We’d just finished up our backpack trip around the Alice Toxaway Loop. It took us about six hours to drive to the trailhead. We thought we’d take the backroads home, which took us about three days, where we discovered along the way entirely new (to us) parts of Idaho.
We fueled up in Stanley and our first stop, just out of town, was Stanley Lake. There’s been a lot of changes over the years at Stanley Lake. I guess that happens when you’ve been visiting a place since the 1980’s. Things seemed change little from the 80’s to when we visited in 2017. Things changed dramatically when we stopped by in 2020. An earthquake rearranged the area around the inlet, the two nicest campgrounds were gone and replaced by a trailhead parking lot and a boat ramp. On this stop we wanted to get a glance of how things looked after last years Wapiti fire burned 129,000 acres in the area. Like a lot of fires, some areas burned hotter than others, but overall, the lake and mountains are still there, the forest looks a little different, and it is every bit as busy as ever.
We continued on our drive and left the highway behind as we made the turn towards Bear Valley. Once over the Cape Horn summit we dropped into the Bear Valley and left most of the crowds of the Sawtooths behind for the remainder of the trip home. We found a nice spot with a view of Bear Valley Creek and set up camp for the night.
With the cold nights this area experiences the reds and golds were making a show of things in the high country.
The next day turned out to be quite a drive. One of those days when you look at the map and say, “I think we’ll make it to this spot (points to map) by mid-afternoon”, but as the sun is starting to set you are well short of that point. Good thing we didn’t have to be anywhere, and even better we started with a full tank of fuel. We didn’t get a lot of pictures along the way, there was just too much driving to do. I guess we’ll have to go back and do it over again, and maybe take a week to leave time for more exploring along the way.
From Bear Valley we made a side trip to Deadwood Reservoir, then moved north through Yellow Pine. Yellow Pine looked interesting but we simply passed through. The food truck, bar, gas station and anything else that looked like a business was closed, so we kept moving. The next little hamlet was Edwardsburg. Talk about the middle of nowhere. What are all these cabins doing out here? Then it was up and over 8700′ Elk Summit Pass. This area looked like a great place to spend the night, except there was snow in the forecast for the high country, so down the other side to lower ground we went, all the way to the South Fork of the Salmon river, pulling into camp as the last of the light was leaving the sky. We just had the awning rolled out and cheese melting on the pulled pork nachos as the evening rain started to fall.
We still had a fair distance to travel on day three of the drive, so it was over the river and through the woods, with another big climb to Warren Summit from the South Fork, passing by yet another middle of nowhere subdivision along the way. Each of these areas has its own airstrip. I wonder if there is a direct flight from LAX or JFK? I suppose even with a connecting flight it could be quicker than how we arrived.
Through the hamlets of Warren, Secesh and Burgdorf we rolled, enjoying fall colors along the way.
After Burgdorf it was one more big downhill to the main Salmon River. As we dropped down the many switchbacks of the French Creek Grade we slowly dropped out of the forest on our way to Riggins. We made it with at least 50 miles of range left in the tank – we could have taken a few more side trips after all, but I suppose it’s good to have a bit of a margin, just in case.
Three days of driving, and I feel like we just scratched enough of the surface to make a big list of things to explore on the next trip to this area. Such is the nature of exploring.
