I’m finding my way back. Hello self.

Each day peels off heavy layers of the other life. The life that has deadlines and commitments,  goes grocery shopping and has to make appointments. The self I find out here is different. She is getting older, getting better, but also more me than ever. Does that make sense?

I start the 1,000′ climb out of the canyon with this song today.

Slow and steady up the grade, and something clicks into place: the climb…the flow. I found it.

My legs start floating my body and heavy water-ladened pack up the grade, and the music is banging, and it is fabulous.

I tend to do better on the climbs and here I am, finally feeling this walking thing on a long and protracted 1,000′ climb. Ok, let’s go!

Up top I transition to chacos. Over the years I have found that chaos are a superb dirt road walking choice for my feet. They love it. The air dries out the one linering hot spot, my toes wiggle with glee, and the cold air doesn’t give them any bother…except to maybe give them more vigour.

Have I said “let’s go!” Yet?

It was a morning of smooth and silky miles where my brain sat back and watched the world move by as my body walked and danced down the road. If there isn’t a dirt road dance, did you even hike?

I tried to read the sky today but finally gave up. There was too much movement. The dark clouds full of rain and snow were intermingled in the sky so that it could be sunny and sideways snowing at the same time. What was inevitable was the snow, sun, and bitter, bitter cold.

At the first large patch of sun, I stopped for a morning break. Maybe the sun would ward off the biting cold enough so that I could to stay still for a few minutes. And it worked! I could feel the vitamin D coursing through my veins, or whatever happens when the skin sees the sun for the first time in a while. Basking might have happened. Then, four minutes later, it started snowing. I packed up and kept moving.

By this time, I had already gotten pummeled by a few of the snow storms. They came in fast and hot…only lasting five or ten minutes, but wow, when they hit… I would have to cover half my face to protect it from the sharp stinging flakes. Then it would stop, and the sun would come out, and the snow would melt, and the dirt would get sticky on my chacos for a minute before it dried out again.

Repeat.

I found another of those sunny patches for lunch. The very satisfying lunch I’ve been having this week is a garlic nann with hummus and a packet of hickory smoked tuna on top. Delicious!

Then the storm. I covered up with my tyvek (I usually sit on my tyvek at every break…I’m a dirt sitter, but the tyvek keeps me a bit cleaner…and is waterproof!) and wait it out.

It made for some stunning skies today…so dramatic.

My head was down for much of the afternoon, hiding my face away from the biting wind, so I didn’t get to take in a lot of my surroundings, but I did see a few more pronghorn, no people. The birds though! Every day there are more meadowlarks.

I am contributing to several iNaturalist projects on this trip. In an effort to be intentional on this hike, I searched for iNaturalist projects in the Idaho desert and came up with many more than expected. I joined 5 or 6, although there are overlapping studies going on.

Two of them you may be interested in: the Idaho Flora project and Idaho Amphibian and Reptile project. I will take photos of flowers for the flora one; that data gets reviewed by the Ray Davis Herbarium and Idaho Museum of Natural History. Frogs and toads? Those observations are for the curator of herpetology, again at the Natural History Museum.

Cool, right? But I haven’t seen any reptiles, and just one type of flower. The cold and snow are taking a toll on the number of my observations.

Back to the walking.

I was reaching the end of my desire to walk for the day. The desire to sit was growing. Sit and snack and read. These were the other elements of backpacking that I loved: the chillaxing.

I found a patch of ground in a sagebrush neighborhood. As soon as I got tucked in, another storm rolled in. Then sun, and repeat. It’s a perfect time to read.

The book? I downloaded several books, and the one that is hitting a chord on this trip is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

Dinner was provided by Itacate Foods, dessert by Stroopwaffle.


P.S. thank goodness I brought my old lady stick roller….the ghost of my former plantar fasciitis past is visiting,  and I’ve been rolling out my calves and shins to keep him at bay.

Oh hello again, wind.

There were no windblocks up on the rim. The wind started and stopped throughout the night, and about 2am came back with a vengeance.

Today was to be a purely road day, but it wouldn’t be an easy one on the feet. The mud had hardened part way – then cattle, elk, mule deer, and pronghorn walked through the clay-like mud, churned it up into a jumbled mess right before it solidified into hard ridges.

Did I tell you I saw a herd of elk yesterday? They were majestic! And large herds of pronghorn too. This morning, a group ran around and around in the hills off to the right, maybe just for the love of it.

Was I out here walking for the love of it? Yes,  but it’s hard to love all the moments… like when I twist my foot weird on the jumbled and uneaven mud road.

Oh, then there was the coyote! I look back to see a handsome fella maybe 20 yards away. He has a thick whitish, gray, creamy coat and doesn’t notice me, then walks over to the road, poops, and carries on. So there is poop mixed into the hard mud I’m walking on as well. I play dodge the poop. In fact, there is so much poop it reminds me of the Oregon desert.

I look at my maps and see that today is the day I will walk back down into the canyon for the night. A dirt road into Indian Hot Springs is the easiest place to access the Breneau River in the whole hike, but easy is all relative. Thank goodness I’m on foot because I would probably have a heart attack if I had to drive it, or was even in the car with someone else driving it. In short: don’t drive it.

Back to the map. I also see that I could add in a little cross-country hiking and cut off 3-4 miles of road walking. I’m game, let’s go!

There was lots of evidence of fires in this desert…in some areas the sagebrush was entirely gone and replaced with grasses (easy walking), and other times the sagebrush grew thick (sharp and pokey walking). On my cross country jaunt, I hoped for the first, but as luck would have it, i got both. Before i knew that, my plan had been to hike cross country a mile to meet an old road for another 1.5ish miles to another road, which would take me another 3 miles to the river.

All was going well until it was time to find the old road. There was no old road. And it’s extremely unusual to find a road in the desert that has been completely reclaimed… especially in an area of thick sagebrush. This road would have had to predate the growing of this sagebrush.

I grunted.

At one point in the now two-mile bushwack, it’s impossible to keep a stright bearing in this kind of landscape because I am weaving in and around the sharp pointy everything, I see by my app that I’m right on the old road grade. But there is nothing. Later, a certain hint of patterns in the sage stop me, and I notice an old rusty tin can. The old road! Always the tin cans.

I finally emerged onto a dirt road that is so braided and wide that four trucks could be driving side by side. Year after year, trucks must have slid around in the mud and rocks, making this monstrosity in the desert. 

I walk this veritable highway and note that I’m supposed to be dropping suddenly into the river canyon, but I look all around and can’t see the canyon. Desert rivers can be sneaky like that. It’s flat, flat, flat, then boom! 700 foot drop off to a river below. The other side? Flat, flat, flat for 100 miles.

That was today walking down to the Breneau River.

I pick my way down the panic-inducing road and turn a corner to see some ATVs next to an old abandoned truck. I walk up expecting some questions, I haven’t seen another human since the start, but I pass by without receiving so much as a glance.

At the bottom, I see several choices of roads and another BLM kiosk. I must say, again, Idaho BLM, you do a good job of recreation infrastructure. I’ve passed several intact map kiosks along the route, and the fact that these signs are intact continues to be impressive.

I take the road that heads into the trees, hoping to find a camp. And I do! The river is running a muddy shade of brown. I am camped just downstream of the Jarbidge and Breaneu confluence, and the two rivers pump up the volume… this section is popular with rafters and boaters, too. I don’t see any boats though, the periodic hail and grapple storms I’ve been walking through today tell me the mountains are probably locking up and adding to the snow in the high country. After the next warm spell, though, or rain on snow event, and boom! Boating season!

Then: pitch camp, filter water, and into the tent for some R & R.

Rain? Snow?

Something fell from the sky in the middle of the night, but the pattering on the tent didn’t last long.

I slept long and deep, and in the morning when the light started illuminating the rimrock across the way, I knew the forecasted storm day could as easily be a non-storm day, or one of many types of days. The weather out in the desert does its own thing, but at least dramatic skies were a guarantee.

The trail entered the Wilderness and wasn’t a trail so much as a haphazard user trail with old footprints. At the footings for a once-there footbridge, I turned my sights up: it was time to climb. The guidebook said something about an old trail, and partway up I found a path and followed it to the top. Glimpses back at the canyon were lovely, especially as patches of blue swirled in the cloudy sky.

Up top I met the wind…my hiking companion today. I put wind layers on and battened down the hatches…even getting my fleece and rain mits out. It wasn’t too long before snow started flying, then it took on a sideways slant and started building up in leeward piles on my coat and pack.

I battled through it for a bit before seeing a depression in the earth that could serve as a windbreak while I put the tent up. The wind was trying to blow me over by this point. I put it up, climbed inside, and into my sleeping bag as the snow accumulated. I decided to have an early lunch…I had a feeling the storm would last a while.

About two hours later I emerged to a quickly melting landscape, and not long after the sun had sucked it all up. The squall was gone.

All the better for the skies.

Today had long road walking miles. Actually, this whole section is a dirt road walk.

One tire tank was dry. One dirt tank had water, and since I decided to rely on this water source, I sucked it up and dipped into the muck. It wasn’t as bad as some water I’ve had, I was able to step on the frozen shore and dip without getting my feet wet, but it was close to the worst. 🤢

I left three liters as is to filter later and groaned my pack back on. Whose idea was it to do 20 miles between water sources with a 7-food carry? That decision by an optimistic previous version of myself was delusional. This was a lot.

I plodded down the road and slowly walked my way around Poison Butte, and was saved by a full tire tank of water. I replaced the foul stuff with much less foul stuff.

The sun was out, but the wind was windy, and cold.

My energy and willingness to be blasted by the wind was waining, and I knew it was time to make camp before I tripped on the chaos of the chunky hard mud disaster once called a dirt road. The walking on this mess was challenging.

I waddled over to an overlook of the Jarbidge River, and finally put the beast of burden down.

I made camp with a view and started my progression to horizontal, snug as a bug, but first, food. I needed to lighten this pack.

Late March is the perfect time to be out here. At least that’s what I’m saying on day one before the rain comes. A soild week of sun on earth started the annual cycle of green growth…even in the depths of this Idaho desert.

I was headed into one of the most remote places in the country…the Jarbidge Wilderness. It has been a fairly smooth trip in, though, and will be a cruisy 100 miles out.

I left Bend, and after six long hours in the car yesterday, crashed in a hotel room an hour from Hammett, Idaho, where the next day I would leave my car and get a ride to the Nevada border and the start of the trail.

I was meeting Dennis there, my shuttle driver and trail angel to be. I connected with Dennis on the Idaho Centennial Trail Facebook group. (About all fb is good for anymore are the trail groups. When you want real-time information on conditions, past experiences, or offers of assistance, you go to the group).

The page provided, and I quickly found a ride to the start of the trail. The drive in would also figure into my water cache strategy.

There is very little natural water in the first 100 miles of the Idaho Centennial Trail, so much like the Oregon Desert Trail, hikers must place their own gallon jugs on the way in.

A dirt road from the small ranching town of Breneau stretched 70 miles down to the state line…and served as the caching backbone. (There is also a paved road that gets you within 2 miles of the start, but then no water caches).

We were lucky, the road was dry today…with rain and wet it could turn dicey in spots, but today it was firm and fast. The same can not be said of the side roads one would use to cache. Those were two tracks that disappeared into the sagebrush sea…and were referenced as rough and tumble type roads…only suggested for high clearance vehicles on the driest of soils.

I didn’t want to deal with that, plus, it was March where my average temps would be in the 50s and 60s. Perfect for hiking long distances between water sources. In fact, since I wasn’t bothered by 20-mile water carries, and I had the time to make a key 9-mile round trip down to the Breneau River a few days in, I only needed to place one cache….near where the trail crossed the main road. Easy peasy.

Dennis has a ranch near Fairfield, Idaho, at the end of the next section of the trail, at the transition zone into the Sawtooth Mountains. He wants to help hikers as a potential resupply stop, and wants to thru-hike the trail himself in a few years. We had lots to talk about, especially around funding for trail maintenance. He is in the midst of working with other ICT advocates on legislation to create a funding source within the state. Brilliant!

He also suggested I stop by the winery next to the BLM Guard Station right off the trail by Hammett. Dennis had a feeling the owners of Cold Springs Winery might be interested in supporting hikers as well, so I was planning on capping off my spring hike by telling trail stories and drinking wine with potential trail angels….pinch me.

We finished the drive into the desert, and Dennis dropped me off at the first white carsonite post that would be my guide that week. The Jarbidge Mountains still held her winter coat of white, although the recent warm weather had started the spring sloughs. It was officially spring after all (as of last week), and even though blades of grass were sprouting up everywhere, the temps were due to drop 20 degrees by tomorrow and start raining.

I was prepared for the drop, and carried rain gear, cold weather gear, and even a tank top just in case things started to warm again at the end of the week. Those systems and a 7-day food carry meant I had a heavy pack. But my walking forecast was slow and steady with lots of snacks. This desert section has very little elevation gain (other than the two alternates I was taking into the canyon), so many hikers blast through this section…afterall, the stunning spines of Idaho’s densely forested mountains made up the rest of the 800+ miles. Just to the north were challenging and rugged miles, some in fire-affected forests with blowdowns for days, thus a main reason Dennis was working on trail maintenance solutions. It was a constant and persistent problem…the problem of keeping the trail cleared and in good shape.

But this section, the desert section, is a land that is mostly sky. Sky, punctured by deep drops into the Jarbidge and Breaneu Canyons. These were wilderness canyons with big horn sheep, whitewater rapids, and steep basalt columns…very reminiscent of the Oregon Desert Trail, except the ICT had carsonite posts.

When we got to the drop-off point, I got out of the truck, took some photos, and started waking to Nevada. I would do a quick out and back to the border, and then take my first alternate down into the canyon next to the East Fork of the Jarbidge River.

I was hungry.  The leftover burrito I had packed out from lunch yesterday was sounding better and better….but kept going because I had decided to eat lunch in Nevada. As I walked down the rocky two-track road to the border, I chased a herd of 50 mule deer down the slope before me….I was already excited about the wildlife I had seen on the trip so far. Multiple pronghorn and mule deer herds had sprinted from the truck as we drove in.

At the orange border sign I plopped down on my fresh piece of tyvek and reveled in the quiet.

This is the life.

By the time I had finished my first trail-side nap, an extra chill had entered the air, and only walking would warm me up.

I was to take my first alternate soon.

I pulled up photos I had taken of this section in the guidebook. Lisa and Jeremy were the authors of a new and excellent guidebook for the ICT, and had suggested hikers take an alternate right from the start down into the Jarbidge River canyon… and that was an obvious yes for me…Yes I will take the route into the canyon and sleep next to the sounds of the rushing river before climbing out later to hike along the top. Yes. Yes I will.

I had been in touch with Jeremy via email for a year or so by this point, and was fortunate enough to have met the couple in November when I was giving a talk at Idaho Mountain Touring on the Blue Mountains Trail.

I trusted their alternate suggestion, and after my 4-mile round trip visit to Nevada, I was back to the pullout where Dennis had dropped me off, and I started walking the down the long grade to the river and the small community of Murphy Hot Springs. I hadn’t been able to determine if there were soakable hot springs for the likes of me down there, and the absence of information led me to believe there wasn’t.

I was surprised at how big the “town” was…maybe 50+ houses and buildings huddled in the bottom of the narrow canyon. I was baffled to see so much infrastructure next to a canyon river. They didn’t have problems with flooding? Many of the other free-flowing desert river canyons could flood spectacularly every few years, but it was apparent from the scene before me that that didn’t happen here. By the time I started walking next to the river, I saw how low-volumn it was. I’d packraft that! Soon, I saw log jams blocking the flow and determined that while it could be done in a packraft, you would have to be careful of pointy sticks and scrapey sharp rocks.

At the end of the road I was walking was a popular boat launch, the whitewater only got more whitewatery from here down, especially after the confluence with the Breneau River. I wouldn’t be paddling through, instead I would be walking the rim of these remote canyons to the Snake River.

I ambled down the dirt road and passed several campgrounds, all with fire rings and pit toilets. Everything was very clean and nice…no bullet holes in the signs either! And the boat launch, wow, I had never seen one so nice with platforms for rafts and stairs down to the water. Color me impressed.

I found a campsite tucked into some trees across from the launch and enjoyed having a picnic table in camp. It’s the little things!

The Jarbidge lulled me into a post-dinner stupor and I closed my eyes.