Wednesday July 16, 19.4mi/31.2km

Monroe Butte (609.3/6350ft) to No-see-um Meadows (589.3/5890ft) (ID) -0.6mi skip Liz Cabin

I woke up in a damp meadow to a wet and cold tent. I spent a few minutes trying to dry out the inside but knew I’d have to dry everything out at lunch. I had a nice trail for the first half mile of the day.

As soon as I turned onto the Windy Creek Trail it became a little overgrown, and I could tell it was maintained and used far less frequently than the nice Windy Bill Trail I had been on.

At the higher elevations it wasn’t so bad, as there were just fewer plants available to reclaim the trail. But after I descended a thousand feet, the trail became more overgrown.

But at least it was still easily followable 99% of the time. Only a couple times in big meadows did I lose the trail tread and have to find it on the other side.

There actually weren’t many blowdowns, and I could walk at almost my usual pace when the trail wasn’t approaching a little stream or waterway. When it got within 100 ft of water, the plants grew like crazy and I just had to wade slowly through the entangled ferns and bear grass.

Finally, after 4 hours of effort I had made it the 9 miles to Weitas Creek bridge. Down here the trail seemed to be a little better used and I followed nice tread for a half mile until I stopped for lunch on the bridge.

It was pretty hot down here at 3,000 ft, so I sat in the shade on one end of the bridge while my tent and gear dried in the sunny part of the bridge. I took up the entire bridge with my stuff, there’s nothing like a good ol’ bridge yard sale. Plus there’s no way anybody was coming through here, I was hours from reasonably good trail, and even further from a trailhead. After lunch I packed up and quickly found the junction to the Yokum Creek Trail.

The distances on those signs are often full of lies, as they don’t account for the many switchbacks. Turns out it was closer to 3.5 mi to the Liz Butte Trail, and 6 mi to the top of Liz Butte. I wish I had taken a photo of the trail junction, it was comical that the trail I was turning on to was almost non-existent, and the trail tread was blanketed in thick moss. It cleared up considerably as I climbed higher on pretty nice switchbacks, and above the riparian plants in the valley. After a couple hours I made it to the junction, where the sign was being swallowed by a tree.

As I got higher up I was traversing meadows more frequently, which were beautiful to walk through with all the paintbrush growing this time of year.

The downside of meadows is that they sometimes make a faint trail impossible to follow, but I only lost the trail once and found it after only 5 minutes of searching the forest. This was probably the strangest piece of trail trash I’ve ever encountered.

The last mile was through an area that was severely burned, so there wasn’t much brush but there were plenty of downed trees.

Finally, at 4pm I arrived at a dirt road, with much relief and fanfare. I thought it was cool, and also a little ironic, that the only sign I’ve seen for the Idaho Centennial Trail is on the brushiest trail I’ve hiked yet.

The roadwalk was pleasant and easy, apparently it’s also the Nez Perce National historic Trail, and the Lewis and Clark Trail.

I arrived at a trailhead at 6 pm, and it seemed too late in the day to continue down 8-mile Sherman Creek Trail, which descended 4,000 ft down a steep valley, and probably had no camping options. So I set up my tent at the edge of the forest, and afterwards noticed this sign. Eek.

While the meadow did have a few of those bugs, it had far more mosquitoes. I enjoyed a couple hours of relaxation protected in my tent, and looking at maps for the next section in the Selway mountains. I also made a plan to deal with my rapidly deteriorating Durston backpack, one of the hip belt straps was slowly ripping off of the pack frame. It definitely wasn’t going to last another 300 miles to Stanley (the next town), so when I get to Highway 12 tomorrow morning, I will hitch almost 90 miles East to Missoula, which has an REI. What a pain.