Boundary Peak, Montgomery Peak

22-Jul-89

By: Bill T Russell

We drove north Saturday morning and met at the junction of the Trail Cyn and Middle Cyn roads. From here, we caravaned to the meadow about 1/4 mi from the end of the Trail Cyn road. The road is Ok; two Honda CVCC' s made it with only moderate protest. we started our hike at 3:15 pm, each with four or more liters of water. Our route was up the ridge that goes through UTM 840909. (The new 71/2' map "Boundary Peak" has the UTM gridlines printed on the map). Early on, George had breathing difficulty and turned back and Pat was appointed Vice Leader.

We spent the night at 10800' at a flat area where two ridges join. Some large rocks furnished protection from the wind that was blowing. During the night, we had five episodes of rain, each short but long enough to turn on the adrenaline of the light sleepers. Sunday at 0630 we started on up the hill, went over pt 12045, and west to Boundary which we reached at 0915. It was then over to Montgomery for lunch, phase I, and back to Boundary for lunch, phase II. As we cleared pt 12045 on our descent, a thunder storm moved into the area we had just left. The time between lightning flash and thunder clap got as short as three seconds. Just as we reached our bivouac site, the heavens opened with a downpour of rain and hail. It lasted perhaps ten minutes and some of us got quite damp as we made up our backpacks and started on down. We had a few more squalls but we reached the roadhead in good spirits at 6:00pm. Our trip was scheduled to Dubois on Monday but no one was very keen for it so we scrubbed it. We had a good trip and some weather excitement to add spice.

Boundary has an original Sierra Club rectangular register box with broken hinges and one full book and one half full small spiral bound book. Montgomery has three register books dating from 1967 that are cramped in the small nesting tin cans. It deserves a bigger container. Participants were:

Barbara Reber
Bill T Russell
Pat Russell
Evan Samuels
Hoda Shalaby
George Smith
Bill Tryon
David Verner