Trent's Experience: Altitude in Summer: Coney Lake, Beaver Reservoir Trailhead, Indian Peaks Wilderness & James Peak Wilderness

ProTrails: Coney Lake, Beaver Reservoir Trailhead, Indian Peaks Wilderness & James Peak Wilderness
Saturday started off blustery and managed to maintain that attitude until we left. We started from the Coney Flat trail h

ead at 8:45 on the almost 7 mile trek up to Buchanan Pass, with the intent of summiting Sawtooth Mountain at 12,304 feet above sea level. Buchanan Pass is the saddle or low point between Sawtooth & the peak just to the north (right) of Sawtooth. Walking up to Sawtooth would have put us just east of the Continental Divide.
It was interesting to note that just a few months earlier, Jim had gone cross country skiing on the same rocky road we were hiking. Apparently, a couple of feet of snow makes a big difference! Still, there was a 5-15 foot drop off on the right side of the road in some places!
We made it to the Buchanan Pass trail head about 2 hours later. We had been protected from a lot of the wind whilst in the trees, but we were coming up to the tree line. The hike started around 9230 elevation, so after a couple of hours of hiking up, the trees had started to thin out. Not to mention that shortly after leaving Coney Flats on the Buchanan Pass trail, we soon lost the trail in the large snow banks. 3 days away from summer and we were walking across acres of snow. Fortunately, we did very little postholing, and just a few more fall down spills. Nobody went hurtling to the end of the snowbank unintentionally, although I did glissade down about 25 feet to avoid the next 25 yards of crossing the snow bank.
We crossed a field of boulders, then crashed through some low evergreens, crossed a swollen stream & voila! there was the trail. Finally, three hours after Coney flats, five hours after embarking, we got to the last ridge before Buchanan Pass. We were at 11,662 feet elevation. There was a large snowfield blocking our way to Buchanan Pass. We could try to walk across it, but slipping meant a long slide down the side of a mountain! Who knew how deep the snow was, feet or inches? We had gotten within 900 feet of the 12,304 foot peak of Sawtooth, a wonderful place to be so close to summer, although the peak would have felt like the dead of winter!
So we declared victory, had a bite to eat, gloried in the blustery beauty of alpine elevations in Roosevelt National Park, and started on the trek down. Slowly but surely, the oxygen became more plentiful. Headed east, we lost the trail again in a snowbank, but didn't get as far off track this time!
We finally got back to the car at around 5:15, making it an 8:45 min day, but far better than the best day at work!
The wildflowers were blooming, but not in vast numbers. There were a few big patches of Columbine just below 11,000 feet, including some huge yellow daisy like flowers over 3 inches in diameter & some tiny little white & purple flowers, maybe one-quarter inch in diameter. We didn't see much wildlife, save for a whistle pig on the way down.