Skiing Leatherman Peak in the Lost River Range

[eagleskier]

I had been trying to get into the Lost River Range this spring; but due to schedules, bad luck and bad timing I had not been able to pull it off – until this past week.
Deb and Tom were both looking for a snow climb of Leatherman Peak, second highest in Idaho and our schedules lined up for an attempt on Friday, June 6th. Although both of them would not be skiing on the descent, I had successfully teamed up with them last year to climb Lost River Peak and I skied the Super Gully. We were all pretty stoked to go get one of the Idaho 12er's. We headed out of Boise on Thursday afternoon, with the intention of hiking up the trail to the foot of the mountain where we knew the snow level was, but a series of unfortunate events, including a blown tire on the Double Springs Pass road and a backpack lost and recovered in one of the mountain streams kept us at the trail head overnight.
Friday was clear, beautiful and just cool enough to set the snow up nice and firm for the ascent. We took a fairly direct ascent up the East/NE face until we were about 500 feet below the summit. At that point, we thought it would be fun to head up the SE ridge, (climbers left) for some scrambling to the top. Other than the infamous Lost River scree between the snow and the ridge, it worked out fine and gave us a little “mountaineering” feel for what was essentially a “walk up” approach.
The ski descent on this route in the late spring is fairly mellow. No real exposure and on this day, the snow is very firm on top, softening to corn about midway down. Even though it was firm, it was easy to set an edge and made for a nice comfortable descent.
There are definitely lines in this range that have a high "pucker" factor, but with conditions like they were on the day we climbed Leatherman, this route is pretty tame. That being said, the size of the peak and the length of the approach make for a worthy challenge. The statistics for this climb from the Pashimeroi Valley trail head are as follows:
2.5 mile approach
2 mile, 3,000 foot climb to the summit
Total elevation gain is just over 4,000 feet.
Here is a link to the video of the descent. The footage is all GoPro. We were shooting some film with a decent Cannon camera, but due to technical glitches, (operator error), the video footage didn’t pan out.

The pics below turned out decently and show some of the terrain that we climbed and that I skied. Plus I threw in a couple of shots of one of my next objectives in the range.

Before we get to the real stuff, here is what the blown tire on the way to the trail head looked like. This almost ended our trip before it began because someone had removed my lug wrench without my knowledge. Fortunately, some grizzled old bear hunter came by and let us use his.


Here is a shot of the peak. The red line is the approximate climbing route and the blue line is my ski route.


We begin the climb up the main snow field.


Getting a little "mountaineering" on the ascent.


The obligatory summit shot.


Here is a look at Borah's East/SE face, (I see some "pucker lines" there).


I had to down climb a few feet to avoid some gnarly little rocks that would have destroyed my bases if I'd skied from the summit.


Here is the view right down to the base of the mountain from the summit.


This little couloir would be fun for someone, but I'll pass on that mandatory air.


This one is on my "hit list".


A parting view of Leatherman and 11909 as we head out for Boise.

[abraham]

Hell yeah! The lost river range is awesome! That looks like a nice run.
The last two pictures are mt corruption, no? That one's on my hit list but it won't be until next year.

[eagleskier]

The last two pictures are mt corruption, no? That one's on my hit list but it won't be until next year.

No, it is Peak 11909. Corruption is out of the picture on lookers left. I have some shots of it that I could dig up if anyone is interested.

[Grape_Ape]

Well done! Looks like fun.

[schwerty]

That's a beautiful area. Thx for sharing!

[Big Lepowski]

Nice job. Thanks for the report.

[Trace Hardslab]

Wow, Lost River. What's next, Lemhi stoke? Thanks for the great pics!

[Jaded Loc]

Awesome, that parting view shot is beautiful.

[eagleskier]

@Abraham: you had asked about Mt. Corruption. I did find the photo of it. I have heard of a couple of guys skiing it's north face as seen in this photo, and depending upon my sanity level I've thought about it at times, but usually I back off of that thought once I return to a "normal" state of mind :-)

@ Hardslab: hadn't thought much about the Lemhi range, but I think I may try to find a couloir in the Sawtooths in July, (I'm going for the 12 straight month thing this year).

[abraham]

@Abraham: you had asked about Mt. Corruption. I did find the photo of it. I have heard of a couple of guys skiing it's north face as seen in this photo, and depending upon my sanity level I've thought about it at times, but usually I back off of that thought once I return to a "normal" state of mind :-)

@ Hardslab: hadn't thought much about the Lemhi range, but I think I may try to find a couloir in the Sawtooths in July, (I'm going for the 12 straight month thing this year).

Cool, thanks! I was trying to get a hold of the friend who sent me the picture to check if he was confused about the name. Looks like I was wrong though. Yeah it's certainly one I'd like to ski but it looks like 11909 has most of the same aesthetic appeal but is a more sane option. It's on my list now

[moose pit]

Nice TR... makes me wanna do some spring skiing.