Monday July 21, 21.6mi/34.8km
North Fork Moose Creek (539.9/2760ft) to Ridge above Bitch Lake (518.3/6910ft) (ID)
I packed up from my cozy little spot in the Cedar forest, and had another couple hours of hiking along North Fork Moose Creek.
I was beginning to think it never rained in Idaho, but then it rained lightly for about an hour, which was enough to make all the plants very wet, which soaked me on the overgrown Trail. There was even a short section of blowdowns when the trail passed through a small burn section, and that went pretty slowly given how slippery all the logs were. The views of the river were unbeatable though.
After a couple hours, I entered a wide flat valley where the two forks of the Moose Creek converge, and hiked through a beautiful forest full of soaking wet ferns.
As I got closer to the East Fork of the Moose Creek, the trail quality started to improve.
I was pretty excited to see fewer wet plants lining the path.
The bridge over the East Fork Moose Creek was truly impressive.
From there I had just over an hour of pleasant hiking through a very burned valley, down to the Moose Creek Ranger Station.
There’s a bunch of backcountry outfitters and stock camps in this valley so they tend to keep the trail pretty well maintained.
The ranger station was an entire complex of buildings to support the operation.
There was a stables, a couple residences, a storage room, a laundry building, and a building for the airstrip. And of course a visitor office.
As I was reading the trail report (they keep a huge list of which year that each of their hundreds of trails were cleared!) the ranger came in from the other room and started chatting. It was lunchtime, and she offered that I could eat in front of the nice warm woodstove as it was a chilly wet day. Sweet. We ended up chatting for almost an hour about lots of trail stuff, turns out she’s pretty well connected to the ITA, Idaho Trails Association. As I was finishing my lunch, she also offered me a big slice of Huckleberry pie, a refill on my water, and a quick charge for my phone. It was an unexpectedly fantastic lunch. Pretty soon though, I had to head out into the gray day.
Walking the airstrip felt kind of funny, and there are recreational planes that land here a couple times a week. A mile later, and I was crossing the massive Selway River.
It rained lightly on and off for a couple hours, but that didn’t really bother me. The overgrown Moose Ridge Trail got me completely soaked, although the rain shell and rain skirt certainly helped. I couldn’t take any photos for a while as my lens was wet. I was able to capture one of this very cold, sad wet snake.
The ranger had pointed out how lucky I was to do this big 5000-ft climb on a cool cloudy day, as it’s usually hot and exposed on this ridge. Which is true but I was still wishing for a warmer day, as it was pretty chilly by the time I climbed up to 6,000 ft. These thimbleberries were especially effective, dumping all their rainwater on me.
Once I got up to the top of Moose Ridge at 7,000 ft, the trail became quite a bit better. Not because it was better maintained, just because there were fewer plants to grow up at this elevation.
After 6pm the clouds started to clear out, and the views became pretty impressive.
Looking to the West, where peeks of sun were highlighting some of the Bitterroot mountains.
It was tricky to find a spot to camp that wasn’t in dead forest that wanted to fall over and kill me, but eventually I found a flat grassy meadow above Bitch Lake.
What a long and tiring wet day. I’m starting to think there’s not going to be an easy day of hiking in the Selway section. Only 37 miles more until the Magruder Road, which is the end of this section.