[This article was first published in Idaho Magazine, July 2022.] The Peak That Got Away Lady and I gotten along just fine for about half of the five-day horseback trip up the South Fork of the Payette River, until she bolted off the trail into Lodgepole pines. She was at full gallop and I had to lie flat on the … Continue reading
The City of Rock, a land of spectacular granite formations at the southern end of the Albion Range, was a stop in the 1840s along the historic California Trail. This trail forked off the Oregon Trail. Memoirs written by California Trail travelers momentarily brought some national notoriety to what was then known as the “Silent City of Rock.” After the … Continue reading
Neil McAvoy of Kellogg, Idaho was an active technical climber and guide in the 1960s and 1970s. He was also member of the Spokane Mountaineers and an early contributor to the book. His exploits on the Selkirk Range’s Lions Head’s two summits are briefly recounted on Page 38 of the book and are set out below in more detail. The … Continue reading
“Rugged country. Awful rugged country. Miles and miles of sharp jagged pinnacles of firm granite.” A painter-friend of Bob Underhill told him that about Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains in the early 1930s, when Bob was in the Tetons for a few weeks pioneering big new routes on the Grand Teton and other nearby peaks. Although the painter isn’t named, it almost … Continue reading
When Robert and Miriam Underhill first gazed from the top of Galena Summit in Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness, before them stretched a wild mountain panorama never before seen by mountaineers. It was 1934 and in those days the road past the future site of Sun Valley to the summit was little more than a rutted sheep wagon track. Approaching the remote … Continue reading
The Summer of 1949: Fred Beckey, Pete Schoening and Jack Schwabland went into Idaho’s Sawtooth Range to finish “some business” with two peaks that had repulsed their climbing attempts the previous Summer. They also had a shopping list of other unclimbed peaks in the Sawtooths. Their “Idaho adventure” may well be the most exciting epic in Idaho’s climbing history. Fred … Continue reading