Mount Borah

The mountain carries more than one name. Federal maps call it Borah Peak, the sign Mount Borah, and an older name, Beauty Peak, still turns up in climbers' guides. Its distinction is more than height. A small glacier on its north side is counted as the only active glacier in Idaho, and the north face is one of the state's few year-round snow climbs. Most people climb the southwest ridge instead, and the mountain is not gentle with them: three climbers are known to have died on it, two of them on the northwest ridge in November 1977.

What the plaque says

Mount Borah Idaho's highest peak, 12,662 feet, is named for William E. Borah, who served in the United States Senate from 1907 until his death in 1940. Ten or a dozen large but shallow inland seas have covered this area in the past billion years. They became a graveyard for countless generations of sea creatures: bones, shells, coral, and microscopic remains piled up through the eons into a clay-and-limestone deposit thousands of feet thick. During the past 10 or 20 million years, part of this deposit has been thrust upward into the towering ridge which you see before you. 45 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Borah Peak Earthquake Fault Scarp — 2.5 mi
  In 1983 the valley floor dropped seven feet in a second, and a truckload of hunters dropped with it.

More markers nearby

• Earthquakes — steps away
• Goddin's River — 12 mi
• Mount McCaleb — 21 mi
• Ghost Towns of Mackay, Idaho — 21 mi