EISPIRATEN

So I went to Idaho last week.

First we climbed Hyndman Peak. It's slighly higher than 12000 ft with a ~7 miles one-way approach and a bit over 5000 ft of gain. The main route follows Hyndman creek to the saddle between Hyndman Peak and Old Hyndman peak:



Hyndman is on the left. Climbing a bit more you get to a nice field of lupine blooms



And an alpine lake



Lots more flowers around the lake



Also lots of butterflies and bees doing their pollination thing



A bit above the lake, the trail (which was in good shape up to this point) disappears, and a rock scramble begins. This is maybe class-2, and is fairly steep. The North side of the ridge is extremely steep, cliff-like really, so we ascended the boulders on the South side.



After maybe 1500ft of climbing, we topped out to some pretty nice views.





That was fun. The next day we climbed Borah Peak. This is higher (~12600 ft), has a bit more gain on the standard route (~5300ft) and is much more steep (only ~4 miles one way). The route is mostly class 2, with a single exposed class 3-4 section. This section (Chicken-out ridge) isn't particularly difficult, but requires at least one semi-technical move with exposure. The views from the top are pretty good



But this peak isn't nearly as nice as Hyndman. If this wasn't the Idaho high point, nobody would come here.

Then we parked ourselves in a field, joined by maybe 100 friends, and looked expectantly sky-wards

Great photos! Idaho is very pretty.

For me, Borah was the hardest of the 17 state highpoints I have visited. The descent was rather difficult on the knees even with trekking poles. Add to that it was a windy day and it was a couple hours of misery on the way down.

Those look awesome!