Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Ironside Mountain Hike

Early in the week, I made plans with Matt Durrant to climb Galena Peak in the Boulder Mountains. Rob Ronald also joined the trip. However, as the weekend approached the forecast for Idaho looked bad for the fourth straight weekend. On Friday we identified some probable good weather in Oregon and decided to head over there to hike Ironside Mountain.

After meeting at 4:30am, we headed west and were at the start of the hike just after 7:00am. I parked conservatively because I'd heard some concerning information about the road. The reality is that we probably could have driven to within a half mile of the summit instead of 5 miles away like we did. None of us were bothered by this though - I personally was happy to get the exercise!

The weather was better than we expected; partly cloudy and dry. We made great progress along the road - in fact, we were confined to the road due to private property postings all along the way. So much for taking shortcuts! We made it to the summit at 10am and had great 360° views of an unfamiliar Oregon landscape. There were a few clouds hanging around but they brought no precipitation and were seemingly just there to add some visual interest.

In summary, this was a great Spring hike - fitting for the last day of Spring. I got to meet two new hiking partners as well. Yet another fine day in the mountains!

Trip statistics: 10 miles, 3000' gain, 6 hours (including 1 hour spent on the summit)

Ironside Mountain Pictures!

4 comments:

Cathy said...

Great pictures Zach. Glad you have found more hiking partners! I think the bird is a Pyrrhuloxia - related to the cardinals and finches. Just a guess from the picture - more size/ bill info would be helpful.

SusanR said...

It would take me all day to do a 10 mile "hike". I'd call that a haul.

zdv said...

AC - The bird was pretty small - the blades of grass in the picture are no taller than 6". It also has an elongated bill and didn't seem afraid of being near people. The only reason I got the picture was because the bird was willing to stay reasonably still only 10' away while we briefly stopped. From my brief Googling, it looks different than a cardinal.

Susan - 10 miles isn't so bad. Now 20 miles, that's a haul :-)

MomV said...

HMMMM, at the momemt, I am having difficulty walking through Wal-Mart.