Oneida County Highpoint Trip Report
Oxford Peak
Date: May 14, 2006
Author: Ben Knorr
With gas being so expensive and my time becoming hard to come by,
I originally thought I would also include BM Blackfoot on this Sunday trip.
Lucky for me, I decided to try Bannock first then Oneida and decided to leave
Bingham for another day.
The directions in the existing trip reports are accurate. The road became very
rutted but I continued on anyway in my VW. I stopped at a spot where I could
turn around, perhaps five miles up the road. This turned out to be a good call
since just 100 yards down the road snow covered it and would have blocked all
but 4x4 travel.
I followed the road and later the ATV trail all the way up and over numerous
bumps on the Oxford ridge when it was convenient. At times, snow blocked the
trail and light bushwhacking through sagebrush was needed. It looked as though
one could follow the ATV trail the entire way to within 30 feet of the main summit.
The remaining snow all consisted of heavy drifts that are sticking on
the leeward sides of slopes (mostly the east side). In some smaller gullies
visible from the ridge's west side, I could see drifts so thick I would guess
they could be almost 50 feet deep in places. The cornices were all cracking and
some falling off during the day as well.
I left my GPS on each summit for about five minutes to get a crude height measurement.
To my surprise, the rock next to the cemented cairn showed up as
9300 feet even and the south summit came up as 9386 feet. While I doubt they
are really that different, it might be possible that the north summit is higher.
They are only a few minutes apart, so checking both was easy, perhaps because I
could walk on the eastward snow drift.
I was very tired at the end of the day after this hike, which was 12 miles
minimum round-trip, based on a straight line GPS reading, plus all the ups downs
and turns that I made.