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| Alpine Peak, Sawtooth Mountains, with Sawtooth Lake below. (all photos by Anna Gorin) |
Hi all,
Anna Gorin has Idaho mountain fever.
A Boise photographer in her young 30s, she pursues big hikes in the Idaho
mountains, bagging peaks at a blistering pace. She might climb three
mountain peaks in a week, or even a day. She’s scaled 53 mountain peaks so far in
2023, and in 2021, she notched more than 70 Idaho peaks. Overall, she’s notched
over 160 high points in Idaho.
“I love getting out in nature and seeing beautiful views,
plus the accomplishment of climbing to the summit,” Gorin says. “I love the
alpine scenery, alpine meadows full of glowing wildflowers, and the snow-capped
mountains make my heart sing.”
Gorin is on track to join the lists of the most accomplished
peak-baggers in Idaho who have climbed more than 300 high points or more. Who knows, at this rate, she might even reach 500.
“Anna not only has a talented photographer’s eye for
composition but also a climber’s eye for finding the best lines up mountains,
said Tom Lopez, a prolific mountain-climber and author of “Idaho: The Climbing
Guide.”
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| Galena Peak - what a view! (Courtesy Anna Gorin) |
Like me, Lopez has noticed that Anna Gorin is making significant tracks in Idaho's high country. For my outdoor tip of the week, I wanted to introduce Anna Gorin as someone to watch in the outdoor scene, if you haven’t noticed already! I recommend people pay attention to Gorin’s trip posts on the Hiking Idaho Facebook group. I’ve enjoyed reading about her trips and seeing her scale mountains on trails I haven’t experienced before, despite the fact that I’ve spent the last 40 years trying to cover every square inch of Idaho’s backcountry.
Gorin’s energy for exploring Idaho’s mountains is infectious
just by the quality of the photos in her posts (she carries a good camera with
her on trips), and the raging enthusiasm exhibited by her friends in her summit
photos. She’s got a core group of 10-15 friends who go frequently. They’re
clearly in great shape and having a great time, but you know that they felt
their thighs and lungs burning on the climbs just like any other human being. But
they had the gumption and perseverance to reach the summit.
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| Being goofy on Gunsight Mountain (Courtesy Anna Gorin) |
They’ve also got the gusto to bag new peaks as often as possible, putting in late night drives on the bookends of trips to reach the mountains from Boise.
“I like to vary it between McCall, Stanley, Ketchum and Fairfield,
depending on the weather. I enjoy going to see new places.”
Just on the spur of the moment, Gorin said her top 5
favorite Idaho peaks are:
- Standhope Peak in the Pioneer Mountains (elev 11,878 feet). “The view from the top was epic!” she says.
- Johnstone Peak in the Pioneers (elev 9,879 feet). “Sometimes the smaller mountains have better views of the peaks above.”
- Elk Ridge in the Soldier Mountains (elev 8,551 feet). “It’s so pretty up there. That one has a great effort-to-reward ratio."
- He Devil in the Seven Devils Range, Hells Canyon (elev 9,400 feet). She saw mountain goats up there.
- Kelly Peak in the Sawtooths (elev 9,321). “That peak has extensive views of the southern part of the Sawtooths.”
Gorin grew up in Boise. She didn’t really experience the
outdoors that much as a kid. Her parents home-schooled her; the family went to Stanley maybe once a year. She went to Willamette University for college, majoring in art. She
launched a photography business after returning to Boise from college, and she’s
been doing that for over 10 years now. She does portraits in outdoor settings
for clients and landscape photography. See more at annagorin.com
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| Anna knows where to find the beauty of Idaho ... Packer John Mountain with her beau, John. She also is dabbling with mountain biking. |
How she got into hiking: In her mid-20s, Gorin started hiking in the Boise foothills, scaling Table Rock, riding the Boise River Greenbelt, things like that. She joined some meet up hiking groups and 20-30 age groups to meet people to go hiking with. A friend convinced her to climb Mt. Borah, Idaho’s tallest mountain, in 2017. She had climbed Mt. Olympus in 2012, which she recalled being quite challenging. It was her first official peak.
After summiting Borah, she was blown away by the roof-top
view. “This is an amazing mountain," she thought. "There’s nothing else higher anywhere around
me. This is so cool!”
“I loved that feeling, and that drove me to climb more
mountains,” Gorin says.
Trip planning: She uses a wide variety of resources
in planning her trips, including hard-copy national forest and topo maps,
interactive Forest Service map, Caltopo maps online, Google Earth, Tom Lopez’s “Idaho:
A Climbing Guide,” Lists of John, and mountain-climbing notes from John Platt, who was a person cut from the
same cloth as Anna, but probably more of a technical climber than she wishes to
be.
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| Climbing ridge tops has rewards in terms of big views. But it's hard! |
She also uses AllTrails.com, Summit Post, and more online resources. She spends a lot of time planning trips to understand the challenges ahead; she checks on trail conditions; she checks on weather and snow levels before she goes. She recommends lots of advance planning for a safe journey. But even with all the planning, things can become challenging!
“I also enjoy the puzzle of getting places,” she says. “Sometimes
it can almost be like a problem-solving game to figure things out or thrash through
the brush while cross-country hiking to find our way to the top.”
Next time you’re online, watch for Gorin’s stunning
photography of Idaho’s mountains and trip notes. You might just discover some
new places to explore!
- - SS
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| Fishhook Point, Sawtooth Range (courtesy Anna Gorin) |
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