Peak 8641 (Bitterroots)- June 13, 2026

Leader: Forest Dean

Participants: Tony Lebaron, Mason Schweyen, Michelle Brown

The four of us met at the Watchtower Creek trailhead area on Friday evening about 8:00pm. Set up camp and had a nice little campfire and roasted some s’mores! Awoke around 6:00pm on Saturday to a stellar day. We got started up the trail at 7:15. Unbridged creek crossing at ¾ mile woke us up for the day. Over the 6.5 miles to where we left the trail there was probably 200 trees down; however, none of them were really difficult to just step over and thus it didn’t really equate to much lost time. From where we left the trail, we hiked through totally open understory, crossed the creek again, then headed up an older avalanche chute to treeline. Here (around 7000’) we finally encountered snow and put our crampons on.  We then hiked to a saddle to the southeast of the Peak. The final 600’ to the summit was on a south aspect and only a few patches of snow. We stepped on the summit about 12:30pm- 8.25 miles and 3800’ of gain. Near perfect weather, so we lounged a bit, had lunch, took pictures. No obvious signs of humans having been there. Started back down at 1:15. Descended a slightly different way to allow for some nice long glissades while descending from the aforementioned saddle- fun stuff!  Back to the trail and then the long slog out. We got back to the trailhead at 5:30 then headed to Higherground Brewing in Hamilton for celebratory pizzas and beverages.  Fun day with a great crew!  Forest Dean