Wednesday July 30, 25.3mi/40.7km

Indian Creek (333.5/4700ft) to Sulphur Creek (308.2/5640ft) (ID)

With a later bedtime I slept in later, enjoying the warm morning by the river. After I ate my breakfast and packed up, the rafting guides offered me some coffee and pastries. Nice people. After breakfast they were all scurrying around to pack everything up and get ready for their clients later that day.

As I was hiking out to leave, I crossed the landing strip again, and noticed another rafting company had dropped off some supplies by plane. They had a cool logo.

The trail along the Middle Fork was pretty nice, a few small hills and heaps of views.

For just over a mile, I walked through a strange private land inholding, called Pistol Creek Ranch.

Of course they had their own airstrip, complete with a funny sign.

It felt awkward and very artificial to have a dozen little cabins, with sprinklers and green grass lawns, owned by people in California in the middle of Idaho. As I exited the property on the other side, I noticed an Idaho Centennial Trail marker. I hadn’t seen one of these before!

Even through the talus fields, the trail was very well constructed.

Much of the forests along the Middle Fork have burned in recent years, but I still enjoyed the views.

In early afternoon I arrived at the Sheepeater Hot Springs, they were quite hot and it took me a few minutes to get used to the water.

I’m excited that the hot springs are back. Northern Idaho didn’t have any at all. As the usual afternoon clouds started to gather, I decided it was time to pack up and continue on. Lots of river views all afternoon.

At one point, I hiked by a random grave site. A little creepy.

And half-mile later, a little shack called The Joe bump cabin.

I don’t think the two artifacts are related, but there’s no signage explaining either one. The usual thunder and lightning storms passed through, and it even rained for 10 minutes. Of course, right after it rained I passed through the only overgrown section of trail the entire day, lots of tall wet grass. Ugh.

And then back up onto the hillside above the river.

At the end of the day, I noticed a little bit of smoke up on the hillside on the opposite side of the river.

There was a bunch of lightning a couple hours ago and that’s probably what started this newest wildfire.

I came to Trail Flat Hot Springs, which is where I intended to camp.

I soaked in the hot springs for a while, watching the wildfire and trying to figure out whether it was safe to camp here or I should continue onwards.

Ultimately, I decided to continue as it was only 6pm and I still had several hours of daylight, and I didn’t know if it was going to be windy tonight. So I climbed back up the hillside onto a nice trail.

I hiked up on a plateau above the river for several miles, through a severely burned forest.

I kept looking for a spot to camp but everything was burned and all the trees looked like they wanted to fall over. It rained again for a few minutes and then a nice rainbow!

I had intended to continue on for only another mile or two past the hot springs, but this entire area was so burned, I ended up hiking into the evening, getting out my headlamp for the first time this hike. It was nice trail so that made night hiking easier but I still didn’t like it. After six extra miles from the hot springs, it became clear that the burned forest wasn’t really ending anytime soon, but I saw a meadow marked on my map, near a landing strip. So I left the trail and hiked directly over, and setup my tent amongst the few live trees bordering the large clearing.