Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Moose Creek

By Jeanne Bustamante

Join Jeanne on another section of the Idaho Centennial Trail into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. This is back country hiking, along trails that few use, including a visit to the most remote lake in the lower 48.

The journey begins with a drive to the end of the road, followed by a day hike through Lynx Meadows. Next, Jeanne heads out solo from Warm Springs Bar to the Moose Creek Air Strip, encountering no people along the way. At Moose Creek, she meets up with her husband, friend, and friend's dog, along with other folks on the air strip. Then they all hike out to the Race Creek Campground along the Selway River.

Includes over 180 color photos!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeanne Bustamante
• Release date: Feb 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215067567

Book preview

Hike with Me:

Idaho Centennial Trail

Moose Creek

by Jeanne M. Bustamante

Kesourla.jpg

Boise, ID

©2023 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, kesourla.com/books:

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

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Part 2

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale

Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Challenge

Trail Guides

Stay on the Trail

Trail Guide: Queens River Loop

Trail Guide: Chamberlain Basin

Miscellaneous

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

Fiction

Kicking the Desk Job

Running into Love

The Greening

Finding the Spirit

Caught in the Net

This book is dedicated to all the trail crews

that help keep Idaho’s trails maintained.

Prologue

When I first started my Idaho Centennial Trail section hike, back in 2016, I picked my sections based on how much I thought I could do. And, as long as I was south of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, I did pretty well at matching my planned route to my abilities. I trained specifically for some of the sections, but I didn’t really have a problem with getting big miles done. Once I entered the River of No Return Wilderness, my plans began to fall apart. I tried to bite off far more than I could chew through that wilderness.

And so, having left the River of No Return in my rearview mirror, I decided to approach this next wilderness, the Selway-Bitterroot, with more caution. The problems that I ran into in the River of No Return Wilderness were mainly due to the state of the trails. I could probably have kept my planned itineraries if I hadn’t kept on running into trails with little to no recent maintenance. The extra work, both mental and physical, of backpacking on what can only be loosely termed trail, took its toll.

I knew, from my research, that the Selway-Bitterroot would be similar. Some sections of the Idaho Centennial Trails are maintained, and some are not. I found where the Forest Service maintenance records are posted, and that allowed me to mentally prepare for the sections that had no recent maintenance. I read other people’s reports on the trail, though those are difficult to find and the ones I could find tended to be from several years ago. I really wish the Idaho Centennial Trail blog was still up and running, but there haven’t been new posts on it for years. The ICT isn’t an easy trail, and sharing information on it can be key, because many of the trails in the central section are disused and not well maintained.

In the spirit of making sure I could accomplish what I set out to do, I planned on doing a section as a day hike on the first day. That would be Lynx Meadows, which I had planned on hiking the year before.

One problem: it was on fire at the time. Nearly a year after the fire, I hoped that the trail wouldn’t be too much of a mess. But even if it was messy, the trail section would only be about six miles, and I’d have all day. Then I’d backpack out with four days of food to cover the next thirty miles (or so) of trail to the Moose Creek Air Strip. At the Moose Creek Air Strip, I’d meet up with Ambrose and Bill. Ambrose would have two additional days of food for me, along with his own food and gear. Together, we’d hike out from the air strip to the Race Creek Campground, about twenty-two miles along the Selway River.

That plan felt right to me. I had an entire extra day of supplies in case the unmaintained trails took a long time. I would be meeting up with other hikers so I wouldn’t be alone the whole time. I was carrying bear spray for the first time in years, because I’m starting to get into northern Idaho, where grizzly bears are more prevalent. Plus, a co-worker let me know that I shouldn’t hesitate to use the bear spray on a moose if one were to threaten me. Anything threatening could find itself with a face full of bear spray, people included.

Even though I had planned this hike out to a fine level of detail, I was still nervous about it. I had been truly burned by the prior year’s day hikes, when a simple ten-mile hike turned into a 12 hour suffer fest. Not knowing what the trails would actually be like was starting to drive me a bit crazy. But I was also excited. Because I was as prepared as I could possibly be, and I was ready to test myself.

Now that I’m starting to hike in the more northern part of Idaho, the drive to the trailhead is a lot longer than for the southern sections. For that reason, Ambrose and I took one entire day for traveling to Warm Springs Bar, a place at the literal end of the road off the Magruder Corridor. Google Maps gives a travel time of about eight hours and twenty-four minutes. That’s about right, I’d say. We left early so we could arrive in plenty of time to check the area out and set up our camp. I was a little concerned that there might be people at Warm Springs Bar. From what I’d read, there’s an outfitters’ camp there. But they might only show up later in the year, when hunting season starts.

The majority of the route is one that we’ve driven before. We drove most of the way to Warm Springs Bar last year when I was going to hike Lynx Meadows. So, I had some familiarity with the route by this point. It’s a really beautiful drive. I love the area near Riggins, where the road is next to a river. There’s a really neat stretch of road above the town of White Bird that switchbacks way up high.

We crossed over to the Pacific Time zone and I reset the car clock. I don’t always do that, but we would be driving around in Pacific Time for a while, so I figured it would be more convenient. Once we cut over to Idaho 14, the scenic views just get better and better. That road follows the South Fork Clearwater River, and it is dotted with campsites. Many of them were occupied, but I didn’t see anyone frolicking or fishing in the water.

We stopped at the French Gulch campsite after turning onto Red River Road to use the pit toilet. Then it was on to the Magruder Corridor. The road was very dusty, and I was glad my car’s air conditioning did not require windows to be down (like my old Honda did – it didn’t have AC). We took one more pit stop at Granite Springs. After that, we took the next left on Elk Mountain Road, a road that climbed high above the Magruder Corridor in short order.

Elk Mountain Road brought us past the trailhead for Lynx Meadows, so we stopped there to stretch our legs and eat lunch. I walked over to check out the start of the trail while Ambrose got cooking. It did appear that there was a trail to follow, at least at the start, and I was happy to see that. We ate lunch, and then drove on. At the next junction, we took a right onto Running Creek Road, finally entering some new territory.

This road doesn’t look very scary in the pictures that I took. It looks kind of normal. Let me tell you right now, it did not feel normal. It felt like it was barely a single lane, a trace of a road precariously carved out of the side of a ridge. Straight up on one side and straight down on the other. I mean, it wasn’t really, but that’s how it felt to me. Like a private lane into the middle of nowhere. It was incredibly beautiful, and the sights fed my soul.

The road wound its way down into old growth forest. It was a bit less scary driving through the woods, but there were still pronounced embankments on either side. Trees leaned over the road, and I hoped we wouldn’t run into one across the road. One piece of gear we didn’t have in the car was a chainsaw. I followed our progress on GPS so I could see where the Lynx Meadows trail met the road. I wanted to stop at that point to check it out.

When we got there, it took me a few moments to find the trailhead. There was a sign there, which was good, but it was partially obscured by fallen trees. Not so good. At least I knew what kind of terrain to look for at this end of the trail. And I was now mentally prepared to handle lots of step overs on the day hike.

The next spot on the road to watch for was where the trail would leave the road. See, it only stayed on the road for a short passage. Then it kind of did a cut through, taking a more direct route to Warm Springs Bar while the road went around to a bridged crossing of Running Creek. We found that trailhead, but only because there was a sign. The sign wasn’t for my trail, but it was directly across the road from it. Maybe someday I’ll come back and hike up the Parachute Ridge Trail that sign marked, but the sign would still help me find my trail.

From there, we made our way past a fallen log on the road. It was huge, clearly too big for us to move, but there was a kind of go-around. Other vehicles had clearly gone on through, and Ambrose steered our Subaru through without incident. We crossed a bridge, and the area on either side of the road flattened out a bit as we made a U-turn. Then we popped out into a big meadow dotted with structures. There were many tent structures (wooden framed, canvas covered huts basically), a big wooden building, several small structures that looked like outhouses, a corral, a roofed wooden platform… But no people!

We drove through to where I thought we’d camp, but there was no shade there at all, and the sun was mercilessly hot. We drove back towards where we entered and parked where there was some