On Elk Summit road and ascending Savage Pass, I noted sardonically after days of single digit and subzero temperatures, the sun was beginning to warm the south face ridge up to freezing. This was my fifteenth day in a crossing of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Idaho and Montana. I didn’t know at the time, but I would arrive the next day at Lochsa Lodge on Highway 12. Ten days later I would return with a new set of snowshoes and continue the trip for the second crossing, that would end nearly one 100 miles south of Savage Pass.

Savage Pass Winter Ascent