A big peak north of McCall, Bear Pete can be seen from Burgdorf
- July 25, 2009
- Team: Tom and Brian
- Summits:
- Bear Pete Mountain, 8752', 2650' climbing,
3.5 hours
- Round trip: 9 miles, 6 hours car-to-car
- Point 7450, 7450', 1300' climbing,
1.25 hours
- Round trip 4 miles, 2 hours car-to-car
- Bear Pete Mountain, 8752', 2650' climbing,
3.5 hours
Note: click images to see a larger version in a new window
| Friday night, we all stayed at Burgdorf Hot Springs and partied a bit too much. So even though the trailhead was only 2 miles away, we didn't start walking until 9:30. As such, it was already warm, but at least the dew was mostly off the grass. That's Bear Pete on the left. |
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| The trail starts from the back of the Three Springs campground, and immediately heads out into this lush meadow (sign says no ATVs....). A bridge gets you across Lake Creek, then you start heading directly for the Pete Creek drainage. |  |
| We followed the excellent trail up Pete Creek for quite a ways, then two of our party continued on the trail while Tom, Brian and I headed cross-country for our peak. After a very steep hillside with lots of low brush and deadfall, we got into a classic McCall-type gully with rock walls on the sides and wildflowers under foot. Very pretty. |  |
When we gained the NE ridge, we finally got some breeze, which was very welcome. The sun was out (duh!) and it was a little muggy. At this point, we sat and had some lunch before continuing up the ridge. We thought we saw a variety of routes up the right hand gullys.
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We were right about the gullys, but the variety was a little on the "technical dirt" side. |
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We avoided knocking each other in the head with rocks, or sliding down the steep dirt, and eventually made it to the relatively large and flat summit. From the car, about 3 1/2 hours to this point. We had another leisurely break on the summit and admired the views. |
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| Looking south, you can see lot of peaks: the French Creek saddle area, North and South Loon, Sawtooth and Snowslide, etc. We could also see Council Mountain and even Payette Lake. |  |
| With a better idea of the topography, we opted to do a loop off the summit, going down the SE face. While steep, it did not have the technical climbing that the other dirt had. |  |
Back at Burgdorf, you can see most of our route here. We went up roughly the right-hand skyline, and descended the left shoulder. When we got back down to the trail, it wasn't any cooler, but the horse flies did seem bigger. Although the trail was very pretty, given the heat and horseflies it seemed a long way back to the car. |
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| Sunday morning, Julie and I made an attempt to hike to Crystal Mountain. We had seen this peaklet on the Bear Pete hike, and as the picture shows, it looks interesting. I chose to do this via a cross-country route instead of following the road. Without a good map, we just hiked uphill through the lodgepole until we found "the" highpoint, which turned out to be Point 7450, not Crystal Mountain (which is lower). From our high point, we did find Crystal but decided to simply walk downhill on the road to close our loop. |  |
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