Parma
@parma26
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2014
- Messages
- 754
July 16-20, 2015
A buddy of mine wanted to experience the goodness that is the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. So we found a good route that would be scenic and have some good lakes for fishing. He brought his two sons and I brought my younger brother. We drove up from Utah Wednesday after work and stayed the first night in a hotel in Twin Falls. In the morning we had to take a look at the Perrine Bridge. Yep, that same canyon ole Evel Knievel tried to jump back in 1974 on the X2 Skycycle...spoiler alert...he didn't make it.
On the drive from Twin Falls to the Sawtooths we passed thru Shoshone, ID that allegedly has the "World's Widest Main Street"...I'm not convinced.
We started at Yellow Belly TH with the intention to stay the first night at Edna Lake, about 9.3 miles. The trails are great and very easy to follow.
First stop was Farley Lake, only 3 miles up the trail, a great spot for a break.
We then turned off the Alice/Toxaway Loop and headed up toward Edith Lake. From the turnoff you can start to see the White Clouds in the distance.
Here's Edith Lake...and it like most lakes in the Sawtooths, is crystal clear water.
Above Edith Lake we are now 3.5 miles from Edna Lake.
Imogene Lake is over them mountains...along with that football Uncle Rico threw.
That's me with Farley and Yellow Belly Lakes in the background.
On the other side of the pass and we can see Rendezvous Lake.
We made it to Edna Lake, but unfortunately so did several others. We didn't find a suitable spot so we continued about 5 more minutes to Vernon Lake and found a great spot without the people. Mileage the first day was 10.1 miles.
Vernon Lake
My first catch of the trip.
Next morning we only had a short 2 mile hike to Ardeth Lake.
Here's our camp at Ardeth Lake. We were here for about 20 minutes setting up everything, and then an older couple hiked by and stopped 15 yards from us and started to take off their packs. We started looking at each other wondering if they were really going to setup camp a literal 15 yards away from us. So I decided to make the whole 15 steps over and i asked them "Hi, are you guys just stopping for lunch or setting up camp for the night?" Sure enough, they said they were planning on setting up camp. The guy asked me if we were too close. I immediately said ya, you're right on top of us. And I pointed to the rest of the huge lake and plenty of other campsites to seek out. The wife said they had a long hike that day and needed to stop. I kinda shrugged with a face of don't even think of setting up here. The guy then looked around for a bit and returned to his wife and convinced her to move on to someplace else. She repacked her stuff and wasn't pleased. But they were seriously 15 STEPS away from us!
After they left we tried to think of a way so others don't do the same. So I grabbed a stick and wrote NO CAMPING in the dirt...no one else camped there, so either it worked or others are normal and don't want to camp on top of others in the backcountry.
Later that afternoon we decided to head off trail for Tenlake Basin above Ardeth Lake for some fishing.
First peek into Tenlake Basin above Ardeth Lake.
In this first large lake we caught some large cutthroats, rainbows, and a couple graylings.
This is the grayling I caught...just a little guy.
This is one of the cutthroats.
The next day we day hiked to Spangle Lake, this is looking back at Ardeth Lake on the right before heading over the pass to Spangle Lake.
At Spangle the fishing was fast for some small brookies, nothing too big, but it was fun.
We did have a small rain storm to wait out.
Then heading back over the pass toward camp at Ardeth we had to do a photo...this is me and my brother.
Final morning at Ardeth gave us a great photo opportunity of the lake and Glens Peak.
This day we planned on hiking to Toxaway Lake, so we are filling up our water before heading over the pass and descent to Toxaway Lake.
Descending to Toxaway Lake.
Once we got to the lake we couldn't find a spot we liked, so we kept hiking back toward the trailhead thinking we'll eventually find something.
This was a shot of a smaller lake/pond below Toxaway that I think looks pretty cool.
We kept hiking and hiking and hiking...so we ended up just hiking out that final day instead of camping in a spot we didn't like. That day we hiked a pretty tough 13 miles. We thought we'd just camp at the trailhead. But we saw a bunch of RV's and car campers and their BBQs/picnics and the thought of tearing into a Mountain House didn't sound too appealing. So we hopped in the car and drove to Ketchum for some pizza. And now that we have fully thrown the towel in we didn't want to crawl into our tents for the night so I did what any manly man would do...I used my Marriott points and booked a night in Twin Falls!
So the trip was great and the first time I've started and ended a backpacking trip in a hotel...yep, I really roughed it!
EDIT- I forgot to mention that we rented a sat phone from Skycall here in Salt Lake City: www.skycallsatellite.com. They were great and the prices are pretty good too, so give them a look if you need to rent a sat phone or locator.
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A buddy of mine wanted to experience the goodness that is the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. So we found a good route that would be scenic and have some good lakes for fishing. He brought his two sons and I brought my younger brother. We drove up from Utah Wednesday after work and stayed the first night in a hotel in Twin Falls. In the morning we had to take a look at the Perrine Bridge. Yep, that same canyon ole Evel Knievel tried to jump back in 1974 on the X2 Skycycle...spoiler alert...he didn't make it.
On the drive from Twin Falls to the Sawtooths we passed thru Shoshone, ID that allegedly has the "World's Widest Main Street"...I'm not convinced.
We started at Yellow Belly TH with the intention to stay the first night at Edna Lake, about 9.3 miles. The trails are great and very easy to follow.
First stop was Farley Lake, only 3 miles up the trail, a great spot for a break.
We then turned off the Alice/Toxaway Loop and headed up toward Edith Lake. From the turnoff you can start to see the White Clouds in the distance.
Here's Edith Lake...and it like most lakes in the Sawtooths, is crystal clear water.
Above Edith Lake we are now 3.5 miles from Edna Lake.
Imogene Lake is over them mountains...along with that football Uncle Rico threw.
That's me with Farley and Yellow Belly Lakes in the background.
On the other side of the pass and we can see Rendezvous Lake.
We made it to Edna Lake, but unfortunately so did several others. We didn't find a suitable spot so we continued about 5 more minutes to Vernon Lake and found a great spot without the people. Mileage the first day was 10.1 miles.
Vernon Lake
My first catch of the trip.
Next morning we only had a short 2 mile hike to Ardeth Lake.
Here's our camp at Ardeth Lake. We were here for about 20 minutes setting up everything, and then an older couple hiked by and stopped 15 yards from us and started to take off their packs. We started looking at each other wondering if they were really going to setup camp a literal 15 yards away from us. So I decided to make the whole 15 steps over and i asked them "Hi, are you guys just stopping for lunch or setting up camp for the night?" Sure enough, they said they were planning on setting up camp. The guy asked me if we were too close. I immediately said ya, you're right on top of us. And I pointed to the rest of the huge lake and plenty of other campsites to seek out. The wife said they had a long hike that day and needed to stop. I kinda shrugged with a face of don't even think of setting up here. The guy then looked around for a bit and returned to his wife and convinced her to move on to someplace else. She repacked her stuff and wasn't pleased. But they were seriously 15 STEPS away from us!
After they left we tried to think of a way so others don't do the same. So I grabbed a stick and wrote NO CAMPING in the dirt...no one else camped there, so either it worked or others are normal and don't want to camp on top of others in the backcountry.
Later that afternoon we decided to head off trail for Tenlake Basin above Ardeth Lake for some fishing.
First peek into Tenlake Basin above Ardeth Lake.
In this first large lake we caught some large cutthroats, rainbows, and a couple graylings.
This is the grayling I caught...just a little guy.
This is one of the cutthroats.
The next day we day hiked to Spangle Lake, this is looking back at Ardeth Lake on the right before heading over the pass to Spangle Lake.
At Spangle the fishing was fast for some small brookies, nothing too big, but it was fun.
We did have a small rain storm to wait out.
Then heading back over the pass toward camp at Ardeth we had to do a photo...this is me and my brother.
Final morning at Ardeth gave us a great photo opportunity of the lake and Glens Peak.
This day we planned on hiking to Toxaway Lake, so we are filling up our water before heading over the pass and descent to Toxaway Lake.
Descending to Toxaway Lake.
Once we got to the lake we couldn't find a spot we liked, so we kept hiking back toward the trailhead thinking we'll eventually find something.
This was a shot of a smaller lake/pond below Toxaway that I think looks pretty cool.
We kept hiking and hiking and hiking...so we ended up just hiking out that final day instead of camping in a spot we didn't like. That day we hiked a pretty tough 13 miles. We thought we'd just camp at the trailhead. But we saw a bunch of RV's and car campers and their BBQs/picnics and the thought of tearing into a Mountain House didn't sound too appealing. So we hopped in the car and drove to Ketchum for some pizza. And now that we have fully thrown the towel in we didn't want to crawl into our tents for the night so I did what any manly man would do...I used my Marriott points and booked a night in Twin Falls!
So the trip was great and the first time I've started and ended a backpacking trip in a hotel...yep, I really roughed it!
EDIT- I forgot to mention that we rented a sat phone from Skycall here in Salt Lake City: www.skycallsatellite.com. They were great and the prices are pretty good too, so give them a look if you need to rent a sat phone or locator.
Featured image for home page:
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I should start remedying that asap!
) are the lakes south/west above Ardeth Lake just below Glens Peak. It's off the trail, but fairly easy to get to. Camping up there would be pretty cool if you want to get away from any crowds around Ardeth.
