The Beehive Five is a fantastic ridge traverse of five different peaks in Northern Idaho, just west of Bonners Ferry. And while the Beehive Five itself was fun and went to plan, our night of sleep before the traverse decidedly did not go to plan.
To set the scene: we started the trip by driving to the parking lot for the climb, up a long dirt road in the middle of nowhere. This is an area with lots of grizzly and black bears, with signs everywhere warning hikers to carry bear spray and keep an eye out for bears. So we were already on edge about bears. Brennen and I decided to sleep in the car, with all of our gear packed away in our car top carrier. Matt and David didn’t have a car top carrier, and in order to sleep in their car they would have to move everything from their trunk into the front seats. They decided that would be too much work, so instead of sleeping in the car, they decided to sleep in bivy sacks between our two cars. This is what they looked like going to sleep that evening:
Matt and David in bivy sacks
So we handed them our bear sprays, which they set next to their sacks. Matt asked us to set off the car alarm if we saw a bear so that they could know to whip out the bear spray, and we agreed. With that, they went to sleep in their sacks and Brennen and I locked our doors and fell asleep in our Subaru Outback.
In the middle of the night, Brennen had a spider dream. Brennen has an intense phobia of spiders, and when he has spider dreams he generally wakes up screaming bloody murder, reassures himself that it was just a dream and that there aren’t actually any spiders in his bed, and goes back to sleep. This time though, he took it a step further. This time he managed to eject himself from his sleeping bag and into the front seat of the car (which he normally struggles to do while conscious), open the front door of the car, and run out. Since we had locked the car from the inside, this caused the car alarm to go off.
Matt and David then woke up in the dead of night hearing the car alarm blaring and, thinking there must be a bear nearby, panicked. David immediately runs to the car and locks himself inside. Matt, unfortunately, didn’t have his glasses on and couldn’t see anything. So he grabs the bear spray, takes off the safety clip, and starts blindly waving it in all directions. “Brennen, where’s the bear? WHERE IS HE BRENNEN?”
“I had a spider dream,” Brennen said, finally waking up and realizing that there probably weren’t three large wolf spiders trying to attack him from inside the car. Later Matt would say he was a flip of the coin away from blasting Brennen with bear spray, thinking his movement might be a grizzly. Brennen got back in the car and went back to sleep. But Matt and David were thoroughly traumatized by the experience, and realized that if a bear were to show up, they were not prepared to deal with it. So in the middle of the night they moved all of their stuff from the trunk of their car to the front seat so that they wouldn’t have to sleep outside the rest of the night. They didn’t spend a single night of the trip in their bivy sacks again.
That was our only mishap of the trip. Unless you count when I accidentally discharged bear spray in our house just before leaving (do NOT do this EVER if you can avoid it), or when our map directions took us an hour drive up the wrong road for a climb we wanted to do, or when David’s hand accidentally got a deep puncture wound from Brennen’s crampons while descending a couloir, or when I tripped and somersaulted down a hill in Banff, or when Brennen got charged by a bighorn sheep…
The Climb
Anyway. We woke up at 7am a little more tired than we were expecting, but ready to finally do some climbing. We were at the Harrison Lake Trailhead, which we’d gotten to by using the directions from this AllTrails. It was a nice place to spend the night since there was a toilet right at the trailhead. The toilet did have a small wasp nest inside, and was riddled with bullet holes, but still a toilet. There was no service there, so it was important to save beta for the Beehive Five traverse before heading out. I was also able to save this fantastic CalTopo by Nick Crews, which I bookmarked in the CalTopo app and was able to use even without service. Although in all honesty, staying on route isn’t very hard and the directions are pretty simple. It’s one big loop that goes in the clockwise direction, and from trailhead to trailhead it was around 8.5 miles of hiking/scrambling/climbing (although only one very short part where ropes were necessary). For a very quick summary: Hike down the road until you reach a meadow, hike through the meadow to the base of the dome, traverse south along the dome until it looks easy to climb, hike to the top of the dome, follow the ridge until you hit a left/right junction and go right, and finally follow the ridge until you’re at the saddle above Harrison Lake and hike down.
We started by walking downhill from the trailhead for about half a mile to an obvious clearing where Beehive Dome is in clear view. There’s also a nice rock band coming down from the dome that we aimed for. We then bushwhacked through the clearing to the base of the dome, with one river crossing along the way. Brennen chose to hop rocks, which almost proved to be catastrophic, while Matt, David, and I took off our shoes and waded through the icy river.
The clearing and the dome ahead, with the rock band coming down through the brush.Brennen hopping rocks.
After reaching the base of the dome, we skirted it to the left through bushes until the grade looked gentle enough to climb. At one point a mountain goat peered down at us from up on the dome. We hiked straight up the slab until we reached the top, a good wake up for the calves. It took us (me, since I was slowest) about two hours from the base of the dome to the top.
Me on the start of the slab.
From the top of the dome you can see the rest of the climb through the trees. Harrison Peak is directly north, with its striking overhanging feature sagging from the top. Harrison is often added on as a sixth peak to the Beehive Five, but we chose not to climb it this time. To the west is Unnamed Peak #2 of the Beehive Five. And there’s a good bit of doable bushwhack between the top of the Dome and the next peak. Once you’ve made it through the trees and bushes though there is some fun third and fourth class scrambling to Peak #2. We headed to the second peak. It took us about an hour and a half between the top of Beehive Dome and the second peak.
Of the two bumpy peaks in the picture, the unnamed one for Beehive Five is on the right. The peak on the left is Twin Peaks and is not a part of the Beehive Five.Bushwhacking between Beehive Dome and Peak #2Starting the fun third and fourth class scrambling, nearing the top of Peak 2. You pass between two lakes on the way there, and you can see the edge of one of the lakes on the right side of this photo.One of the fourth class bits to the top of Peak 2A look at the remainder of the route from the top of Peak #2.
From the top of the peak 2 we turned right (north) to continue the traverse. Getting to Peak #3 was fairly easy, with only second and third class scrambling.
A look back at Peak #2 on the way to Peak #3. Peak #2 is directly above Brennen. The peak on the right is Twin Peaks.
Coming off of Peak #3 and heading toward the fin is where the climbing starts to get tricky. We went from climbing third and easy fourth class to down-climbing solid fourth class, maybe a little low fifth. We didn’t rope up for this bit, although I could see people roping up for safety for this bit since the climbing is harder and since it’s pretty exposed. The fin really comes into view on this section, and the ridge you see that you’ll have to climb looks intimidating. But the closer we got the easier the climbing looked.
Some tricky down climbing, with the Fin looking glorious in the background. David (with the yellow backpack on) is at one of the down climbing cruxes.
At the base of the ridge, after down climbing, we decided to rope up but climb with approach shoes on. In retrospect I might have liked climbing shoes. We brought two 35m ropes (we cut one of my old but still useable ropes in half ahead of time) and simul-climbed the ridge in two pairs. We brought one single rack with us. Matt led, David followed and unclipped but left the cams in, I led and clipped Matt’s cams, and Brennen followed me. One short pitch brought us to a large ledge, and we threw in an anchor here to hand over gear. The second pitch brought us to the top. We should have stuck to the skyline, but Matt didn’t know that, so he skirted to the left of the ridge on the final pitch, which involved a very spooky exposed move that I would have rather avoided. I’m not sure if the 35m rope reaches the top from the ledge since we simul-climbed it.
Matt on lead, first of the two pitches we did.
This ridge had MASSIVE exposure, with hundreds of feet of air on either side. The moves were never harder than 5.4, but I was glad to have a rope for that amount of exposure. For comparison, Pigeon Spire in the Bugaboos is also 5.4. I would feel comfortable soloing Pigeon Spire, but I would not feel comfortable soloing this. This ridge is the best part of the route, and although short, brought this route of from good to great for me. The rock is also fantastic.
Once we made it up the ridge, it was an easy hike along the top of the fin. It’s exposed on the east side, but a gentle slope on the west side.
Brennen and I hiking along the top of the Fin.
Getting to the next peak is an easy hike/scramble, with some bushwhacking. From this peak Harrison Lake comes into view down below. We scrambled down and over to one more subpeak, and then finally down to the saddle above Harrison Lake.
Harrison Lake, with Harrison Peak behind it. The saddle is just left of Harrison peak.
We hiked straight from the saddle down to Harrison Lake, where we found a campground next to the lake. Every map we’ve seen skirts Harrison Lake to the north, so there’s maybe a trail that way. But the south just had boulders and not much snow this time of year, so we skirted it to the south without any trouble. The led us to a series of campgrounds with lots of people camping and fishing, and to a nice 2.5 mile trail (the same trail in the AllTrails we used to get to the trailhead) all the way back to the car. We sped walked / jogged back to the car.
All in all it took us around nine hours car to car. A comment on Mountain Project says “6 to 8 hours is pretty typical”, so maybe we were a little slow, or maybe the commenter was an under-estimator because I didn’t feel particularly slow.
Overall, fantastic route. Would climb again. Bailing is easy at pretty much any point if weather were to get iffy.
After finishing the route we hopped in our cars and drove up and into Canada. The next four days we’d be spending in the Bugaboos, which is for another blog post.
Timeline:
Car to top of Beehive Dome: 7am-9am (2 hours)
Beehive Dome to Peak #2: 9am-10:30am (1.5 hours)
Peak #2-Peak #3: 10:30am-11am (30 mins)
Peak #3 to base of the Fin: 11am-12:30pm (1.5 hours)
Base of the Fin to top of the Fin (end of roped climbing): 12:30pm-1:15pm (45 mins)
Top of the Fin to Peak #5: 1:15pm-2:15pm (1 hour)
Peak #5 to Harrison Lake: 2:15pm-3:15pm (1 hour)
Harrison Lake to Trailhead: 3:15pm- ~4pm (45 mins)
Looks a spectacular route and seems like you had a great day. Thanks for posting. Sorry, but I had to chuckle at some of the mishaps you had in the Intro!
Mike
Parents refers to a larger category under which an object falls. For example, theAconcagua mountain page has the 'Aconcagua Group' and the 'Seven Summits' asparents and is a parent itself to many routes, photos, and Trip Reports.
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