A little confusion over the name – the locals call it Mt. Borah but in most reference books it is referred to as Borah Peak. Nevertheless, we took advantage of a week’s leisurely drive to MN for a wedding and stopped to climb two state highpoints along the way. The first was Mt. Borah in Idaho. This is a 12,668ft peak described as the “Crown Jewel of the Lost River Range.”

We arrived early to stake out a campsite at the trailhead as there are only four sites. Of course, the couple with the screaming baby pulled in shortly after us and chose the site right next to us. Whatever we thought of them surely paled with what they must have thought about us … Moron most likely, as we tried to rig the tent up to some trees with trekking poles because neither of us remembered to bring the tent poles… I ended up sleeping in the makeshift tent while Joel took the backseat of the car – not off to a good start!

The part of the hike that we sort of minimized during our initial fact gathering was how steep it was. One guide book described it as steep, steeper and then “brutally steep” once you got out of timberline. The trail gained 5262 feet of elevation in 3.5 miles. The guidebooks noted that the normal up and down was 10 – 11 hours. We scoffed at that as we started up the trail but soon I wasn’t laughing – this was probably one of the steepest trails I have been on in a long time!

Joel flew up the trail and only slowed down to take photos, as usual. About an hour up the trail we met a man coming down who was unsure of the actual route over the aptly named “Chicken Out Ridge” and turned around. At that point I was sort of worried because he looked like a pretty savvy hiker. “Chicken Out Ridge” is touted as 200 yards of sheer drop-offs on either side and extreme exposure, but we either took the wrong route over it or it was highly sensationalized. After a quick lunch on the summit we made our way down and drove to Salmon, ID for dinner.