How to Climb Borah Peak: Idaho’s Highest Point & Chicken-Out Ridge

Borah Peak – also called Mount Borah or Beauty Peak – is the highest point in Idaho at 12,662 ft (3,859 m) and the 11th-highest of the 50 US state highpoints. It anchors the Lost River Range in central Idaho’s Custer County, inside the Salmon-Challis National Forest between the small towns of Mackay and Challis. The mountain was nameless until surveyors found it higher than Hyndman Peak; the USGS named it in 1934 for William Borah, the long-serving Idaho US Senator. Three things make it stand out beyond its height.

It’s one of the most prominent peaks in the country. With 5,982 ft of topographic prominence, Borah is an “Ultra” – it rises far above everything around it, which is why it feels so much bigger than its elevation number suggests. It holds Idaho’s only active glacier, a small ice body high on the peak that the USGS officially recognized in February 2021. And it is still being built: Borah sits on the Lost River Fault in the Basin and Range, and the 1983 earthquake that struck its base literally lifted the range while dropping the valley – geology you can see from the trailhead road.

Almost everyone climbs Borah by the Southwest Ridge (the “Borah Peak Trail” or “Chicken-Out Ridge route”) from the Birch Springs trailhead. It’s deceptively short on the map – about 3.5 miles to the summit – but it climbs relentlessly, gaining over 5,200 ft, and the trail turns to Class 2–3 scrambling on the upper ridge. There is almost no flat ground and no reliable water above the trailhead.

Chicken-Out Ridge earns its name: it’s where hikers expecting a walk-up meet real exposure and, often, decide the summit isn’t worth it. In dry mid-summer conditions it’s a Class 3 scramble with one brief harder move – hands-on climbing along a narrow rock crest with big drop-offs on both sides, followed by a short downclimb into a notch before the terrain eases toward the summit ridge. For a confident scrambler in good conditions, it’s exhilarating rather than desperate. For someone uneasy with heights or loose rock, it can be truly frightening.

On October 28, 1983, at 8:06 a.m., a magnitude 6.9 earthquake (7.3 on the older Richter scale) struck along the Lost River Fault at the base of Borah Peak – the largest recorded earthquake in Idaho’s history. It killed two children in nearby Challis when a storefront collapsed and caused about $12.5 million in damage across the Challis–Mackay area, with shaking felt across eight states.

For climbers and geologists, its legacy is written into the landscape. The quake produced a fault scarp running about 21 miles along the base of the Lost River Range, up to roughly 9 feet high in places: in a single event, the valley floor dropped several feet while the range rose – the mountains and valley pulled apart by as much as 14 feet in spots. This is textbook Basin-and-Range normal faulting, the very process that has built Borah and the ranges around it over millions of years. The scarp is still clearly visible from the road to the Birch Springs trailhead – a rare chance to see, in one afternoon, the mechanism that raises a mountain you’re about to climb.

For the layering system and footwear, see our layering guide and boots guide.

Borah Peak sits in the sweet spot of the 50 state highpoints challenge: harder than the walk-ups, but a step below the technical giants. If Borah’s Class 3 scramble suits you, two neighboring Western highpoints are the natural next objectives — both a notch more committing. Granite Peak (Montana, 12,807 ft) is often called the second-hardest lower-48 highpoint after Denali, with exposed Class 4 rock and tricky route-finding. Kings Peak (Utah, 13,528 ft) trades technical difficulty for remoteness — a long ~29-mile Uinta backpack with a Class 2–3 finish. Together with Borah, they form a classic Northern Rockies highpoint progression.