Sawtooth Saga

I had been looking forward to a climbing trip to British Columbia in Alberta, Canada for some time.  Lots of work shifts at the hospital finally led to my two week break from work.  I met up with Andrew Fitzgerald in SLC after staying with my parents in Midway for a few days. I was able to sneak in a morning of climbing with my brother Ben on an "old school" route up Little Cottonwood Canyon called The Schoolroom before Andrew arrived in SLC.   We began the long drive north in his Subaru loaded down with packs and climbing gear.  While passing through Montana we made a last minute text to our friend Kirk in Canada to advise him of our arrival that evening.  To our dismay he shot back a text indicating that we might want to reconsider as the week long forecast was awful and our chances of climbing some long routes in the mountains was slim.  We immediately stopped by the roadside and began to look at other options.  We settled on the Sawtooth wilderness area in Idaho and detoured towards Stanley, Idaho.  Later that night we finally arrived but not until after experiencing two flat tires on a dirt road outside Salmon, Idaho.  Before the trip was over a third tire sustained a flat.  Needless to say, Andrew ended up purchasing a whole new set of tires before coming home.  The climbing in the Sawtooths was awesome.  We backpacked up to Saddleback Lakes below Elephant's Perch and made camp.  We climbed the Mountaineers route up the 1500 foot face on wonderful granite in a beautiful mountain setting.  The next stop on our trip was the City of Rocks in Southern Idaho a place where I have climbed before on several occasions.  The weather continued to be fickle and one night a fierce thunderstorm even ripped my tent fly.  We did still manage to get in quite a bit of excellent rock climbing on the granite domes at the "City".  I was able to get home a few days early since we never made it to Canada, and Deb was OK with that because I made it home in time for our anniversary.  Andrew and I still have plans to make another attempt to climb in the Bugaboos next year.  I did get out of the heat of St. George but actually enjoyed getting back to the hot sunny skies after this trip where it rained on us nearly every day.