Sawtooths 2017 Planning

September 16, 2017

Next: Sawtooths 2017 Day 1

After last years adventure to the John Muir Wilderness, we started to think about where to go in 2017. In August of 2016 my brother David visited the Riggins Idaho area and suggested that maybe we do the Seven Devils Wilderness area. I was immediately interested since the Seven Devils had been on my radar from many years of driving past Riggins on the way to Lewiston Idaho to visit Julie’s mom and dad when we lived in Gardnerville NV. More detailed researched showed the Seven Devils to be interesting, but with the forest fires over the years and it being a smaller geographic area made it a bit less interesting. I then started looking at the Ruby Mountains in Nevada since I had made 3 trips there over the years we lived in Nevada, but again no real good loop presented itself. About then David and I both mentioned the Sawtooth mountains in Idaho. Again this was an area that was on my radar from a trip Julie and I took to Montana 30 years ago. We had camped downstream from Stanley Idaho on the Salmon river. Our drive the next day took us through Stanley giving me my first look at the Sawtooths and I had filed it away as a place to come back to. Further researched provided some very nice options for backpacking over 7 days.

The Sawtooths in morning light from Stanley Idaho

We settled on mid August for a week to tackle the Sawtooths and with the big snow year the west had during the winter of 2016-2017 that turned out to be a very good decision. Trying to do a late July trip would have really limited our choice of routes and areas. The only downside was that Idaho experienced very hot weather from late July into August and many forest fires were underway during beginning of August. We got very lucky and had a week of good weather and clear skies the week of August 13-20 in the Sawtooths. With the hot weather the snowpack had melted away and even the bugs were pretty mild. Sometimes you can plan all you want but luck sometimes plays a role. The only potential hiccup in our planning was the Total Eclipse. None of us had any idea that Stanley was a 100% site and that they were expecting flocks of people. Again we lucked out for some reason and the massive crowds they predicted were not present on Saturday when we came out of the wilderness. Even our drive to Boise via Ketchum was pretty open and easy. In the beginning we were looking at 9 or so people, which whittled it’s way down to 5 for the actual hike; Myself, Darrell Moore, David Moore, Steven Moore, and Vince Stefanetti. Vince’s nephew Jack was a last minute cancel when he caught the flu from his younger brother. We felt bad for him as he had been training all summer for this trip.

Once we had the location and week picked out it was time to start looking at routes and potential itineraries. I knew that Sawtooth Lake was an iconic spot and that we had to include it in our itinerary. Otherwise it looked like the mid and southern parts of the Sawtooths were the more interesting with many alpine lakes. There looked like there was a north to south route we could consider if we had two cars (which we did) for a trailhead shuttle. The mileage and elevation seemed pretty reasonable for a 7 day trip.

Proposed North to South loop

In looking at trip blogs and reports there was a loop trip many folks had done from Granjean, but on closer investigation a lot of the miles were in lower river valleys and could be pretty hot. Either way, upon reading trip reports (see Sawtooth resources below) an area of concern was the Baron Creek canyons. It sounded like even in a good year the trail was hard to follow with many down trees. In trying to get some actual trail conditions in these canyons I was left with only a little bit of information from the ranger station (who were very helpful, especially and recommending the Stanley Bakery for breakfast) on the Baron Creek canyons: “there are trees down and some people are making it through”. Being that my back can have issues and just being in my later 50’s (okay 59), I was not real excited to pick my way over and around trees for a couple of days. I was able to get recent trail reports for the mid and southern portions of the Sawtooths that looked good. It was decided to do a 1 night in and back past Sawtooth Lake, car camp for a night and then head up Hell Roaring Creek into the Imogene, Toxaway, Alice Lakes area as that seemed to be a very popular and highly recommended area. For the most part we stuck to the agenda. We did decide to spend an additional night at Alpine Lake near Sawtooth Lake instead of car camping, and looping out of Pettit Lake to Alice, Toxaway, Imogene Lakes. We backed away from Hell Roaring because the forest service was closing it due to the big eclipse crowds they were expecting to help protect the Salmon spawn, and it looked like a hot boring hike anyway. Here is the route for our first two nights.

Actual trip route nights one and two

And for the next 4 nights.

Nights three to six

This turned out to be a nice way to do things, as we did not have to carry 7 days worth of food, and parking the cars at the same trailhead worked out well so David and Vince could exit early when Vince’s knee started to swell up after 5 days on the trail.

Permits for the hike were easy. For groups of less than 8 you simply fill out a form at the trailhead entrance to the wilderness.

My physical preparation for the trip was a bit like last year’s preparation. I did back off a bit on the number of hikes and spent much more time biking. The swimming was about the same, a few days a week. For the record here are the totals from April to July:

Swimming 44 miles

Walking/hiking 145 miles

Biking 977 miles

I think next year I will do a bit more hiking in preparation, but overall I felt no issues going up the passes. One thing Steve and I did was slow down our pace a bit from the JMT trip to see if that would help with blisters and fatigue, and it did seem to help. Of course, lowering the mileage per day and the fact that out highest pass was 9500 feet also helped. It was especially nice to spend more time enjoying the scenery and taking pictures.

Here are some resources for the Sawtooths that I found useful.

Nice waterproof map: http://a.co/j2J0ifI

A pretty thorough guidebook (I got the ebook):
http://www.idahoriverpublications.com/store_E-books.html

Some Facebook pages:

Sawtooth Mountains

Sawtooth Mountain Guides

https://thebigoutside.com/ask-me-what-are-the-best-hikes-in-idahos-sawtooths/

https://thebigoutside.com/going-after-goals-backpacking-in-idahos-sawtooth-mountains/

https://www.theoutbound.com/dustykleiner/the-top-5-adventures-in-the-sawtooth-mountains

https://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.aspx?trailid=HGW275-015

https://www.flickr.com/photos/11717855@N08/sets/72157602482795088/

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/80009/