Thursday July 10, 8.5mi/13.7km

Mullan (756.5/3270ft) to Ridge above St Regis River (748.0/5730ft) (ID/MT)

It was hot in that low elevation Valley, but with the fans on all night I slept comfortably. In the morning I packed up my food into my bear canister, with some food also going into a box to be mailed into the Frank Church wilderness.

I left the Airbnb before the checkout time, since I wanted to get to the post office before they closed for lunch at 11am.

I mailed a small box of food to the Indian Creek Guard station, and despite me verifying the address from three different sources, the PO still couldn’t find it in their computer. But I know it’s right, so it should get there. Afterwards I went a couple blocks to a little bakery, and was doubly excited when they had sourdough toast with peanut butter and honey.

I got on the bus and went back to Mullan, which took almost an hour. I noticed the library was open so I decided to do some quick updates to my journal and my maps, and also top up my phone charge while I was there. After that was the road walk out of town, fortunately it was cool and cloudy today.

That billboard looked weirdly out of place behind all the trees, but then I figured out this must have been the main highway through the valley before they built Interstate 90 in the late 1970s. And I could hear that Interstate nearby, and I crossed over it a mile later. It looked pretty empty.

Once I was south of the interstate, the road turned to dirt.

After a mile it ended at the Willow Creek Trailhead where I saw just a few vehicles, weirdly one of them was the Shoshone county Sheriff. Now I was back on trail and happy to be making uphill progress and in the nice cool weather. I really had pretty good luck with the weather today, the one day I have a huge 3,000-ft climb and it’s cool and cloudy.

I was almost to the lake when I saw a couple people hiking downhill towards me, without backpacks and wearing uniforms. Once I got closer I realized they were two county sheriffs, they said they were looking from somebody that wrecked their car “up at the lake”, which sounded ridiculous given that you can’t drive anywhere near these lakes, it’s just narrow hiking trails. They said not to worry and the person isn’t dangerous, but if I see a car or a lost person to call 911 and they’ll come sort it out. Interesting. I pondered that for quite a while and then when I passed a waterfall it pushed those thoughts out of my brain.

Within a few minutes I was at lower Stevens Lake, which looked pretty sweet. Lots of campsites, no mosquitoes, and swimmable water.

But the afternoon was getting late and I wanted to cover some miles, so I went past it towards Upper Stevens Lake.

And from the upper lake, I took a series of faint herd trails to hike/ scramble up to the ridge, 600 ft above the lake.

This routing is an alternate recommended by the guidebook, I’m not sure I agree. It was quite steep, and very different in character from the rest of the trail so far. Looking at Stevens Peak, my destination at the top of the climb.

Once I was on the ridgeline it was quite rocky, though there was a nice herd path. The last bit just before the summit was definitely steep, and while I have fun with these little rocky scrambles, I think most hikers would be happier taking the original route, which is a more gradual ascent on dirt roads.

The view from the summit was pretty epic. Looking West toward the other ridge, where the original routing is located.

Stevens Peak is 6800 ft, which is the tallest in the Northern Bitterroots. It’s always nice to look down on the area I just hiked up, feels like an accomplishment. The Stevens Lakes:

From there I dropped off the summit and followed a ridgeline for the rest of the day. Since I was on the highest terrain in the area, I had tons of good views, including this cool spot of sunlight.

I knew I would be following this ridgeline for a couple more days, and once I noticed it was almost 8pm I decided to stop and camp. Of course there weren’t any convenient spots nearby so I just camped in the middle of the wide trail.

I didn’t cover many miles today but it was a big 3,000-ft climb to get back up onto the ridge.