Dan Noakes skis all 9 of Idaho's 12,000-foot peaks

Hi all,

Many of you may remember my story about Donnelly resident Dan Noakes hiking the Idaho Centennial Trail in only 52 days in the summer of 2018.

Considering the HUGE amount of downfall and brush that he had to plow through on the 1,000-mile trail, plus using serious route-finding skills necessary to stay on course -- and having the mental toughness to persevere on a mostly solo adventure -- you know that Dan Noakes is a super strong outdoor athlete!

And he's ambitious! His next big adventure was to summit and ski all nine of Idaho's 12,000-foot peaks in one year! He not only skied the peaks, he often skied the most extreme line possible on the way down those mountains! Phew!

To top off the adventures, Dan is super handy with video production, using GoPros expertly in the field, to share some of the most challenging, hard-to-film moments of his journeys with all of us. You can learn more how he climbed and skied each mountain on a separate YouTube episode on Dan's Channel.

Thanks to Star-News writer Drew Dodson and editor Tom Grote for sharing Drew's story, published today, about Dan's adventure ... I have a few quotes to share for perspective below his story.

Peak Performance - McCall man climbs, skies all 9 Idaho peaks over 12,000 feet 

BY DREW DODSON
The Star-News

Clinging to a steep snow-covered mountainside near the apex of Idaho itself, Dan Noakes peered down as his fear and self-doubt plunged to the mountain floor in a procession of snow chunks and pebbles.

“I mean, these peaks could gobble you up in a second if they wanted,” said Noakes, 35, of Donnelly. “If the snow fractures or a loose rock gives out, you could just be a goner.”

“They’re almost like a loyal friend that notices your full potential,” he said.

Noakes recently completed a personal quest to climb and ski all nine of Idaho’s 12,000-foot peaks, a feat known to have been completed by only professional skier Mark Ortiz and a few others.

The idea was born in a waiting room at St. Luke’s McCall a year ago as Noakes’ wife was in labor with their first child and he was watching a ski movie that featured Mount Church in Idaho’s Lost River Range, which is home to seven of the nine peaks.

Noakes tackled that peak almost immediately last spring, and within a year, managed to climb and ski all eight others, some accompanied by friends and others alone.

Collectively, the undertaking took Noakes a total of about 80 hours, 92.2 miles of hiking, skiing and bicycling and one calendar year.

Now Noakes is releasing a docu-series on YouTube chronicling each peak. Producing episodes using footage from his trips requires about another 16 hours per peak, Noakes said.

New episodes are released Wednesdays on Noakes’ YouTube channel, which can be found by searching “Dan Noakes” on youtube.com.

Each of the nine peaks offered unique challenges, but the toughest peak for Noakes’ money was Diamond Peak, the last he completed, and on his 35^th birthday no less.

Rocky and near vertical terrain covered by a couple inches of fresh snow made finding footholds sketchy at best, even with the use of crampons, or spiked cleat attachments for ski boots, Noakes said.

While walking the tightrope ridgeline, Noakes’ right foot slipped and brought him face to face with the prospect of a 2,000-foot tumble to the mountain’s base.

“The main thing that caught me was my whippet, which is an ice axe connected to the handle of a ski pole,” he said. “That was really scary.”

That experience was the only true close call among all of the peaks, though much of it was a balancing act eerily similar to navigating icy, narrow ridgelines, Noakes said.

“It was a battle of is this intuition or is this fear?” he said. “With each step forward, I said, ‘I think it’s my fear, I’m gonna go for it.’”

That lesson is applicable not only to skiing Idaho’s tallest mountains, but also to the challenges people encounter every day that at first seem too daunting, Noakes said.

“If you just go one step closer, then you find out ‘oh, I can go one step further,’” Noakes said. “And then you keep going and you find out, ‘oh, it’s not as bad as I thought.’”

“You can take that energy and put it somewhere else, whether it’s a relationship or starting a business,” he said.

Noakes is not producing the docu-series for profit, but in hopes that it inspires others to derive self-worth from fulfilling personal goals rather than letting their net worth or career dictate it.

“You come back with a sense of self-confidence and self-peace,” Noakes said. “But I think what a lot of people struggle with is that society doesn’t really reward you for these endeavors.”

Powder conditions made Mount Idaho’s near 50-degree slopes the best of the nine peaks, while Mount Church claimed the title for longest outing at 14 hours and 23 miles roundtrip, Noakes said.

Noakes escaped any falls while skiing or scaling near vertical snow walls, but was forced to drop-trou on top of Donaldson Peak after the urge of nature calling became too much to ignore.

Each mountain ascent was plotted using Google Earth and uploaded to a Garmin GPS device Noakes used to keep him generally on track for each peak.

Noakes owns a local animation company called “Motifize” and is known locally for his pursuit of extreme outdoor activities, including in 2018 when he hiked the 1,000-mile Idaho Centennial Trail.

(c) McCall Star News

This is what Tom Lopez, author of Idaho: A Climber's Guide, had to say about Dan's adventure:

"Just summiting the 12ers in a short period of time is an impressive accomplishment. Doing it in winter-like conditions takes the effort to another level. Skiing down them? The first thought to cross my mind was "wow." The next thought was what a crazy, bold, dangerous challenge. Dan Noakes rocks!"

SS: Which was harder? Tackling the ICT or summiting and skiing all the 12ers?

DN: "I have asked myself that question. They are two different beasts. I would say that the 12ers are scarier because there are spots with high consequences if you fall. Skiing is the same, high consequence if you fall and then are alone out in the Lost River Range. 

"With that said, the ICT is more of a challenge overall IMO. It is longer miles, a ton of bushwhacking, more of a commitment for sure and more endurance because you have to travel 940 miles instead of 90 is what I traveled on the 12ers. This is all my opinion."

SS: Which was tougher mentally, the ICT?

DN: "Oh gosh. Yes I think overall the unknowns and being away alone in the wilderness for so long on the ICT was more mentally taxing. With the 12ers you had the thrill of skiing, which made up for any agony that you felt on the way up."

There you have it! Are you inspired?

Idaho’s 12,000-foot Peaks

1.     Mount Borah: 12,667’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
2.     Leatherman Peak: 12,228’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
3.     Mount Church: 12,201’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
4.     Diamond Peak: 12,197’ – Butte County, Lemhi Range
5.     Mount Breitenbach: 12,140’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
6.     Lost River Mountain: 12,078’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
7.     Mount Idaho: 12,064’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
8.     Donaldson Peak: 12,023’ – Custer County, Lost River Range
9.     Hyndman Peak: 12,009’ – Blaine County, Pioneer Mountains

(All photos courtesy Dan Noakes)

- SS

Dan Noakes of McCall just completed the Idaho Centennial Trail in 52 days ... Wow! What an adventure!

Dan and Michelle Noakes at the Idaho-Canada border ... the end of the ICT on the Upper Priest River by a cool waterfall. 

Hi all,

Dan Noakes emailed me yesterday, saying that he had just completed the Idaho Centennial Trail. He shared a video trailer with a few nuggets from the super-challenging 900-mile journey. I took a quick look at the video, and it was a visual feast.

The stream-crossings that he captured on video looked scary and epic, including one where he's doing a belly-crawl across a skinny lodgepole pine tree over the top of a rushing stream. And then there's this segment where he's saying "I'm so cold, I'm so cold," running with his pack on through the forest to avoid hypothermia. Take a look ...

Dan wrote me because I wrote a guidebook about the Idaho Centennial Trail for the Idaho Trails Council in 1998. We didn't have a lot of budget, but it was a first attempt to provide a detailed guide to navigating the trail, albeit with horrible big-picture maps that were scaled to page size and reprinted from BLM and Forest Service maps.

The value of the book is that folks can learn about the history of how the trail was created through the inspiration of ICT pioneers Roger Williams and Syd Tate, who hiked the length of Idaho in the mid-1980s. It was the first time that anyone had done that, to anyone's knowledge, and it served as inspiration to create an official Idaho Centennial Trail route during the Idaho Centennial year in 1990. Williams and Tate took 86 days to complete the journey, hiking at a pace of 14 miles a day. By the end, they each had lost 20 pounds and Tate had a big long beard. "Our legs looked like a weight-lifters and the top half looked like a prisoner of war," Williams said.

Stateline Trail on the Idaho-Montana border

ICT route (courtesy IDPR)
Left route is an alternative
route for motorcyles and bikes

The final ICT route ended up being a little different than the one that Williams and Tate did. It was selected by a committee of ITC people and Forest Service and BLM staffers. But the route overall did fulfill the vision that Williams charted from the get-go -- he wanted it to go through the "Best of Idaho," meaning the Sawtooth Wilderness, the Frank, the Selway-Bitterroot, the Stateline Trail, and the Cabinet Mountains in the Idaho Panhandle.

Noakes, 33, ripped through the 900-mile route in 52 days. He started on May 21 on the Idaho-Nevada border and finished the trek at the Idaho-Canada border on the Upper Priest River trail last week. His wife, Michelle, hiked the last section with him from Clark Fork to the Canadian border. Michelle helped with water and food drops, and Noakes had a friend join him for another segment of the hike. But for much of the route, he hiked alone. Did you know that the ICT hike features 90,000 feet of elevation gain/loss?

Noakes' father got him into backpacking when he was 11 years old. They often hiked the John Muir Trail. "He ingrained in me the spirit of backpacking," Noakes says. "I always wanted to check off a through-hike."

He found out about the Idaho Centennial Trail through a Google search, just looking for big through-hikes. He thought, it's only 900 miles, shouldn't be too big of a deal ... but when he was out in the big wide open Jarbidge and Bruneau desert, hiking the two-tracks next to those big canyons, and realizing how far he had to go, "I realized this was going to be a big deal. It was the real deal."

Noakes planned to hike at least 20 miles a day; sometimes more if he felt he could go farther. He carried a light-weight pack of just over 30 pounds with all of his gear -- clothes, cook stove, food, water, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tent, etc. He wore Altra Timp hiking shoes, and went through several pairs during the big adventure.

To plan the trip, Noakes ran across Clay Jacobson's web site, Idaho Centennial Trail.org, which provides a ton of useful information, including the names of the people who have done the thru-hike in recent years. Thomas Ord told him where to do the water drops in the desert section. Another hiker gave him the complete GPX file to the ICT, the trail tracks for the whole route.

There's still just a handful of people who have completed the trail since it was designated in 1990. It's not that well-known, or heavily publicized, and the difficulty level is pretty extreme in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness because of heavy blowdown and trail-finding. That's a sad commentary, compared how things were 30 years ago, when the trails in those wilderness areas were some the most well-maintained anywhere in the state.

Fortunately, Noakes had a good GPS that had the ICT route built-in, and he forged ahead, knowing he was going in the right general direction. He hoped to rejoin the trail when it became visible again. "I lost the trail many, many times," he says. "The trail is non-existent at some points."

Segments of Marble Creek, upper Kelly Creek and Windy Creek had a lot of downfall, but at least things improved after a few hours of walking, he said. The Idaho Trails Association and Frank Church-Selway Bitterroot Foundation have been working on opening up Marble Creek for several years. But once he got into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness section, he said, the route-finding and hiking were miserable.

"That section was the hardest for me. Every day, it was cold, rainy and wet, and the blowdown trees were epic. The challenges in the Selway would make a grown man cry. But what makes it so great, is that after you get through there, you think, dang, I did this. You feel a real deep sense of accomplishment."

Michelle met him at Wilderness Gateway Campground on U.S. 12 next to the Lochsa, and Dan must have been SO happy to see her! Imagine how that experience may help in other aspects in life, when he'll feel his patience tested by whatever, and he'll know that he's experienced far more difficult things on his ICT hike. "I was in pain pretty much the whole time," he says.

When Noakes arrived at Moose Creek Ranger Station in the middle of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, he sniffed a campfire burning and went directly to it. Some pilots were hanging out by the airstrip, and they warmed him up. That was one of his favorite moments of the hike.

He also really enjoyed the Stateline Trail between Idaho and Montana, going north from Hoodoo Pass to Wallace. "The could be some of the greatest backpacking in that area," he says. "But when I was there, I was walking on snow most of the time." He took a break in Wallace, wandered into the public library in town, and ran across my ICT guide. He hadn't seen it before the trip. He loved reading about Syd and Roger's vision and adventure.

In terms of wildlife, Noakes saw a big wolf on a hillside on a stormy day. He wasn't able to get any pics or video. He saw a lot of wolf tracks along the way, a few elk, 1 moose and 1 bear. He heard from another ICT hiker that the guy had gotten charged by a black bear. That would be scary.

Noakes, who's a professional video animator for his company, Motifize.com, plans to release a new video segment about his big adventure each Monday until he's exhausted his video from the trip. The first segment will run on Monday, July 23, on his YouTube channel and continue each week. I know I'll be watching.

"There's something magical about the Idaho Centennial Trail," he says. "I think if you experience it, it might change you for the better. For a lot of people, it could be a life-changing experience, and here it is, right in our backyard."

Kelly Creek country ... it's located in a roadless area that is not official wilderness, but wilderness just the same.

When I did the ICT book, I suggested that every Idahoans should consider making it a lifetime project to experience all the segments of the ICT. Not everyone can do it in one fell swoop, especially if they're working a full-time job, raising kids, etc. Noakes agrees. "Everybody needs to experience the ICT at some point in their lives."

While other long-distance trails can be tackled as well, such as the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, or the Continental Divide Trail. But the ICT is probably one of the most challenging and primitive thru-hikes anywhere in the U.S. You won't see many trail signs. You'll frequently lose the trail. You'll have to deal with a ton of blow-down timber across the trail. You'll have to navigate  super-challenging stream crossings. But it will make you a more skilled outdoors person, and perhaps a better and stronger person overall.

I am hoping to do it in the next 5 years while I still can! Hope you can plan a trip on the ICT too! Thanks to Dan Noakes for the inspiration!
- SS