2005/2006 Winter E-News
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Ready for Business! The hut is up, the track is in, the snow is here, and we are
ready to roll! Welcome to another winter in the Sawtooths. This is our fifth electronic newsletter with information
about goings on at SMG. Read on below for a winter update and also for a little spring ski mountaineering
teaser. Thanks for checking it out!
All photos in this edition of SMG E-News are courtesy of Matt Leidecker Photography. |
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Avalanche Education Update
For the 2005/06 ski season SMG will again be offering a full-slate of avalanche education classes. We still have room in our January 6-8 Level 1 Backcountry Skier/Snowboarder Avalanche Safety class and our Level 2 Tour Leadership and Avalanche Hazard class. The December 9-11 and January 13-15 Level 1 classes are full, but we sometimes get last minute cancellations so stay in touch. SMG’s courses are designed according to guidelines set by the American Avalanche Association. Kirk Bachman, SMG co-owner and American Mountain Guides Association Certified Alpine and Ski Mountaineering Guide, is the lead instructor. These courses are a must for any backcountry skier/rider planning to enter avalanche terrain! |
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New Certified Guide
SMG co-owner Erik Leidecker attained American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) Rock Guide Certification in October. A Certified Rock Guide must pass a rigorous six-day exam in which candidates are evaluated daily in nine different categories such as client care, technical systems, and risk management. The Certified Rock Guide standard is recognized by the International Federation of Mountain Guide Associations (IFMGA) and the exam is one of three that an “aspirant” guide must pass to achieve full IFMGA certification. Leidecker’s partner Kirk Bachman is also certified--in the Alpine and Ski Mountaineering disciplines. SMG guide Marc Hanselman plans to take his Rock Guide Exam in October 2006. |
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SMG Partners with Backcountry Access
SMG is pleased to announce being selected as the Idaho technical representative for Backcountry Access aka BCA. As an American based company BCA is the innovator of the Tracker Avalanche beacon, the largest selling transceiver in North America and Europe. BCA also offers a full line of products for backcountry riders including hydration packs, climbing skins, probes and shovels, the Naxo AT binding, and the Alpine Trekker. Kirk Bachman serves as the technical representative for the equipment and can answer any questions you might have about this product line which has been integrated into the SMG's Avalanche Education program. Feel free to contact: kirk@sawtoothguides.com. |
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Summer 2006 Recap
From a guides’ point of view a number of “firsts” highlighted the summer of 2005 for SMG. Among these included a guided ascent of what we’ve been calling the Broken Arrow Arete (III 5.7). Broken Arrow climbs the stunning north ridge on the unnamed 11,000-foot peak that splits the head of Wildhorse Creek in the Pioneer Mountains. The route consists of two thousand feet of 4th and 5th class climbing, much of it on clean granite and quartzite in classic position on the true ridge crest. Another first was a one-day guided ascent from Redfish Lodge of the Fine Line (IV 5.11) on the Elephant’s Perch. The Fine Line offers up a thin crux, clean climbing, and good pro on one of the Perch’s most striking features. Of course these two climbs accounted for only two days of a 100-day season. Aimee Barnes’s City Girls program, a three-day climbing weekend for women, continues to be a success. We enjoyed many days (and nights) at the Canyon Camp, an ever-popular family base for introductory climbing on the Super Slabs and a day-hike up to Saddleback Lakes. We ran a 3-day corporate retreat for Connecticut-based Shumway Capital, climbed Mt. Borah with nearly a dozen boy scouts (and 68-year-old Jane from Maine!), and re-visited the classic summits such as the Finger of Fate, Mt. Heyburn, and Warbonnet Peak. All in all it was another great summer in the Sawtooths. |
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The Boulder Traverse by Erik Leidecker
Note: this story appeared about three years ago in Backcountry Magazine. It’s hard to be a purist. I’m a mountain guide by trade, in part because I love the mountains. But some people accuse me of selling out the backcountry to my fat-cat clients. Some of these accusations come from people who write guidebooks or people who only go to the mountains to make films. As long as there are skiers there will be those who do it for the soul of the sport and those who do it for money and movies. This story lies somewhere in between—not quite in the valley of the corporate shoulder patches, not quite in the valley of the leather-booted die-hards—but on the spiny ridge, corniced and craggy, that divides the two drainages. A traverse of the Boulder Mountains, a rugged three-layer cake of volcanic andesites, pink granites, and creamy quartzites located in Ketchum, Idaho’s backyard, was my brother’s idea. He has a fetish for ridgelines and this one, a thirty-mile backbone from Galena Summit to Durrance Mountain, was the first over which he ever lusted. Matt purchased all the seven and a half minute topo maps for the proposed route and plotted the mileage and elevation gain. He took aerial and panoramic photos, scanned them into Photoshop, and created a super-panorama of the entire route. Using the software he could zoom in on technical portions of the ridgeline and pick out plausible lines through rock towers and cliff bands. By the time we scheduled a three-day window during April 2001 to finally tackle the traverse, Matt had skied the route on his computer screen and in his head dozens of times. |
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2003 Spring/Summer E-News
2003 Fall/Winter E-News 2004 Spring/Summer E-News 2004 Fall/Winter E-News 2005 Spring/Summer E-News |
