Buckley Mountain - Awesome Mountain You've Never Heard Of

2:30 AM Saturday morning, the alarm goes off.  I dragged myself out of bed expecting to have a fairly mellow day climbing 9502 ft. Buckley Mountain. The Utah Climbing Club was scheduled to do Loafer Mountain and Santaquin Peak but extreme avalanche conditions forced a chance to smaller, less exotic, Buckley Mountain. Buckley Mountain sits right at the Provo – Springville border. Buckley, along with Y-Mountain and others are the shorter peaks that sit in front of the taller more well-known peaks like Provo, Cascade, Timpanogos, etc. I haven’t yet met anyone that has ever heard of Buckley mountain or paid any attention to it, despite the fact that it sits right there in front of everyone that lives in or drives around Provo.

My snowshoes and ice axe were already strapped to my pack. I just had to cram some oatmeal down my gullet and put some Carbo-Pro and Nuun in my water bottles. When I hopped in my truck the local radio station KRCL was playing late-80’s/early 90’s hip hop. All the stuff I listened to in Jr. high and early years of high school:  Humpty Dance, Buffalo Stance, Mama Said Knock You Out. It was a good morning.  This was my first outing with the Utah Climbing Club so I popped into the Mountain Works climbing shop to meet everyone else. Everyone looked as bedraggled as I felt. We drove in a procession to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail head in south Provo. We headed south on the trail for a few minutes then turned and headed strait up the mountain. It was a steep grassy slope with no trail in the dark for about 1000 ft. until we got to a ridge saddle and turned north to where we topped out on Toad Rock. Toad Rock, apparently looks like a toad when viewed from some angle, but I couldn’t see it. We were hoping to head north off of Toad rock to the ridge connecting us to the route for Buckley, but a 50 ft. drop off a cliff turned us back.

Utah Climbing Club in action

After we dropped down below Toad rock and did a lot of bushwhacking we made it to the ridge and started a meandering traverse upward. Just when I thought we’d start working up through some rocks we cut down across a wide gully and strapped on the snowshoes.  Soon we were headed up, strait up. Luckily the snow had a pretty hard crust so the snowshoe crampons dug in and we worked out way upward. At one point we had to do some small bits of low angle 5^th class rock climbing. I let my poles hang from my wrists as I used my hands and the front points on the snowshoe crampons to climb up the short sections of rock. This was easily the most technical route I’ve ever done in snowshoes.

Summit of Buckley Mountain

Unfortunately the hard crust was not as consistent up higher and much of the going was through several feet of powder snow.  Stepping very gingerly sometimes helped and other times I plunged through the snow with a depressing slide back to my last step. After what seemed like an eternity I finally made it to the top of that section and turned to follow the ridge to the final summit ridge. Before continuing though I figured I’d better get some nourishment in me. I pulled out the peanut butter and Nutella sandwich, which was now nearly frozen. The sandwich turned out to be the tastiest thing I’ve ever taken with me on a hike or backpacking trip. I wished I had made two of them. Oh well. By now the wind was howling pretty hard and the temperature was dropping. I put my thin down jacket on under my softshell and worked up the ridge through deep powder, over rocks and logs and trees. Finally the summit ridge was there. The snow was wind-blown hard and crusty making the last 100 yards pretty easy.  I snapped a couple of quick summit pics then started heading back down before my fingers froze off. Temps on the summit were probably around 0F, colder than anything we’ve had all Winter.

Tricky section to descend

Usually when snowshoeing the descent is pretty easy and fun, this was not. There were all sorts of boulders and rocks hidden under the snow so that if you slipped on your snowshoes you could fall and gash a knee or hip and make the rest of the 4500 ft. trip down very hard. After some time a lot of the tracks had become a narrow powdery gully, perfect for some glissading now that we were past the rocks. The sliding sections were fairly short, but sure helped take off some of the knee strain and add in some fun. 

I connected up with about 4 other people from the club and we decided to head down a gully instead of heading back the way we came. This allowed us to keep on the snowshoes and slide, plunge step down the snow instead of working back up to the high ridge and back down the steep grassy slope to the bottom. Still it took about 3.5 hours to get down the gully and hike the BST back to the trail head.

Black Diamond Epic 45, packed up and ready for
Mount Timpanogos on this weekend

Through the whole ordeal was my trusty new-ish Black Diamond Epic 45 backpack. I bought the pack last Fall specifically for ice climbing and winter mountaineering.  The driving features for winter use are the ice tool pocket and crampon pouch. Instead of the usual ice axe loops that many packs have, the BD Epic has a nice pouch that you tuck the ice picks into from either side, keeping you from ripping up other gear with point parts. The ice tool handles are secured with a simply cord that is snugged up near the lid of the pack. The back of the pack has an extra tough layer of nylon that when coupled with a couple of straps and  a 3 inch strip of nylon make a great pouch that you can stick your crampons in. Making it both easy to retrieve or put them back as you’re moving across varied terrain. So, not only do I not have to dig through my pack to find them, but they aren’t ripping holes in my favorite light down jacket either.

I found out doing this trip that the cinch straps on the side are perfect for strapping snowshoes to the pack. The size is nice and versatile. I’m not an “Ultralight” backpacking kind of guy so an extra  2 oz of fabric doesn’t bother me. This allows the pack to be big enough to stow a 70M rope and ice climbing gear.  I could probably get away with a 30L or 35L for most day trips to the mountains, but cinch it down and you don’t notice the extra material anyway. Black Diamond packs have an awesome hip belt feature that pivots behind the lumbar support. This enables the pack to move more naturally with you as you move. No hip straps shifting around, or stiff body strapped to a pack unable to maneuver normally. I wish my other packs had this feature. All of the other features are well thought out. The shoulder and hip straps are padded nicely and keep the load supported comfortably. The lid has a top pocket where I like to keep food and headlamps. There is also a pocket on the underside of the lid.

After all is said and done. Buckley Mountain should be a tick on everyone’s list. It really was an alpine adventure. It may not have required crampons and an ice axe, but it had just about every other type of terrain you could expect in a mountain trek. Though I may not have paid any attention to Buckley before I know I’ll look up at it from the valley with fondness from now on.