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I turned 40 at the end of May. To celebrate, I took a 10 day road trip starting in Moab for mountain biking and made my north through Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Every day I made a stop to hike/climb or mountain bike. My hikes included Fisher Towers in Utah, a short outing in the Sawtooth Wilderness, a climb a summit along the Continental Divide in Montana's Anaconda Pintler Wilderness, another climb in the Gallatins, wrapped up with stunning views on the edge of Grand Teton NP.
This trip was important not only because it was my entry into my 40s but it would be the last hiking/mt biking I would do for a while. On june 8th I had surgery scheduled. A spot on my knee turned out to be melanoma and needed a large area of tissue removed as well as a lymph node removed for biopsy that involved a 4 inch incision across the top of my knee and another 2 inch cut near my groin area. (Preliminary biopsy looks good- still waiting for biopsy results from melanoma specialist)
Rather than go into every trip report here I'll share links to my blogs for each post below.
Here is a brief rundown.
5.22.17 Fisher Towers are a short hike with stunning views of red rock towers rising as high as 900 feet tall and also a top climbing destination about 20 miles north of Moab. Easy 4.4 mile hike Awesome bang for you buck hike.
5.24.17 Sawtooth Wilderness. Absolutely stunning mountain range of jagged peaks. I was with a friend that was painfully slow. My goal was to attempt Alpine Peak at just under 10K. It was snowshoes from the start but my friend was slow moving and we didn't get moving until noon and snow was pretty crappy by then. We fell short of the peak but still beautiful area
5.25.17 Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness A scenic range along the Continental Divide near Anaconda Montana in the Anaconda Range. I drove until snow was too much then snowshoed to Storm Lake under the Divide before making my way to Little Rainbow Mountain on a fairly steep snow slope with occasional light snow.
5.27.17 Gallatin Range near Bozeman Overlook Mountain. Again snowshoes nearly from the beginning at 6900' with an easy snowshoe to two alpine lakes before the very steep climb to the ridge with ax and crampons with awesome views encompassing many mountain ranges in southern Montana
5.28.17 Table Mountain on edge of Jedediah Smith Wilderness and Grand Teton NP with in your face views of the Tetons. Snowshoes after about a mile. After 4000 feet of climbing you reach the summit of Table Mountain with the Grand just 2 miles away towering 2600 feet above and completely unobstructed. The last hike of my 30s (Birthday the next day)
All of these are worthy destinations for climbing summit or backpacking (Fisher Towers not so much backpacking)
Love the Anaconda Pintlers! You are correct - they are seemingly almost abandoned relative to popular wildernesses in CO
That Storm Lake Pass provides some really easy access to that area too - for two years in a row I was coming at that area from the other side of the range - hiking 6-7 miles up that flat valley to reach the mtns. Much easier from the other side!
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