In 2010 during the last week of September I was aiming to
take a trip to Idaho. I was going to the
Sawtooth Mountain Range in Idaho’s central region (how does a state shaped like
that have regions?) to spend a week hiking.
This was the week before school started, so I was pretty stoked to get
out and enjoy things before getting back to the grind. Somewhere in the mix of planning and getting
ready to go a friend said he had an interest in coming along. He had different hopes for this trip, but we
agreed on Idaho as a starting spot. We
had six days to do whatever and we we would play it by ear.
We were going to leave at night, and as I headed over to
pick my friend up he expressed a worry about some throat issues he had been
having. I slept at his house and we
agreed to leave in the morning. In the
AM we started the long drive. We’re
headed down the Gorge and my friend casually tells me to pull over at the
dam. He whips out his cell phone and
tells his work he’s sick (which he truly was) and won’t be coming in. That, in my head, was like the official start
of the trip. The thing about this trip
that made time ease by was Seinfeld. My
buddy had his laptop, and I had an FM transmitter and a power inverter. These paired he could watch Seinfeld with the
car speakers, and I had seen them all so I could pretty much watch them in my
head with the sound.
We drove all day on 84 and then hit a windy(the twisty kind,
not the gusty kind) highway that brought us into the Sawtooth Range. That mountain range was pretty impressive,
and it was obvious why they call it the Sawtooth Range. We drove around a bit until my colleague
noticed a peak. We took a gravel road
towards this peak and drove for a while until we came to a parking area. My key memory here was that in Oregon we have
smooth gray basalt; out in Idaho they had granite. I was tying my shoes and I BRUSHED my leg
gingerly against some granite, and then I was bleeding. The granite was aggressive and jagged. Anyways, we set up camp next to a spot on the
trail.
The next morning I woke up, had some breakfast, and heard my
buddy going, “Hyokkkkkkkkkkk, HYOKKKKKKKKK!!”
Then he asked me to peer down his throat with a flashlight. I scoped it out and things were swollen, but
he was alright enough. We picked a peak
and left the trail. We headed in the
general direction through the vegetation and then up some talus slopes. The rocks there were awesome. I picked up some huge chunks of Feldspar rich
rock. This is the downside to hiking for
me, I pick up big samples and by the time
I get back to my car I’ve got an extra 5-10 pounds in my pack. We took some breaks and got to the top of
this peak. Looking out was amazing. It was different types of peaks in every
direction. Numerous lakes, peaks, and
trees as far as one could see. We hiked
down to the highest lake on the true trail and followed it back to the
car. Beautiful stop in Idaho: check. We got back on the road and drove the rest of
the day to a random campsite in Utah. We
set up camp, some Seinfeld was watched, and sleep was had.
In the morning we packed up camp. Once again I performed a flashlight throat
swelling inspection and then we hit the road again and drove through
Wyoming. The only notable things in
Wyoming were stopping at the Sierra Trading Post store in Cheyenne, and a
lightning storm near the Wyoming-Colorado border. We got to Colorado, crossed through the great
divide (it was a tunnel through the mountain), and stopped at a Wendy’s for
lunch and to use the WiFi to find a trail location. We found a trail and headed there. In the parking lot we packed all our gear, it
would be a lot colder at this altitude (my car was parked higher than the
summit of Mt hood). We hiked in the dark
to make decent head way. We found the
most protected area, but it was still rocky most places and hard to sink tent
stakes. My Harbor Freight tarp had last
a long time; Colorado destroyed it. The
wind ripped grommets from the force and flapping. I was reaching out of my sleeping bag trying
to rig it by hand. We finally got to
sleep. In the middle of the night my
friend stirred… “Justin, Justin, are you awake?”
“Yeah”
“I need to pee.”
I didn’t really understand this comment but whatever. I
returned a confused, “OK?”
“I need to pee, but there’s a mountain goat outside of my
tent, it’s freaking me out.” There was
more to this; I can’t remember exactly what concerns were expressed but I’m sure
it involved fears of the mountain goat turning violent and a brutal mountain
battle of man versus beast.
Eventually dawn came and we headed out up the trail to
Torreys Peak and Grays Peak. This trail
was pretty awesome in that it was two mountains connected by a saddle. The two mountains differed by an elevation of
nine feet, which is pretty awesome considering the mountains had completely
different stages of erosion. I was a
bit slower than my hiking pal so he would take frequent breaks and let me get
closer; it was cold enough that he couldn’t stop moving long enough to let me
catch all the way up. That part that
gets me was that I was struggling along while this guy’s throat was swollen to
who knows how much, and I still couldn’t keep up with him. We got to the summit and looked out over the
mountains of Colorado. Beautiful stop in
Colorado: check. The funny part is that
the summit we were on was 14,278 feet, but the state sits so high you’d never
guess you were anywhere near that high up.
We took in the view, ate some lunch, and headed back to camp to pack
up. After packing up we hiked back to
the car and set off down the road to Utah.
We drove to Canyon Lands National Park near Moab, Utah. The National Park campground was full so we
turned around. It was a long ways back
to the highway so we were hunting for a place to camp. We found some BLM land and found a spot to
camp there. This area had hard clay like
ground. My friend broke a tent stake
(heavy duty aluminum one) trying to hammer it into the ground. With my tarp in shambles from the vicious
Colorado wind I had elected to bust out my actual tent. Thankfully it didn’t rain because my tent
couldn’t take it, and also because I’m pretty sure this was BLM land because it
was prone to flash flooding. More
Seinfeld was watched and then we went to sleep.
In the middle of the night one of my tent poles tell over because the
stake wasn’t deep enough in the hard ground.
I didn’t care and went back to sleep.
An aside about this spot is that it was a spectacular camping spot. We were next to a fairly large feature that
we could climb on to take pictures. The
view out was amazing. 
In the morning we went to Canyon Lands (the less touristy
south part). We found an 11 mile
roundtrip trail that led to a over look into the canyon. We set out on the hike. Early on we passed a couple in their 30’s,
the woman was complaining about the steepness getting down the initial part of
the trail. At one point on the hike
there was a permanent steel ladder.
There was a lot of climbing down, jumping up, and long flat areas. We got to the overlook at looked out into the
canyon. The view was down into the
canyon at the Colorado River and Green River confluence. We sat for a while and ate lunch and enjoyed
the amazing view. Beautiful stop in
Utah: check. On the way back the clouds
looked aggressive so we rapped cell phones and cameras into my rain jacket
inside my pack. I think it rain quite
heavily for a few minutes and then cleared up again. The trail back was back tracking the original
trail. We never passed the couple again
from the start of the hike, they must have turned around. We drove out of Canyon Lands and drove into
Arches which was very close. The rain
had set in again so we stopped at some close to the road attractions and
snapped some pictures. We did a hike
that was about ¾ mile long and that finished it. The rain was too much after all the days of
hiking; we were done. We drove through
the rest of Utah and into Idaho. As
night fell we couldn’t find anywhere to camp, it was all farm land. We found a rest area with an interpretive area
attached to it. We were there late
enough and planned on leaving early enough, so we just threw some sleeping bags
on the grass and slept there. I woke up at
some point in the night feeling cold; I went to sleep in the car. 
I woke up early and roused my friend. We hit the road again and drove all the way
back to Oregon. The trip was done. We had driven a little over 3,000 miles in
six days. We had climbed peaks in Idaho
and Colorado and covered a long trail in Utah; it was a great trip. I never planned to drive over that much
ground in those six days, but I was glad it worked out that way. As another aside my friend’s throat was a
pretty big issue, the flash light routine was a regular daily occurrence. He was taking Ibuprofen pretty regularly for
swelling. It was known in the back of
our heads that maybe we’d have to find a hospital at some point. This guy never complained the entire
trip. He was along to explore, just as
much as I was. Some people are born
troopers.
Here's the link to some pictures from the trip:
