The plan is to have a 7 day mountain bike tour through the back roads of the Salmon-Challis Nat'l Forest http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/sc/ with the cyclists spending the nights in huts that provide food and shelter, thus enabling relatively unencumbered travel. No re-inventing the wheel here. I want to do it just like the San Juan Huts in Colorado, cheap and basic.
I had no idea what I have been missing for the past 4 1/2 years we have been Idaho residents. This previously unexplored, by me, area of southeastern Idaho is largely overlooked by the hordes who are destined for the Tetons. That is a mistake for them, a bonus for those of us looking to avoid the masses. AS BEAUTIFUL AS the Tetons without the ski resort to expose the secret, not to mention inflate the real estate prices.
There are several significant mountain ranges contained within the Samon Challis National Forest: portions of the Beaverhead and Bitterroot Ranges near the Montana border, the Lemhi, Lost River, White Knob and Pioneer Ranges further south, to name just a few. Loosely, the boundaries to this vast expanse of wilderness are route 93 running northeast, route 26 to the south, route 75 going up through Sun Valley and through to Stanley and ending somewhere north to including lower portions of the Frank Church Wilderness of No Return. The relatively small chunk this proposed bike route addresses is located between Sun Valley, Mackey and Arco.
We (Tony, Owen, Nellie, Sammo and I) scouted this route in two sections, east and west, over the course of two weekends. This first weekend we tackled the eastern portion. Although the actual bike trip will begin and end in Sun Valley, for the purposes of route-finding we began our trip in Arco, a sad and dusty town. Within 12 miles we had left sad and dusty and had entered beautiful and interesting. Remnants of history remain all along the road, Champagne Creek Rd, leading into the nat'l forest in the forms of an old cabin, water dam, mining shafts and the like. The area is riddled with rivers, streams, lakes and majestic mountain peaks with colorful names like The Devils Bedstead at 11,865 ft. and Smiley Mountain at 11,508 ft. The highest visible peak on the ride is Hyndman Peak, 12,009 ft., northeast of Sun Valley. The highest pass we climbed, 8,934 ft., was Antelope Pass along Cherry Creek Summit Rd.
The purpose of these first trips was twofold, figure out the exact route and locate potential hut sites. The route location was easy since I have been poring over maps for a while. The locations of the huts is a bit more tricky since I have to take into consideration daily mileage, nat'l forest boundaries and asthetic, flat locations, preferably hidden by trees. Each of these locations will have to be assessed by a national forest employee for environmental impact.
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