It's a thirty minute drive north of Challis to get to the trail head. It still wasn't light outside, and we could barely see the wildlife sighting of the day as we started our hike.
It was 44 degrees when we left the car, and it was a little chilly as we headed up the trail that took us across the hills.
It appears that this trail is taking us towards the crevice between those two mountain tops.
Mark is certainly wearing an interesting hiking outfit this morning. Isn't that his old swim trunks?
The reason for the swim wear is because our destination this early morning is Goldbug hot springs. Denisa had her suit on under her hiking clothes, and that warm water certainly felt good on this chilly morning.
We tried several of these natural hot spring pools. This one was just right in temperature, with water cascading off the pool in a little waterfall.
Situated on the side of a mountain, some of the cascading waterfalls were pretty tall. Denisa is peeking over the top of the fall, staying warm and toasty in the warm water at the top.
The hot springs here don't smell of sulfur like many we have experienced, and the water was perfectly clear.
Arriving this early, we had the springs to ourselves. But that made it trickier to get a picture together. By balancing the camera on a rock over the water and using the timer, Mark got it done.
By now the sun has risen over the mountains and is finally lighting up the top of the peak in front of us.
We tried a pool further down the mountain that had a waterfall above and below. This is one of the neatest destinations we have ever found on a hike! We have wandered into another of God's wonders this morning! It was especially wonderful to have this beautiful place all to ourselves.
The sun is finally out and warming up the air around us so the thought of getting out of the warm water doesn't sound so bad. This was the last picture we took before other hikers started showing up.
That's when this hike can get scary. We've been hiking among the bears all summer, and we have grown comfortable with that. But we've heard that these hot springs are often "clothing optional" and we weren't comfortable with that. We don't mind the bears, but we didn't want to share the springs with the bares. We liked it much better when we had the whole mountain to ourselves.
We met more than a dozen hikers on the trail as we headed back down towards our car. It was a great hike, and we had perfect timing this morning. Now we had time to drive back to our camping site and have showers before check-out time.
Then we were on the road, once again following the narrow space just big enough for a highway between the mountains and the Salmon River.
We drove through the robust town of Clayton--with a population of 7. We're guessing that the winters around here can be pretty cold and lonely.
Rocks falling from these sheer rock walls onto the highway can be disastrous. So crews are working to remove any loose rocks and bracing others.
But their work makes this highway into a very narrow one-lane road. It's a little unnerving to drive a wide motor home through this pass with only a guard rail between us and the steep drop off into the Salmon River.
But we made it to our destination of the day--the Sawtooth Mountains. Recent camping neighbors told us about a disbursed campground just a couple miles from Redfish Lake in the Sawtooth National Forest. Disbursed camping means there are no hook-ups and the roads can be rough and the sites unlevel. But it is free to camp, and all the spaces are first-come-first-served. So arriving during the middle of the week gave us this shaded site overlooking the Salmon River. Nice!
Since we don't have any hook-ups, we'll be ready to go to bed when it gets dark. With our early morning hike this morning, we are tired. We have to chuckle as we think back over our day, and realize that we are more comfortable with hiking with bears rather than bares!
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