[raising3hikers]

Ba Pk 8142' Louis Pk 7787' I drove out to the Twisp River road Friday evening and slept in the back of my truck to get an early start on my hike the next day. The road is in great shape and snow free all the way to the South Creek TH. I started hiking at 5:30am on the South Creek trail. It's also in great shape and snow free for the 1st 2 miles. Only a couple down logs across the way. After 2 miles, I took the Louis Lake trail, crossed the creek on a nice bridge and then put snowshoes on for a little while. There was patchy snow for a few hundred feet before deciding to take the snowshoes off. This trail is also in good shape with minimal tree debris. At 4700', I put snowshoes on again for good. I lost the trail on a big open slope because of deep snow cover but it didn't matter anymore, it was easy travel to Louis lake. The lake is 90% snow covered and I chose to walk the nice, flat lake to the other end. I headed up and found the upper lake while being impressed with Rennie Pks steep North facing walls.

Pt 7782 from upper Louis lake

As I began heading up the slopes, I had mistakingly thought Pt 7782 was Ba pk and became focused on getting to it's North ridge. Being 2000' below the pks, it's tough to tell which one is the highest. Anyways, I reached a saddle at 7520' south of Ba and North of Pt 7782. I scrambled up the ridge and was at the top. As I started to pull my camera out for pics, I looked back and saw Ba pk rising significantly higher than I was to the North.

Ba Pk from Pt 7782

So, I went back down the ridge to grab my snowshoes and decided to head up Ba's South ridge. It was slow going as I had to negotiate several pinnacles, gullies, etc. However, it went and I made it to the summit and found a register left by Fay.

the last bit to the summit of Ba

more nice looking pks in the area

looking to the North, Silverstar and Gardners

Louis Pk

register

page 2

With the time I took taking the wrong route, I wondered if I'd have enough time to try for Louis Pk. I wanted to get off the snow as it was being cooked by the sun. I decided to at least head over towards Louis and evaluate the snow conditions. I went down the much easier East ridge of Ba, up and over a small bump down to the saddle of Louis. The snow wasn't terrible so I decided to go for it. I scrambled up a couple hundred feet on the West ridge and then crossed some gullies and hit snow for the remaining couple hundred feet. I was happy to get this extra peak on the trip.

Ba from the Louis saddle

a great day to be in the mountains Pt 7782 center

Ba from Louis

I didn't find a register probably because I didn't want to dig in the snow for it. I headed back down and grabbed my gear. A couple fun glissades in the basin and easy plunge stepping had me back at the upper lake. From there, I retraced all of my steps back.

Louis lake

the raging South Creek

17 miles 6100' elevation gain 8hrs 45min

[RichP]

Good to see Sawtooth trip report. I'm hoping to spend some time over there this year. It's been too long for me!

[wildernessed]

Nice ! I have no idea why we didn’t think to do Lewis when we were up there and did Gibbs maybe it was the fishing but a reason to go back in the future. Good beta for Spring !

[Gimpilator]

That's a cool register. Thanks for the report.

[iron]

rugged terrain there. can't believe you glissaded!

[Stefan]

What? Only a measley 6100 feet for the day? Come on man! Show me more!

[cartman]

That's a good trip for spring. And for an overnight above Louis Lake, not that you ever actually do that. I do want to return there someday to do Rennie. I prefer the name Gibbs to Ba, the latter sounds so incomplete... Louis is a fairly straightforward glissade run back down to the basin.