top of it. We were following some animal paths and suddenly below us appeared to be a more developed path so we scrambled down and sure enough found the trail. There were moments coming down the the snow that I was not sure we would easily make it out, if at all so I was quite pleased to come upon a trail. We started jogging down and came upon two men hiking up and they asked us how much snow was up there. We explained to them our route and they just kept pointing to the mountain and saying: "you went up that? How on earth did you get down." They most certainly thought we were nuts and maybe we were. I would not say it was the smartest thing I have done and I of all people, growing up in the mountains, should know to always carry a topo map and probably a few more articles of clothing, food, and water. BUT, we made it back to the car after just under four hours of adventuring and were both very glad we went up the peak. It was quite a day up there!
Me approaching Pioneer Cabin
The view from the top!
Soph and I at the top of the unknown peak.
Me falling through the snow on the north slope descent....NOT FUN
