From Humble Beginnings Come Great Things (A Borah Love Story)

It all starts with a Big Hairy Dream and ends with a thriving sense of accomplishment and pride in oneself.

A few years ago I went through some big changes — many of them, eventually, for the better. One way I chose to cope was to start hiking, this time with intent and purpose. I spent a year traipsing all over Idaho: from her southwestern corner to her North Central forests to the equally stunning southeastern edge, where the state runs up against Yellowstone, Montana, and Wyoming. I chased some of the best trails she has — the Sawtooths, the Pioneer Mountains, Swan Valley, and more. I was hooked, and thrilled to be hooked. Somewhere in there an internal drumbeat started up, faint and steady, beating its way into the deepest part of me. It urged me onto the trails.

Every weekend I could, and most evenings after work, I chased those trails — in heat and cold, sometimes rain, even snow. My body was mostly willing to take the beating in exchange for some of the most stunning country I’d ever seen. And the drumbeat only got louder, its cadence quickening every time I finished a hard hike and pushed a little farther than the last. The pull was so strong it didn’t matter that I wasn’t ready for some of those trails — not in cardio, not in raw fitness. What I had was stubbornness: the ability to dig in and keep going even when my lungs and legs were screaming obscenities at me.

I remember vividly my first attempt at Shaw Mountain — Lucky Peak, up the Homestead trail, pushing a mountain bike the whole way (don’t ask). For three days afterward I couldn’t walk more than ten minutes without searing pain shooting through my legs and tendons. Not wise; a clear sign I was overtraining. But it taught me something I keep coming back to: you do it ‘till it’s done. I remember another day on Shaw when I dropped to the valley floor by the wrong trail and had to backtrack the long way to my car. The mountain took a lot out of me — partly my own lack of preparation, partly the fact that Homestead is one of the harder ways up.

I must have looked wrecked to anyone who saw me: sweaty, filthy, beyond tired, beaten down by over-ambition and a ludicrous sense of adventure. But the drumbeat kept me hungry for more. The peace and solitude out there far outweighed the risk of things going wrong, the soreness, the discomfort. And the pride I feel looking up at the Boise Front, at one of its tallest peaks — only the front, mind you; there are higher peaks farther back — is something I can’t measure and can’t seem to exhaust:

I climbed that,

I whisper it to myself from the valley floor, looking up at the cell tower on top of Shaw — a small reinforcement, a reminder of how far I’ve come. That first year I racked up 119 miles and 23,000 feet of climbing over 49 hikes. What a year. But I needed another Big Hairy Dream. I belong to a few hiking groups on Facebook — everyone from skilled mountaineers to casual foothill walkers — and they’re a great way to scout a hike before you commit to it. The pictures of Borah Peak are what got me. Her summit is the highest point in Idaho; her granite and copper-hued flanks are vivid and jagged. I felt the weight of her through a screen. The shadows pooled in her crevices alone told me how deep and serious she was.

She demands a lot from everyone who tries her, pro and casual alike. One reviewer on AllTrails summed it up: “It is not a mountain for posers.” She isn’t just hard, she’s dangerous — her weather as unpredictable as her jagged lines. Chicken-Out Ridge turns plenty of hopeful summiters around; the drop-offs are steep, and you cross stretches of the mountain’s bare spine to get from one side to the other. A fall there means serious injury, maybe worse. And that’s before you account for the bit of scrambling and bouldering it takes to finish her off. Again: not a mountain for posers.

So I set out that year with one intention: I will climb Borah, whatever it costs me, so long as I’m not hurt and it isn’t unsafe. The dream was already in my blood — impossible not to daydream about, impossible not to train for. Building on the previous year’s fitness, I threw myself at Boise’s Grand Slam Peaks: Mount Heinen, Cervidae Peak, Shaw Mountain, and Kepros. Heinen is the hardest of them, I think, and the best teacher — she’ll show you how to climb and descend steep ground safely if you let her. Somebody in one of those Facebook groups joked that I probably held the record for most Heinen laps in a single year. An excellent trainer, that mountain.

Here’s something I learned along the way: once you have a dream this size and start saying it out loud, people split into two camps. The healthy ones cheer you on. They take your dream on as their own, a little, and they mean it — cherish those people, keep them close. The others, the ones carrying their own jealousy or insecurity, will try to talk you down. Don’t listen. The thing about a dream like this, at least mine, is that it’s mine — nobody else’s. My fitness has nothing to do with anyone else’s. I’m in better shape than some and I’d get blown out of the water by plenty of others, and none of that matters. My Big Hairy Dream is whatever feels impossible to me, and challenging for me alone.

By now I’ve more than doubled last year’s numbers — 66,000 feet of climbing, 237 miles — and dropped about 35 pounds along the way. Will it be enough for Borah? There’s only one way to find out, and it’s written on the wall in the back room of a cabin that looks out at the incredible Pioneer Mountains: you do it ‘till it’s done.

“I’ve never had a dream in my life

Because a dream is what you want to do

But Still haven’t pursued.

I knew what I wanted

And I did it ‘till it was done

So I’ve been a dream I wanted

Since day one”

A Kern, 2005

Borah Peak will be my new Shaw Mountain.

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A note from the years since.

When I wrote this, Borah was still a dream I was training toward — the where-I-started. Since then I’ve stood on her summit twice, and the two climbs could not have been more different.

The first time, I was in the best shape of my life. Every one of those 66,000 feet of training paid out, and I went up strong — the dream realized exactly the way I had planned it.

The second time, years later, I came back softer. Not my worst, but nowhere near ready, carrying cracks in my preparation I already knew were there. Borah found every one of them and made me earn the summit step by step, fear walking beside me the whole way. It taught me more than the first climb ever did: the first proved I could do the thing when I was prepared; the second proved I could do it when I wasn’t — that the determination this whole story is about doesn’t expire the moment your fitness does.

And I’m not done. I’m planning a third climb this year or next — a new turn on the same Big Hairy Dream. Because the dream was never really about the mountain. It is about who you become chasing it, and who you stay when you come back less than ready and refuse to turn around anyway.

What is your Big Hairy Dream?