Sunday August 17, 29.0mi/46.7km

Hunter Creek Transfer Camp (149.5/5450ft) to Little Canyon Creek (120.5/5410ft) (ID)

I was planning on a longer day today, so I started hiking at 6:30 just as the sun was rising.

I hiked along Hunter Creek, which wasn’t much of a creek but really a series of Beaver dam ponds.

Pretty quickly. I turned off of that road and hiked through a ranch for a couple of hours. The cows seemed unwilling to yield the road until the last minute.

It was a relaxing morning of easy hiking, I only saw two vehicles drive by, both were hunters and seemed very interested in what I was doing. The second guy kept asking excited questions, and then sent me off with a bunch of candy and a cold RC Cola. I didn’t even know they still made RC Cola. By mid-morning I had made it to Moore’s Spring, the only nice water source I would see until my campsite at the end of the day.

From there I hiked a couple miles along a paved road that connected to Featherville, a popular tourist town. Interestingly, the lack of painted lines on the road actually made it safer to walk, I think when people are unsure of their lane, they generally drive slower, and are more likely to move over. By late morning I made it to the Castle Rocks area, known for interesting rock formations that kinda reminded me of Joshua Tree.

The final rock formation looked like the scene in the Never-Ending Story with the guardian towers.

I stopped for lunch amongst the rocks and then continued on, and had another couple miles of paved roadwalking on Highway 20.

I know this road goes all the way to the Oregon coast, and the other way to upstate New York and Boston. It would be fun to bikepack that someday. The rest of the day was uneventful on Bennett Hills Road, and it got noticeably hotter once the clouds cleared away.

Taking one last look back at the mountains to the north, before I drop off the plateau and lose sight of them.

I’ve been hiking in Idaho for so long, and all of it has been so mountainous, I’m not sure what I will think for this last flat desert section. I finished a very gradual climb and then descended along Little Canyon Creek, to a lovely little camp spot next to the creek.

I checked my watch, it was 6:30pm which meant I had hiked for exactly 12 hours. Back in the Selway and Frank Church Wildernesses, I commonly hiked for 12 hours to make it just 20 miles. Today was all easy roadwalking and I pretty effortlessly covered 29 miles, crazy.