8 Attachment(s)
Skiing from Bogus to Boise
On Feb 4th of this most epic ski year I was having a pretty stellar day with some fellow dirtbags, ripping up the powder at the local hangout - Bogus Basin. Launched "The Cornice" too big and overshot the "sweet spot". I landed way too hard, and to top it off, I found what must have been the only patch of chunky frozen stuff on the mountain that day. The all too familiar pop in the left knee and I knew the result - torn ACL and the inevitable meniscus damage that goes with it. Made my way back to the car on the blue runs, and that was the end of my season.
This TR isn't about that incident, rather it is an account of a fairly rare accomplishment here in the Boise area - namely a ski trek from the Bogus Basin Ski Resort back to the city of Boise. There are several factors that prohibit this from being a common occurrence:
1 - It is 16 miles by car and 12-15 miles to ski, based on the chosen route.
2 - Boise's elevation is only 3000 feet, so many years there isn't enough snow in the foothills to ski all the way back.
3 - No matter which route you choose, you will be faced with lengthy flat and uphill sections.
Everyone that I had talked to, or any of the accounts that I read indicated that they all skied a forest service road back along the ridge for several miles and then either dropped into a popular mountain biking trail called "Hard Guy", or continued on the road until the 8th Street extension and then followed that down. Most people who have done this used X-C skis. All of that seemed a bit boring to me, so I researched a new route, one that had some "real" alpine/downhill sections, and avoided the roads as much as possible. I knew we would need to use some of the old logging roads that are now trails, and we would make heavy use of a couple of key mountain biking trails. Here is a Google Earth shot of the route:
Attachment 202715
This year was the perfect year. December, (and January), were especially cold and snowy. At one point, I had more than 20 inches in my back yard. The most difficult thing was recruiting a partner. This was due to a variety of reasons, including schedule conflicts and desire, but the most common was that too many of my friends didn't believe that we would find any good vertical AND they all were sure that the upper Dry Creek canyon area would be a killer bushwhack. I finally recruited one of my friends and we were set. He isn't that strong of a skier, but he is fully certified and wilderness CPR and he is willing to tag along on my shenanigans. The date selected was New Years Eve.
Here we are at the top of the Deer Point chair. Conditions look great. It's on!
Attachment 202716
The main vertical consisted of a nice 1500 ft line down into the Dry Creek Basin, and after a short climb up and over to another ridge, avoiding the "jungle" section of Dry Creek, we got in a second 1500 ft descent. The second descent involved some skiing on the old logging road trails and some very sketchy steep, thin snow down into the canyon. The video documents most of this part of the trek.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-f-4gM8Kvo&t=199s
The first mountain bike trail that we hit is the Dry Creek trail. We picked this up as soon as we hit the bottom of the canyon the second time. We followed it out for about 4.5 miles. Here are a couple of shots of this section.
Attachment 202717
Attachment 202718
At this point, Jack was ready to call it quits and so he bailed to the Dry Creek trail head. (We were back in civilization and past any technical areas).
Attachment 202719
I put on the skins and climbed up the connector trail to Hard Guy. Here is a shot from the climb out of Dry Creek
Attachment 202712
Here is a shot looking north, up Dry Creek, back towards Bogus Basin.
Attachment 202713
After skiing out Hard Guy, and a short climb up to the Corrals trail, I was about out of time and I was getting low on energy. Instead of diving off into one more section of thin snow cover and skiing down to the golf course, I chose to bail at the Corrals trail head on Bogus Basin Road, less than 3/4 mile from the city limits.
This was one of those trips that everyone thinks is pretty cool, but not "cool" enough to want to join you. I had a couple of shots in the first two weeks of January with even better snow in the lower sections, and I discovered a better route for the second descent. However, I couldn't convince anyone to join me for a second round of insanity and an actual finish in the city limits! Oh well, some other year...
Attachment 202714
