Boundary Peak

September 23rd, 2008

And so I started my quest for the 50 State Highpoints: Boundary Peak, highest in Nevada. I count this as my second, since when I was younger my family and I climbed Borah in Idaho, but it feels like my first. In fact, I may have to climb Borah again so it feels more legit. Shouldn’t be too hard since it’s in my home state. But back to Boundary. It’s on the North end of the Owens Valley in the White Mountains. I had read that if it weren’t the highest point in NV it wouldn’t be climbed much and I understand why now. It’s not a bad climb, and in fact it’s an impressive 13,147′ tall. The thing is that… it’s nowhere. BFE. I had to drive quite a ways into the desert and away from, well, anything, to climb it. And the climb itself was just sort of a long grind up through sandy scree. What actually made it fun was that because it’s so remote I had the whole mountain to myself. And judging from the register, no one had climbed it for a few day prior, either. I had shared even the remote Mount Adams with a few people, but here there was no one. In my unreliable van which has a habit of quitting sometimes this solitude was actually a little concerning, but I enjoyed it none-the-less. The van worked fine and the only problem was that I had pushed Half Dome too hard the day before and my legs were like lead. I had come straight over from Yosemite, passing out in the van on the side of the road with semi trucks ripping by me all night. The trailhead for Boundary is about 5000′ below the summit so it was a struggle being tired and I was worried about the fact I was going to climb Whitney in just two days. I bagged the summit though, breakfast from a greasy spoon in the non-town of Benton powering me to the top. Exhausted but stoked to tick a nice highpoint off the list, I rolled down to Bishop for my rest day before Whitney.