National "Take a Hike Day" was yesterday 11.17.24). We hit the Johns Creek trail for a couple miles on an overcast fall day. The colors were exquisite brought out by the recent rain: golds, rusty browns, reds on the twigs of dogwoods, white on the bark of birch, contrasted with the shiny green conifers, and massive ponderosa pines towering overhead, 80 feet up to their first branch. The chickadees were foraging and the squirrels were…
Scorching temperatures and smoke, that is what July and August seem to consist of. So we were excited to see some cooling in the forecast as summer turned toward fall. The sky turned back to the blue it should be, and we turned our attention to the high country for a few days of exploring and searching for grouse.
Summer was turning into a scorcher and I started looking at the weather map for anywhere we could escape the heat for a few days. It appeared the only place in Idaho that might still stay in the 80’s during the day and cool into the 50’s overnight would be the high elevations of the Sawtooth and White Cloud mountains in the middle of the state. The White Clouds had been on our list as a backpacking “want to do” for a while, so we loaded the packs and headed that direction.
