Mount Baldy Pics!

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Welcome to

www.Ryan's Adventures.com

This page is for my friends and family who wonder what I do in my spare time (mostly weekends). As you can see, I'm kind of addicted to mountain climbing, so I try to do that as often as possible. Most of my adventures are with my cousin James St. Clair. Please check back often, as the photo's from my latest adventures (Mt. Baldy) aren't developed yet. I'll try and post them as soon as possible. There are also some pictures and facts about our boat at the end.

Also, I would like to thank Joe Gale for loaning me touring skis, boots, poles, and climbing skins for the season. I would never have been able to make any of these trips without them. Thanks for letting me see that there's more to skiing than chair lifts Joe!

27Kb

OK, this first picture is the very center of all living things, duck tape. For a few of our trips, James's car window wouldn't go up, so we fixed it with plastic sheeting and lots of duck tape. It worked fine in town (except for the tiny problem of not bieng able to see out of it), but once we got going 75mph towards the mountains, it was quite loud and eventually just about blew off. Soon we had a good 5 inches of duck tape all around the whole window.

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This is James crossing one of the five bridges across Palisades Creek. This creek runs up a canyon that starts just west of Palisades Reservoir. It's about a 4 mile ski or hike up to the first lake (next picture) and another 3 miles up to the upper lake (much bigger, we didn't get to it). This was one of our exciting trips. We planned on skiing into the lakes and then building a snow cave to stay in, but there wasn't enough snow. So we slept in the car and frooze. Also, because I'm stupid I didn't realize that the stove couldn't be resting in snow, so we couldn't heat any water and therefore didn't eat anything and got severly dehydrated (to the point that James was sick and we had to come home). Oh, I also dropped my glove on that trip, so the next day we had to ski way up and get it. But as James and I say, there's no such thing as a bad ski trip.

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Here's Lower Palisades Lake. It was pretty small, only about three quarters of a mile long. Not much of it was frozen, as water drains into and out of it year round. Up that canyon is where the Upper Lake is. That'll be our next trip, (not on skis, the snow's all gone.) Shortly after we left the lake to go back to the car it started snowing a lot, which we needed as the lack of snow made for a lot of sking over trees and rocks. Oh, also about have way back we climbed up about a thousand feet and skiid down it. We only got in a few turns in but it was still fun.

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This was a couple of weeks ago when James and I climbed Mount Glory (the mountain in the background) in the morning and then climbed this (Edilvies) in the afternoon. (Mount Glory is just north of Teton Pass, and Edilvies is just south of it) The skiing was the best we'd ever had, a foot or more of fresh powder (totally untracked), and a total of about 4,000' verticle drop on 25-35 degree slopes. When you backcountry ski, you start to appreciate each run a lot more (probably because you have to work so hard getting up ;-)

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That's me skiing off Edilvies. We only got one run off it that day, but a few months ago a friend (Joe Gale) and I got four or five runs in. That day was actually my first backcountry experience, thanks Joe!

31Kb *MUST SEE*

This mountain was awesome! It's Taylor Mountain (actually a ridge of mountains, we climbed the highest, Victor Peak 10,352') My parents and some friends and I climbed this two summers ago, but it was unrecognizable in the winter. We followed a skin trail up the south ridge. We climbed the whole way on touring skis, with climbing skins on the bottom. The ridge was about a mile and a half long, and in that distance we climbed 3,700'. It took us two and a half hours to get up (James went faster, he's superman, he always gets up quicker than me.) At the top the wind was blowing 35-45 mph, and we were blown over a couple of times. We hurried and took our skins off and skied down the back side, mistake. We got about 500 feet below the top and decided to go back up for a couple of reasons. One, we came to a 50 foot cliff that neither of us wanted to jump. And two, the snow on the side we were on (the leeward side from the wind) was very unstable and we started numerous tiny slab avelanches. So, we put our skis on our pack and started back up. With James in the lead, it took us about 35 minutes to get up. The snow varied from waste deep powder to 1/4 inch thick ice over rock. This picture is ov James near the top. (hehehe, looks like Everest huh!) The snow was blowing so hard his footsteps filled in with snow in seconds. We finally got up and tried again to figure out what to do (next picure).

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The black speck in the center of the picture is me skiing. The bowl behind me drops about 3,000' from the summit of Victor Peak (background). The skiing here was unbelievable, once we got off the ridge the wind instantly stopped. At first we weren't sure about skiing down this bowl, as it's one of the biggest avelanche chutes on the west side of the pass. But we did a quick sample dig with a guy on top to check the snow pack and we agreed it looked pretty stable. James and I also took turns skiing, one of us would ski a ways down while the other would stay in a clumb of trees, just incase we started a slide. But we didn't, and we enjoyed almost 4,000' feet of steep skiing in perfect snow. Near the top there were some great chutes that were great fun in the untracked snow. The trail ended up right back at the car and we were able to ski downhill all the way there.

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Mount Baldy, ID (9,825') on March 29th,1999
James and I left Idaho Falls at about 6 AM and headed for Swan Valley. This picture was taken just before descending (by road) into Swan Valley. We got to see the sun rise over Mount Baldy, beautiful. (That's Mount Baldy, just under and to the right of the sun.) Also in the picture you can see the Snake River (from Palisades Reservoir).

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This picture was taken at about 7,000', just below Little Baldy Mountain. It is taken looking south. Palisades Reservoir isn't in the picture, but it would be just to the left. We followed the exact same route this time as we did last year (with Eric Peterson), and this was taken at one of our rest stops. We had beautiful weather this trip, sunny, little wind, and warm temperatures. It was great, as last time we had rain at lower elevations and a real blizzard up higher with zero visibility. We also got to ski her this time, as last time the weather was too bad (although we did carry them all the way up ;-)

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Here we are at a small un-named hill just below Little Baldy Mountain (about half-way up the ridge), and Baldy Mountain (summit). We hiked along the ridge all the way to the top. The ridge runs almost exactly north and south, but when we skied off we went west (by accident). Good skiing (icy, but smooth) high up but as we descended it got softer. Because we skied off the wrong way, we had to cross several avelanche shoots. The snow seemed relatively stable, but we still went across seperately. We made it, and continued to ski down to about 6,500' where the snow ended. As we had stuck to where the snow was, we had to hike about 6 ridges east to get back to the car. Great spring skiing though.

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This is the summit box. We didn't see it on last years trip, must have been covered with snow. According to the book inside, nobody had climbed it in 4 months, but I'm sure people had, it was probably just covered with snow. It was fun reading all the entries, everyone who signed it sounded like the sure had fun (like us!) Note the Grand Teton in the picture, we couldn't have climbed on a nicer day.

The following pictures are on the summit of Mount Baldy, ID (9,835'). The first one is of James (left) and I on top. The second one is James doing a back flip on top (a celebration of joy or something like that.) The third one is me resting on top. Note we didn't ski from the very top. We left our skis and pack about 200' down in a snowcovered tree.

20Kb *SUCCESS!*

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Here are Mom and Dad when we all went to Pebble Creek (south of Pocatello). We had a great time, a bit icy in the morning but later in the day the snow got really nice.

This next picture (a surprise) is just to show you why you shouldn't trust an image these days. I digitally combined our boat at Wood's Hole, MA with Mount Everest. It is 107Kb, but please look at it, it's well worth the wait. Enjoy!

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I just realized that many of you have probably never seen a picture of our boat (for the few of you who don't know, I live on a sailboat on the east coast with my parents most of my time, we just come to Idaho off and on to see family and for my dad to work (and for me to ski, hehehe)). Well, here's our boat in North Carolina before we sailed to Nova Scotia last summer. The next picture is much better.

S/V Northern Cross

S/V stands for Sailing Vessel

Built: She was custom built in France in 1979
Hull Material: steel
Length: 40 ft (13m)
Beam: 13.5 ft (4m)
Draft: 7 ft (2m)
Mast height above water: 62ft (21m) (great fun to swing off of into the water)
Displacement: 38,000 lbs (19 tons)
Sails:
- 9oz fully battened main
- 130% genoa
- 1100 sq ft spinnaker
- 9oz staysail
- 2 high cut storm sail yankees
Engine: Diesel Perkins 4154 62hp (yes, I have to admit we do have (and ocassionally use) an engine)
Fuel Cap: 200 gal
Water Cap: 140 gal
Speed under sail: 5-7 Knots (5.5-8 mph)

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Here we are anchored near Woods Hole, MA. We stopped there on the way up to Nova Scotia for a week in this protected anchorage to wait out a hurricane (I forget which one). It was a nice place, water warm enough for swimming and not too crowded. We also met some friends there who we hope will go to Nova Scotia with us next summer. Note that she used to be painted dark green, and she was beautfiul. But because of some people (names not used to protect the guilty) who thought a white hull would keep the interior (and therefore us) be cooler in the summer, we painted her white before we went to Nova Scotia. You are welcome to send me e-mail in the form of a petition to paint her green again!

*The monkey at the top of the page is used without permission from the HotWired: Webmonkey web site. Please don't tell them I used it, or else I might go to jail and not be able to climb mountains or sail ever again!!!!!!