Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 20-21, 2025

2304m

Snake River Plain, ID

Big Southern Butte boasts over 600 m prominence rising abruptly above the Snake River Plain. There’s nothing in the vicinity to match the objective so it really stands out and catches attention from every peak-bagger who happens to drive through the corridor. The moment I saw it I knew I must put in it bag in this trip, but it turned out to be significantly harder than I thought. I only read Eric Noel’s trip report on peakbagger.com and downloaded his GPX track which includes the driving direction. I was anticipating some rough roads but didn’t know the roads would be that rough. We could have budgeted an extra day and do this properly by parking at the (open) gate and hike to the top, but to squeeze this into the already-packed itinerary driving to the top was the only viable option, but to do so I would have to push the stock Subaru to the absolute limit. Years of 4-wheel-driving experience and confidence was needed in order to commit to the challenge while not damaging the vehicle. This turned out to be much more of an adventure than hiking to the top so I personally was actually glad we did it this way.

Earlier in the day we had completed Diamond Peak and Jumpoff Peak and then we killed several hours in the town of Arco waiting for the sun angle to get lower. It was very windy but also very hot. The plan was to drive up Big Southern Butte and camp on the summit and there’s no point in arriving too early. There were several ways of getting to the base of the butte but Eric Noel’s way was the only one avoiding the private property issues. I absolutely loved breaking rules and trespassing into private lands because that is simply one fun part of this peak-bagging career, but in this case there does exist a way to avoid doing that without adding considerable amount of hassle, so why not. Eric’s route involves almost 40 km each way off the pavement and starts from the village of Atomic City. The roads were in some “highway” conditions for most of the way until the last 10 km traversing around the south and then west side of Big Southern Butte. The road had become rougher so I took my time not damaging the tires.

The spur road to the summit was the actual game and was rough right off the bat. We met two dirt bikers on their way down, but didn’t bother to talk to them. This was probably a good thing because they were looking at us absurdly thinking how someone would dare to attempt this drive-up in a stock Subaru. The road had become insanely rocky at around that open gate but I kept pushing, thinking things might improve higher up. The situation didn’t get any better for the next while through the canyon, that at one point I was literally crawling the vehicle over endless boulders and some were definitely hitting the undercarriage. There was however, no way to turn around so the only way was to drive boldly through the mess and either turn around, or keep driving to the top. The “X Mode” of the Subaru was the key to survive this stretch as that’s the “4-low” equivalent of this vehicle. Thankfully the condition did improve higher and the road started to reappear. The road was still consistently very rocky but never imposed any further issue. I thought about to park at the “viewpoint” on the first obvious switchback but that was still too far away from the summit for my like, but after getting to the upper route I might as well push the vehicle to the top because the upper route was actually not that terrible. We got to the summit minutes before sunset so spent an hour or so taking in the views. Camping on this elusive summit was definitely the bonus for pushing the vehicle to the very top.

The next morning I woke up leisurely at around 8 am and Erica was already awake several hours earlier. I’m definitely not a “morning person” and I absolutely loved sleeping in unless I had no other choice. I was expecting some leaking fluids or one (or more) flat tires but thankfully nothing like that happened. The vehicle was still intact so no rescue needed. When I firstly started this peakbagging career in Alberta I would not have expected some trips at some point would turn into a 4-wheeling game. We noticed some weather coming in so quickly turned on the engine and drove away. As expected the downhill driving was not too terrible and I also took my time removing some boulders off the road, so that we wouldn’t be hitting the undercarriage. I think I managed the downhill drive fairly well and I also think the Subaru should fundraise this trip. I would highly doubt anyone else would push their Subaru with stock tires to the top of this mountain except for maybe Adam Walker, so let’s see. After getting down to the desert plain we took our time cooking the ramen breakfast and continued the eastwards journey. The objective for the next day would be Grand Teton.