Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 30, 2026

2862m

Riggins, ID

He Devil and She Devil are the highest peaks on the east side of Hells Canyon in Idaho’s Seven Devils Wilderness. The peaks were long thought to have the exact same height until Eric Gilbertson came to survey them in 2023. She Devil has since then been confirmed to be only 2 or 3 inches taller and hence it’s the “ultra prominent peak” of the two. The status could easily shift if the highest boulder on She Devil becomes loose which can possibly happen in this lifetime, so I still had to tag both of them to be 100% sure. In any case I had thought about this area for a number of years but it’s not really on the way to the “bigger ranges” further east. In fact, adding these peaks would add at least 5 hours of driving detour into the already-long road trip.

This year I finally pulled the trigger since I budgeted a few days of driving towards Colorado, and I planned to take the acclimatization process gradually. A sleep at 2300 m elevation at He/She Devil’s trail-head could very much be the first step, so I committed myself to the many extra hours of driving. On the first day of this extensive road trip my parents dropped me off in Bellingham’s airport since I booked a rental car pick-up at 10:30 am. I opted to rent a vehicle as I didn’t want to put 6000+ km into my own Subaru in a mere 13-day period. I simply asked ChatGPT and it confirmed my thoughts, that it’d be cheaper to rent than to pay my own car’s maintenance and depreciation. The vehicle I picked was Nissan Rogue AWD, which isn’t as aggressive as the Subaru Forester but has slightly better fuel economy. On the way to Idaho I decided in situ to drive up Wahatis Peak in the vicinity of Vantage, WA and that further costed 2 hours of delay. I was originally hoping to arrive leisurely at 9 pm but didn’t get there until almost midnight as a result. I simply picked an empty spot in the Seven Devils Campground and crashed in the back of the vehicle for the night. On hindsight the day-trippers should park their vehicles at the bigger lot 500 m back but I couldn’t figure that part out.

I slept in till 8:30 am since I was tired and there’s also an hour lost due to the time zone change. The weather forecast was not calling for risks of thunderstorms for the entire day anyway. The trail-head at the back side of the campground was surprisingly not marked but the trail leading to the saddle above Mirror Lake was in a decent shape. From there this basically becomes a “route”. Admittedly I did almost no research besides downloading a few GPX tracks and I was anticipating having a path to follow the entire way. This was not the case at all. Traversing around the west side of Tower of Babel had some unpleasant side-hilling on treadmill scree and the route-finding wasn’t that straightforward neither. This shorter, staying-high route to She Devil over “Mt. Baal” is a legit scramble. I also didn’t do enough research to realize Tower of Babel was actually non-technical AND boasts over 100 m prominence. I surely was curious about this tower after seeing it myself but there’s no reception and I couldn’t confirm if it would require rope work or not. As a result I didn’t bother to try doing it and instead, opted to focus on the main objectives ahead. “Mt. Baal” does not have an official name, a striking profile nor 100 m prominence so I wouldn’t count it personally. The plod up the east ridge of She Devil was quite easy and I caught up to three hikers on the summit of this peak.

There are a few ways traversing to He Devil. Normally I would only be interested in the “easiest” way but I sometimes prefer less physical effort over the least amount of technical challenges. In this case the direct traverse would only be “4th class” so I sensed no need to do additional elevation loss to work things around. The descent off the west ridge of She Devil was mostly advertised, 3rd class and exposed at places but generally “tolerable” by averaged scramblers. The route-finding was not straightforward but the challenge on the east ridge of He Devil would be considerably higher. If one’s not comfortable coming down She Devil then I suggest to look for another of doing the link-up. Apparently the “4th class” in Idaho is a little bit harder than I thought. I tried quite hard to stay on the path of the least resistance but still did several short chimneys that were vertical with climbing moves. One particular chimney on the ridge crest forced me to backtrack to find an exposed and contrived ledge traverse on the south side, and that led to another shorter but also vertical chimney. This route should be taken more seriously in my opinion. In any case, whether it’s “class 4” or “low class 5” wouldn’t make a huge difference for me, that in short time I was standing on the summit of He Devil. I saw two scramblers coming up the standard route but that’s it. This peak felt more remote.

Not doing much lingering I quickly made my way down the standard route of He Devil which was basically “class 2”. I even picked up a well defined path so the descent was actually quite pleasant. I did catch some cell reception on these summits and realized that I actually missed out Tower of Babel. I was not very happy about my carelessness in researching so instead of going back to the trail-head I opted to punish myself by bashing up the P100m unnamed peak above Sheep Lake. This added 150 m extra elevation. This summit does offer nice views but not very worthwhile in my opinion. I eventually returned by closing in the loop. The traverse around Sheep Lake was indeed quite scenic and I could even hear some teenagers laughing and talking. I never ended up bumping into them though. My round trip time was 6.5 hours which was also longer than I thought, and I still had 6 hours of driving afterwards as the plan was to ascend Hyndman Peak in southern Idaho on the following day.