Sunday, November 7, 2010

Borah Borah!









9/2-9/3

Brent, Aaron Harker, and I decided to go and hike Idaho's tallest mountain, Mount Borah. None of us had ever done it before so we thought it would be fun to go and do it. We drove out there on a lovely thursday afternoon and then spent the night at the trailhead after eating delicious tinfoil dinners that Brent's mom had so kindly prepared for us. We decided that we didn't want to worry about setting up a tent and having to take it down before we went up the trail the next morning so we just slept out underneath the stars on our mattress pads. It was so cold when we woke up the next morning at 5:00 am to get a good start up the mountain. We started hiking in the dark and had a lot of fun. Aaron had just gotten back from living in Texas for two years, so he was trying to adjust to the altitude change and performed like a champion. We made it up and down with a total hiking time of 7 hours. We hauled a loaf of bread, peanut butter, honey, and bananas up the mountain and had a great lunch on the summit. We passed several groups of hikers on our way up, and were barely beat by a group that had started an hour before us. They were a group of three guys. Two older gentleman in their 60's and one middle aged man. The older gentleman were from Australia and New Zealand and the middle aged man was from Salt Lake City. It was a fun trip, and most enjoyable. It was nice thinking that for a couple hours we were higher than anyone else who was on the ground in the state of Idaho. We were even higher than a few airplanes we saw flying in the valley.

Return to Waterfall Canyon!










8/27-8/28

Brent, Tyler, and I planned on making a backpacking trip before school started back up. We decided that we would repeat the backpacking trip we had done three years prior, before Brent and I left on our missions. We had fun, and ended up hiking about 26 miles in total for the two days we were there. We went off a rope swing into the freezing cold upper palisades lake. We picked huckleberries on the slope on the way up to Waterfall Canyon. We also made a return to sheep creek peak to see if our student ID cards were still there from three years ago when we were there. Mine and Brent's were not there, but we found Tyler's in the rock cairn where we had left them. It hailed pretty hard on us while we were hiking to sheep creek peak to look for our ID cards. We then power hiked back to camp and hiked out while it was raining most of the way back. We had fun. I love that hike and I love being up in waterfall canyon. It was the second time I was up there this summer.

Backpacking With Dad

Well, is been far too long since I've updated my blog, so I'm working on updating it all right now.

8/20-8/21
Dad and I went on a fun backpacking trip. We loaded up our gear and then drove off to the Centennial Mountain range by Kilgore Idaho. We stopped at the store there and Dad bought me a soda and told me when he and grandpa stopped there almost 5
0 years ago when he was a kid. We then continued driving and found the trailhead. We loaded up our packs and grabbed our fishing poles and headed up the trail.

It was a really nice trail and was pretty short. We found some huckleberries along the trail on the way up. So we stopped and took some breaks to pick and eat huckleberries. The total hike was about 1.3 miles until we got to Aldous lake. It was a pretty little lake and looked like it had quite a few trout in it to be caught. After dropping off our packs and getting a quick snack, Dad and I pulled out our fly-fishing rods and started seeing what we could catch. We fished for an hour and a half without any bites at all. I took a break to set up the tent while Dad kept on fishing.

After finishing setting up the tent I went back to fishing with Dad. We worked our way around the lake, and when we got near the north side of the lake, where some scouts were camping, we started catching fish. Also by the North side of the lake there were hundreds of little frogs all along the shore. It was a lot of fun catching the fish. I caught the first one, and then Dad started hooking them and ended up hooking more fish than me. I kept two fish, and Dad kept one. That day was the first day I caught a fish with a fly rod. I really enjoy fly fishing and had a lot of fun fishing.
The next day we woke up and cooked oatmeal for breakfast, and then broke camp. We fished for a little bit, but didn't have any luck catching any fish. We stopped a lot along the trail on the way out to pick huckleberries. We picked quite a few and had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed going on the camping trip with Dad and spending time with him.