IDAHO: A Climbing Guide

Category: Ken Jones

  • Ken Jones and Bob Packard: First to Complete Idaho’s County High Points by Ken Jones

    Ken Jones and Bob Packard: First to Complete Idaho’s County High Points by Ken Jones

    Idaho’s county high points are not only scattered all over Idaho but also encompass many access and climbing problems. Ken Jones and Bob Packard mutually agreed to complete the list on September 2, 2001. Below Ken Jones recounts the event.

    In the summer of 2001 as I looked forward to completing the Idaho county high points I realized that there was a chance I could be the first completer.  But it also appeared that my good friend Bob Packard, from Flagstaff AZ, could beat me to the punch.  Maybe he wasn’t aware of the race, and I could beat him to it!  Maybe he was planning to leave me in the dust (he was retired, I was not).  What to do?

    So I sat down with our respective lists and proposed to Bob that we schedule a joint completion on Illinois Peak in Shoshone county – we both needed it still, and it looked like a good place to finish.  We picked a date in early September, and I scheduled my wife and sons to join us.

    Now, all I had to do was complete the remaining peaks before Illinois Peak while Bob completed his somewhat different set to get to the finish line.  I did several solo trips, my 9-year-old son’s first backpack (Snowyside Peak, he fell in the water on a stream crossing but all turned out well), and a big multi-peak trip with another Arizona friend, Andy Martin.  After a backpack with Idaho hiking buddy Roger Williams to Big Baldy on the last weekend in August I was ready.  The family and I hiked Rhodes Peak on Sunday, September 2 and met Bob near the trailhead for Illinois Peak on Labor Day morning.

    The hike went well, and we positioned ourselves on opposite sides of the summit to touch simultaneously for a joint completion (although I was on the Pacific time zone side while Bob was on the Mountain time zone side, so you could argue that I finished an hour before him – if you don’t understand time zones!).

  • Ken Jones climbs all of Idaho’s 2,000 foot prominence peaks.

    Ken Jones climbs all of Idaho’s 2,000 foot prominence peaks.

    On September 28, 2015, Ken Jones reached the summit of Grave Peak in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness and became the first person to climb all 100 Idaho peaks with prominence exceeding 2,000 feet. Climbing every peak on this list is an impressive accomplishment which took an incredible amount of determination and support.

    Ken Jones on the summit of Ryan Peak (2015).

    Ken notes that: “Although far too many of the hikes were, in fact, done solo, I can honestly say that I never could have done it alone. I’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to all who hiked with me or provided information that helped me find a decent summit route”

    “First off, thanks to my wife Karen for hiking with me on some of them and for encouraging me to pursue the list rather than complaining about the time I spent away from home. Thanks also to my sons Evan and Colin for their company on some of the peaks (before they grew up and moved to graduate programs too far from home to spend their free time hiking in Idaho).

    I would especially like to thank Dennis Poulin for joining me for many of these peaks even when they were my priority but not his (especially, I think, a long day last month on Sheep Mountain), and Ryder Irvine who joined me for many (including an off-trail slog through brush, rain, wind, and eventually snow on Moose Creek Buttes on my birthday this year).

    Thanks too to others who’ve hiked with me in Idaho. I hope I don’t overlook anyone and apologize if I have: Bob Packard, Dean Molen, Greg Jagielski, Kadee Smith, Victor Zhou, Roger Williams, Dan Robbins, Andy Martin, and John Hamann.

    I cannot close without thanking Tom Lopez for his Idaho: A Climbing Guide book, without which I would have been at a loss many times for the best approach to each summit.

    I encourage anyone with any possible interest in this list to give it a try. I can recommend a few peaks as particularly delightful, and others as particularly challenging. Just let me know what you’re looking for!”

    2,000 foot Prominence Peak Lists.

    peakbagger.com P2k List.

    Lists of John P2k List.

    When he was asked about the difficulties involved in completing the list, Ken wrote: “Andy M asked me about which peak was the most technical on the list. I would say that nothing gets beyond Class 3 and I don’t recall using a rope at any time (and as those who’ve hiked with me know, if I didn’t use a rope not many people would). He also asked about which peak might have the toughest access. If by that he meant getting permission to cross private property then that’s not a discussion I want to have in public. But I will say that I avoided long access hikes to more than one summit by flying in to a back-country air strip to shorten a backpack. I don’t think I’d done that since Denali. Without the flights, someone who hikes at my pace might have taken a week to get a single peak in two or three instances.”

    Ken, along with Bob Packard, was the first to complete all of Idaho’s county highpoints.