MT Adventures by Brian Story

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Camas crest ridge loop

It has been over a month, but Leah and I spent a late July weekend trading off mountain scramble days in the Bitterroot.  Saturday was my play day, and I biked out from the Coyote Coulee trailhead at a respectable 7 am.  In less than ninety minutes, I cruised past the Camas trailhead and bounced along to the point where the trail turns up Camas creek proper.  After a full snack sunscreen, shoe swap break, I cruised up to Camas lake, and then up to East Camas peak.  It was supposed to be a blistering hot day in the valley, but the morning was pleasant.  The remainder of the traverse went smoothly, and was quite an enjoyable loop.  I made reasonable time on the boulder hop out to West Camas with a ten minute stop to procure water from a slow drip in a ridge top snowbank.

View from East Camas, showing most of the ridge to West Camas and the Fin.

Looking back from the Fin to East and West Camas.

View from West Camas South to the Lost Horse drainage,
Koch, El Capitan and the Shard.

From West Camas, I bypassed the sharp point at the very head of the drainage (on the East) before regaining the ridge and walking easily to the top of the Fin.  There was also a lot of boulder hopping just South of the crest to Ward, but that section went quickly enough to afford time to walk all the way across the plateau to the exact summit.  I descended the South face of Ward under a blazing sun directly to the middle lakes, ran back down to Camas lake, took a dip, then made the easy run out to the trailhead without difficulty.  The bike back to Coyote Coulee was quick and made for a nice way to round out the day.

Ward South face, with my descent right down the middle.

Thoughts  It was good to finally, finally do this very logical loop. It is a good one.  Biking up the road is not necessary, but it adds to the effort required and helps reduce driving time, which is a little long relative to the length of the outing.  The rest of the weekend was spent lazily camping and picking huckleberries, and shuttling Leah on a similar Camas loop.  She one upped my style by tacking on a full descent off Ward to the Ward/Sawtooth trailhead.