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There is a place in Idaho that has the highest mountains in the state, abundant high elevation lakes and relatively few people. It’s hard to put a label on it, and it hasn’t been branded with this or that “protection” that usually brings in the hordes and destroys the place with crowds fawning all over the place. We got to spend a few days there this August.

We thought we would try out a few hikes with a chance for fly fishing. We were generally making our way back home to north central Idaho after a trip to Utah, and this was a nice excuse to get out and explore. The first evening while looking for camp we ran across a bull moose and knew we were in the right spot (relatively, we didn’t camp with the moose!).

The next morning we hit the trail on the way to a couple high mountain lakes. The wildflowers seemed to be at peak bloom in the Idaho high country.

Hiking into places like this is on the top of my “what to you want to do?” lists.

In addition to the amazing wildflowers we were lucky enough to fool a few fish into rising to a fly. These were nice cutthroat that readily rose and were aggressive fighters.

We returned to the trailhead and moved on to another camp for the night. The next morning we dipped another line in the Big Lost River and connected with a really nice cutthroat that peeled plenty of line and etched itself into my memory.

We ran into a cow moose on the way. Did I say I love this country?

We had another hike to take, and it took the better part of the day to traverse all the boulders posing as a road on the way to the trailhead, so we made camp in preparation for a hike the next day.

The rough road had us rethinking our choice of trailheads. Is it really worth it? Well, you can be the judge, but to hike to this lake, come upon this view, even for a short time, well, my answer is yes.

We didn’t stay long as we knew we had a couple hours of making our way back out that bumpy road and on to where ever we might find camp that night. We admired the Lost River Range’s amazing geology along the way out of the mountains.

It is amazing how quickly five days can go by, gazing at mountains and wildflowers, marveling at lakes, and generally getting lost in the Lost River Basin. I can’t wait to go back.