Hi everyone,
I have tried for years to get a good photo of Pinnacle Peak in the Gros Ventre Range. The one I published in Select Peaks is marginal. I have always been skunked by bad weather either during aerial photo shoots or after climbing nearby peaks....until today.
Today, April 14, 2005, David Bowers, Wes Bunch, and I snowmobiled to the summer trailhead in Little Granite Creek and skinned to the summit of Peak 10,700 where I took this picture...not great, but at least there aren't clouds obscuring it. The standard southeast chimney route is located on the left side of the summit block in this picture.
David Bowers informed me that he learned in a Bondurant bar that Pinnacle Peak represents the head of the "Sleeping Maiden," a characterization I had not noticed before. According to bar-room legend, the Sleeping Maiden was banished by the Sleeping Indian because she became pregant by a white man and was sent into the mountains to die, where she rests today in the Gros Ventre.
Peak 10,700, the first of three summits we made today, represents the maiden's pregnant belly. We proceeded to ski the east face of the belly and then climbed Peak 10,405, which represents her left foot (Peak 10,285 represents her right foot.). We skied the east face of that peak into upper Boulder Creek, and then made a climb to Boulder Ridge for a fabulous corn run back into Boulder Creek, which we followed back to its confluence with Little Granite and the parked snowmobiles. While we were skiing the half mile back up Little Granite to retrieve the snowmobiles, the Sleeping Maiden was suddenly very clear to me.
New info and photo on Pinnacle Peak
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