Pioneer Range 2018

I scheduled a WMC trip to the Pioneer Range in Idaho for Labor Day. The Pioneers are the range to the east of Sun Valley; they hold the 9th highest peak in Idaho (the lowest 12,000-footer), but the highest parts of the range are hard to see from paved roads. At best you can get a brief glimpse of the peaks while driving between Hailey and Ketchum, but you have to look in the right direction at exactly the right time.

That's too bad, because the Pioneers are just as spectacular as the better-known Sawtooths. While parts of the nearby White Cloud Mountains and Boulder Mountains were recently placed under wilderness designation, the Pioneers somehow didn't make the cut.

A great example of wilderness in the Pioneers is Surprise Valley. On Saturday, September 1st, we did a 12-mile round trip hike from the Fall Creek trailhead to the upper lake in Surprise Valley, nestled beneath 11,878-ft Standhope Peak. The ascent started out fairly gently, with an easy hill that led to the huge upper basin of Fall Creek. Surprise Valley is a hanging valley on the east side of Fall Creek, and the trail makes a rather sudden climb up the wall of the Fall Creek valley to reach it. The surprising part is that Surprise Valley doesn't actually drain out its lower end — as we discovered, the outlet stream leaves a lake and pours out of a cut in the east wall of the valley, dropping into Fall Creek in a dramatic waterfall.

We had lunch along the outlet stream, and then we all agreed to strike out for the unnamed upper lake. This hike along a sketchy route took longer than we expected, partly because we missed the trail and went cross-country through some steep and ledgy terrain, but the lake is gorgeous. In fact the whole upper basin of Surprise Valley is amazing, with serrated granite crags, green meadows and snow patches.

We got back to our site at Wildhorse Campground at around 6 PM, and it was my turn to cook dinner, which meant that I had to scramble. We did eventually get everybody fed, and the wood that Barb scored off of another camper kept us warm, burning in our fire ring.

go to the Surprise Valley gallery

Sunday morning was frosty. We had breakfast bundled up against the cold, then squeezed into my 4Runner so that we could bounce down the 4WD road to the Wildhorse Creek trailhead.

My guidebook said that the hike to Wildhorse Lake starts with a 25-foot wade across the Left Fork of Wildhorse Creek, but we were all very, very pleased to see that the Forest Service has installed a log bridge. The bridge gave us our first view of the photogenic gorges cut by both branches of Wildhorse Creek.

The trail climbs fairly gradually up the east bank of the Right Fork. The views are awesome — the rim of the basin is studded with massive peaks, including the pyramid of 12,009-ft Hyndman Peak and the Matterhorn-like crag of 11,775-ft Old Hyndman Peak. We crossed numerous avalanche chutes, and the trail wiggled its way through piles of debris.

Eventually we came out in a meadow above the gorge. The guidebook recommended a route that crosses the creek, then follows the forest edge for a half mile to a big meadow. Easier said than done — Barb, the first to cross the creek, stepped on a huge boulder that rolled, dumping her in the water. We struggled up boulder-strewn slopes, cutting through deadfall and working around cliffy obstacles, until finally descending into the broad green meadow. Even in September there were flowers in the meadow, and there was a delightful cascade over bare rock at its head.

That's when the real work started. We had to cross another avalanche chute, full of boulders and deadfall. On the other side, we crawled up slabs to reach the base of a couloir. At this point Kathy had had enough, so she parked it on a big rock while the rest of us followed a crack through the cliffs high above us. The crack led to a rocky plateau at 9600 ft, with no lake.

The GPS and the guidebook insisted that a lake was just 500 yards away and 400 ft higher, but it sure wasn't obvious from where we were standing. We convinced ourselves to work our way up the slabs to the right of the stream. There we met a backpacking couple coming down, and they assured us that we could follow a ledge system to the left and we'd be right at the lake. And of course they were right — whew.

The lake was spectacular. It was deep and green, with a snowbank at the south end. It was surrounded by a ragged ridge of rock, boasting huge slabs and pinnacles. The pointy top of Hyndman Peak poked up over the ridge to the south. The rock itself was lovely, a stripy gneiss with chunks of crystals.

It felt like a long hike back down to the car, although it was just 5.7 mi round trip on the GPS. On the way down to the creek, we stayed just inside the forest instead of just above it, and that made the walking much easier, in spite of the occasional deadfall.

Back at camp, Stephen made shrimp scampi, and Barb cooked a whole chicken and a pile of veggies in her dutch oven. A lot of wine was shared and the party went on until dark. The next morning, no one was in shape to do another hike, so we all beat it — Kathy and Stephen heading to Yellowstone, and the rest of us trying to beat the holiday traffic back to SLC.

Many thanks to Barb and her border collie Shasta, Stephen, Kathy and Stanley for a fantastic weekend!

go to the Wildhorse Lake gallery