Cougar Basin expedition

Prelude

When Tuesday Dave and I visited The Pinnacles last year, we gazed into this basin-- well, at least in this direction-- and knew we had to come back. Plus, a few years previous Jeff and I had discussed visiting here, although at that time the area seemed pretty vague. And I hadn't done a backpack trip with SuperDave since we had been to the Long Lost peaks of the Lost River range. So this expedition was a perfect confluence of energy streams.

Day 1

SuperDave arrived from Boise right on time, and we shuttled over to Tuesday Dave's, loaded up, and headed for Yellowpine. There we met Jeff within one minute of our arranged rendezvous. After another bumpy hour over Profile Gap, we were on our feet at the Lick Creek trailhead right at the crack of 11am.

We had been warned that the Lick Creek trail was a steep bugger. Well warned. Fortunately, much of the trail was still pleasantly shaded with a temperature in the 60s. Love that altitude effect!

Nonetheless, hauling a full pack up a few thousand feet is still a sweaty affair. Here we take a breather in an open section to admire the view.

The view. That's Marble Mountain, our target peak for Day 4. This was an important view that would affect our decisions that day because we had penciled in a shortcut down the flanks directly to the car. Hmmmm

Keep trudging. 'Trudging' might be a bad word choice, because although it was a lot of work, we were loving every step. Beautiful country. Great conversations, especially as some of my various best friends got to know each other , or know each other better.

Here, you can see the highpoint of our trail work. If you click for a bigger version, you can see the switchbacks going over the saddle in the center.

From that saddle, you can look into the basin holding Bear Lake, our destination for the day.

Another saddle view, looking back at Marble Mountain again.

After a short break on the saddle, we left the trail. Full-pack bushwacking! But the bushes are pretty thin up here. We made up for it by climbing steeply up the ridge to gain this view of Cougar Peak. Yes, that's snow, much to the joy of Ruby.

Summit.

Whew!

There's Bear Lake down there.

You may wonder why we chose to climb a peak with huge packs. Well, you must not know this group well! But in addition, the trail to the lake drops way down into the basin below the lake such that the gain about matches our climb.

Ruby liked this choice as well.

And when we found a nice camp spot, we called it quits without dropping the additional couple hundred feet to Bear Lake. (This beautiful lake has no name...so I jokingly labeled it Ursa Minor)

Day 2

Today's plan had us hike downhill into the previously mentioned basin, then back almost to the trail saddle of yesterday. That's Cougar Peak way up there. Kinda pretty.

It's a pretty good grind to get up to the ridge again, like about 1100 feet. From that point, that dark spike is our first peak today... hmmm.

Well, for starters there's supposed to be an old trail out this ridge. Where the heck is it? We did a little steeplechase through the pickup sticks, then did find tread. Just in time to leave it.

Back on old trail, there's our next objective, Peak 8860.

We were able to follow tread well up onto the left shoulder, where we then bushwacked up the steep forested face.

And for Tuesday Dave and I, this would be our final peak for the day, Snowslide.

If you have sharp eyes, you can see where the trail traverses a couple hundred feet below the summit.

The old guys headed back to spend some quality time grinding up the hill to Bear Lake that we had skipped yesterday. That brought on an extended rest period before we returned uphill (uggh) to Ursa Minor.

Note the cool peak on the left. That's Peak 8869, our first objective for tomorrow.

Day 3

Like with yesterday's outing, we found old tread heading up the valley above Bear Lake, then up onto the ridge we planned to follow today.

From the saddle south of our first peak, we got our first view into West Monumental Creek. That's Catherine Lake in the distance.

Summit.

Not yet 9am. That's Cougar Peak behind us.

One of the several lakes in this rugged basin.

And on the far left, another peak too far for the Senior team. Again, visit SuperDave's trip report to see what he and Jeff experienced.

Summit of Peak 8979.

We had lunch, then split up.

Tuesday Dave and I worked our way back the ridge to a suitable place to do the death scramble down the ball-bearing hillside. After dropping about 50 feet, we found-- you guessed it-- Old trail!

That trail got us down to our first lake today where the fish were biting. This is the result of Dave's first cast. Fish fear him!

We fished that lake for a while, then bushwacked over the hill to another gorgeous lake.

How gorgeous, you say? Check out the panorama below.

More bushwacking. Looking back down on the lake.

The GPS seemed to indicate the possibility of a reasonable escape back up to our ridge trail. It wasn't too long, too hot, or really too bad. But it did bring on one of our wildlife interactions when on top of the ridge what I though was one of those dang biting gnats turned out to be a tick on my neck.

From the ridge top we backtracked to Ursa Minor for another afternoon of swimming in the lake (did I mention that there are no fish in Ursa Minor, especially after each of us swam in it every day) and libations, we loaded up camp for another climb. Yes, an after-dinner mint of the worst sort: back up to Cougar Peak.

But we had a plan. Night on a summit. Comet NEOWISE. Milky Way. Tuesday Dave's famous nighttime photography (check the links below!).

One note: although the bugs at Ursa Minor were annoying, they were tolerable. Not so the swarms of mosquitoes up here. At one point, despite a healthy does of Essence de Nicole, I could have sworn SuperDave was wearing a mosquito sweater.

Day 4

At this point, my camera batteries were both dead. So please visit "The Daves' " websites to see pictures. But here's my narrative.

We got up early and reversed our first-day climb off Cougar Peak. At the saddle above Lick Creek, we dropped packs and headed out to Marble Mountain. We had discussed shortcutting down the hillside but tired knees and our previous view of the terrain persuaded us to do this as a light pack out-and-back. And guess what? Yes, we found some old trail. Not continuous, but enough to make the ridgewalk fairly pleasant. Snow patches near the summit to keep Ruby happy. Another astounding set of views, especially looking back across the vastness we had explored over the last few days (in actuality, a very small portion of the astounding Frank Church wilderness).

From the summit we reversed our tracks off Marble Mountain, picked up our packs, and then had lunch at Lick Lake. Caught a few fish. And then crushed cartilage all the way back to the truck.

See Tuesday Dave's excellent photos

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5
• Finale

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