Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Part 2

By Jeanne Bustamante

Join Jeanne on another attempt to hike the Idaho Centennial Trail through the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. The river might not return, but this backpacker can't stop coming back! Nothing goes exactly as planned, but it was a great adventure. Includes over 100 color photos!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeanne Bustamante
• Release date: Mar 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005876357

Book preview

Hike with Me:

Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Part 2

by Jeanne M. Bustamante

Kesourla.jpg

Boise, ID

© 2021 by Jeanne Bustamante

All rights reserved.

All photos by author unless otherwise noted.

This book is an account of one hiker’s experience, and does not constitute instruction or guidance.

Also by Jeanne Bustamante:

Hike with Me Series

Hike with Me: Stump Lake

Hike with Me: Queens River Loop

Hike with Me: The Wild Coast

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Sawtooths

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Connection

Hike with Me: Return to the Wild Coast

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Reach

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Part 1

Trail Guides

Stay on the Trail

Trail Guide: Queens River Loop

Trail Guide: Chamberlain Basin

Fiction

Kicking the Desk Job

Running into Love

The Greening

Finding the Spirit

Caught in the Net

Miscellaneous

30 Days of CrossFit: A Look Back at the Start of a Fitness Journey

In Loving Memory of my mother

Jean Marie Chalifoux Bustamante 1953 - 2020

Last year, after ending my first attempt at the Frank Church early, my husband and I drove north to visit where I had initially planned to end my hike, at the Magruder Corridor. The Magruder Corridor, also known as the Nez Perce Trail Road, is 101 miles of single lane, winding road that meanders between the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, linking Elk City, Idaho with Darby, Montana - well, it’s a link if you have four wheel drive, high suspension, spare gas, and time to spare.

To get to the spot along that scenic byway where the Idaho Centennial Trail (ICT) crosses, one must simply travel 33 miles along it. That’s not that far, right? I went to a high school that far from my home, so I traveled that far twice a day throughout high school. But that was in Chicago, and this? This is Idaho.

First, we had to get to the Magruder itself. There is one road, Idaho 14. From Boise, you’d take 55 up to McCall, then head over to 95 to Grangeville. There you can hook up with 14, which is a tight two lane or wide one lane road, depending on where you are precisely. It’s paved, but bumpy, and mostly lacking in niceties like a center stripe. The pavement follows a stream, twists and turns and all, with campsites sprinkled along the way. I’d like to go back there and camp sometime, as it never looked too crowded, and the sites had access to the water. Everything was green near the water, and then coniferous forest farther away. And on the side of the road opposite the river, there’s mostly sheer rock face, carved out just enough to allow the passage of (most) vehicles.

On that trip in 2019, we camped at a site called French Gulch, about a ten minute drive from the start of the Magruder. It’s an okay car camping site, includes a pit toilet and a fire pit, as well as a small stream and a couple of camping options. We opted for the easy option, pitching the tent on the gravel flat of the main lot. At 8 the next morning, we started driving up the Magruder Corridor.

It starts off easy, deceptively so, as the dirt road is relatively flat and decently graded. It’s no worse than any other Idaho forest road that I’ve driven on, and better than some I could think of. As we drove through the first few miles of forest, I thought the difficulty of the road itself may have been overstated. We could see little openings in the trees where camping could be done. We went at a slow pace to make sure the bumps we did run into didn’t make us bottom out or otherwise break the car. Yes, that’s right, car. A 2008 Ford Focus two door. Not a Jeep, not a truck, not an SUV nor a Subaru.

There’s a campground called 14 Mile Campground at the (you guessed it) 14 mile marker. It’s also about at that point where the green forest fades into recovering burned forest. Fire weed grows all over the place, twining up around skeletal trees. I noted that some trees had been preemptively chopped to prevent their fall across the road. Further down the road, there was another campsite on the map, but when we got there, it was almost completely burned out. Not much to see, and with no shade, it would be a rather poor campsite.

So far, we’d had a few scary moments, but nothing that would make us turn back. And we had agreed to turn back as soon as it felt unsafe. The road gets narrower on the approach to Poet Creek, which is another campsite. Unlike the last one, this one had escaped the recent burn. It’s in a low spot with flowing water that the fire skipped over, and we got out there to stretch our legs and find a toilet. I definitely wouldn’t mind camping there. It was cool and quiet, shady, with the creek running nearby. And a trailhead!

Poet Creek is at about 4000 feet in elevation. Dry Saddle is over 7200. The road between those two points is, in a Ford Focus, precarious and terrifying. It is fully single lane here, and uses switchbacks to climb all those thousands of feet. Narrow switchbacks. Bumpy switchbacks. Steep switchbacks. We crawled out of the green forest of Poet Creek up onto the road where we could again see the burned forest.

Then the ATVs came. Approaching us from Dry Saddle, they did, out of respect for the road or amazement at the sight of us, give us as much right of way as possible when we crossed paths. I didn’t pee my pants, but that was probably only because I was clenching so darn hard, white-knuckled on the door handle while Ambrose coaxed our car through the piles of rocky rubble masquerading as a road.

We made it to Dry Saddle just after noon. 33 miles in 4 hours. I am quite proud of his driving skills for getting us up there in one piece - without bottoming out or otherwise damaging the car. I would have turned back not long after Poet Creek (I may have, in fact, advocated for this), but we made it - this time. Which is why we knew that we should not be bringing this car up this particular road again. [For more on that road trip, check out this blog entry: https://jmbhiking.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-magruder-corridor.html]

And that’s why, when I decided that I would rather hike north to south for this section, ending at Big Creek rather than in the literal middle of nowhere (hey, at least Big Creek’s got a lodge and an air strip - Dry Saddle has a pit toilet), I also decided I needed to procure a ride up to Dry Saddle. I tossed around thoughts of calling Elk City Hotel and seeing if there were people who would be willing to act as an ATV taxi. But Ambrose had a better idea. Our friend Bill owns a truck and likes to adventure in the wilderness. It’d been a few years since he’d been to the Magruder Corridor and he agreed to meet us at French Gulch and then drive me up to Dry Saddle the next morning. On the day before I planned to start hiking, Ambrose and I left home early in the morning and drove up to French Gulch.

It was almost a perfect plan. The only issue was when we got to French Gulch, it was occupied. So Ambrose and I waited until Bill showed up, and then we all decided to drive up the Magruder Corridor until we found a campsite. That took a little longer than I expected, since all the closest campsites on the corridor were also taken. But we finally got a spot in a rectangular meadow next to the road. The rest of the day was camp chores and hanging out, talking with Bill and throwing sticks and pinecones for his border collie, Mike.

Since Ambrose and Bill met through a backpacking forum online, I had been feeling unsure of whether my company was even desired. But once we met up, it felt right and good to spend time with a friend - and get last minute advice for my planned trip.

The next morning, I was in go-mode, getting ready and not thinking about things like whether the wind might change and I should probably stake the tent down more securely (spoiler alert, Ambrose later told me the tent was almost blown away when he got back). No, I was focused on getting everything together and into Bill’s truck.

And then, what I remembered as a harrowing