Yesterday, I took Bill to the airport and did errands in town, then took it easy most of the day.
Sorry, no pics today. But I'll give a brief verbal description of my Thursday July 19.
Decided to follow in Kevin's footsteps today and climb Lone Peak, alone (is there any better way? Somehow it seems appropriate, given the peak's name).
I did it the lazy way. I paid the $18 to take the gondola to the base of the big steep peak, if that can be called lazy. The climb was as Kevin described - steep and rocky! I followed the traditional route up the ridge, reaching the summit in pretty good time - a little under 1.5 hrs. It's not a long hike, but the elevation change (>2000 ft) is substantial, particularly given the starting elevation of over 9000 ft! It was nice to be able to huff up that ridge with reasonable ease. I saw some rocky mtn goat tracks on the way up, so I thought I might have a chance at seeing them.
Once at the top, I foraged on granola and scanned the surrounding mountains for animal life. Mainly lots of mountain bluebirds feasting on abundant insects, which were flying around despite the 10 - 40 mph winds.
The sky was a gorgeous shade of blue, though in the distance there was haze, probably due to distant wildfires, which are abundant this year. I could not make out the Tetons, which we have seen in winter frequently from the summit. Like Kevin, I scurried down to take a closeup look at Big Couloir, the superexpert run we WILL SKI this coming year! It is fairly intimidating, looking more like a v-shaped vertical chasm in summer than anything ski-able.
Back at the summit I decided to take the lifty's advice and try coming down the south side, by which I assumed he meant Liberty Bowl. Well, that was probably a mistake. There was no trail, and the first 300 yds or so was plate-sized rock scree, and fairly steep. Before descending into that morass however, I followed the ridge to the left of the summit and spied some white dots on the slope above the tarn on the back side of Lone Peak. Aha!!! Binoculars showed them to be 10 Rocky Mountain Goats foraging on the alpine vegetation. Cool!
After negotiating the scree and a couple hundred more yards of loose soil/rock, I realized I was going to end up too low to take the cat track back to the Gondola, so I decided I would cut left at that point. Mistake #2. That route led over a near-cliff - now skiers do huck these cliffs in winter, but I've seen some beautiful wipeouts from the vantage point of shedhorn chair below. I didn't want to be one of these wipeouts, especially while out solo hiking. So I picked my way down very carefully over the loose rock and large boulders comprising this 'slope'. Interestingly, the easiest way to go down was the steepest, where the rocks were not loose and the toe and handholds were secure. Well, it was no harder than what we negotiated in South Africa on Table Mountain, so I figured I could do it. And, thankfully, no twisted ankles or bad scrapes occurred. Luckily I had brought along my sturdy boots and an old ski pole as a walking stick - the first time I had ever done that (the stick), and I was glad to have it!
Well, sorry no pics today. That was mistake #3; I brought my camera, but forgot to retrieve the compact flash card from the card reader...sigh. There were some beautiful alpine sights I wanted to share. Luckily Kevin did a great job photodocumenting exactly this hike; see his post of July 12 - exactly one week ago! http://moonlitknight-travels.blogspot.com/
Tonight, I'm going to one of the Thursday night Big Sky concerts - this group sounds interesting. I'll let ya know! ttfn.
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