We had never heard of Idaho's White Cloud Mountains!

When talking to the young ranger at the Redfish Lake visitor center, we found out that there are more than just one mountain range in this area. The Sawtooth Mountains are best known because they are lovely and can be seen from the highway. So anyone driving down Highway 75 can experience the Sawtooths.

But the local advice we got is that the White Cloud Mountains are taller and even more beautiful. So today we are going on a hike to get our first glimpse of another mountain range. We are following his advice to go on a trail that starts ten miles off Highway 75 at the Fourth of July trail head. It was a rough and slow gravel route, but we finally arrived at the "you are here" star to begin our hike.

Most people are here to hike to the Fourth of July Lake, just a mile and a half down trail 109. But our young ranger friend encouraged us to take trail #219 that branches to the left for another mile and a half to see Antz Basin first. So we followed his advice, and the trail headed straight up. It wasn't long before we could look down to see the Fourth of July Lake in the distance from above.

We're suckers for an old dead tree with a good silhouette against the blue sky. We spotted this one on our way to Antz Basin.

Then we popped over the ridge, and suddenly got an eye-full of Antz Basin and the ring of peaks that surround it.

These are the White Cloud Mountains, that we had never seen or even knew existed before now. Most of their peaks are above 10,000 feet, and we are looking them eye-to-eye today.

We're also noticing a new-to-us wildflower. We found out that this is dwarf buckwheat, and it's all over this ridge.

When we made it to the top of the ridge, Denisa was content to take in the views from there. But, of course Mark had to climb to the end of the ridge to make sure the views didn't change. Then he could look back to see Denisa at the top, standing beside the "National Forest Wilderness" sign post. It's interesting that the south-facing side of the mountain was covered by trees, while the north-facing side was almost bare of vegetation.

We were so glad that the young ranger had recommended this hike, as we love the mountain vista views we got from up here.

After our mountain top views, we had to back-track to see the lakes that most people use this trail head to see. We stopped in for a view of the Fourth of July Lake,

then hiked another mile to see Washington Lake. We have always enjoyed hiking to mountain lakes, but today it feels like the view of Antz Basin won.

Denisa always gets bored hiking back over the trail she's already seen, so she's looking for wildflowers. It looks like we have now changed from spring wildflowers to autumn foliage, as the reds and yellows of the leaves are the prettiest part of the trail today.

It ended up being a 9.1 mile hike today with 1732 feet in elevation gain. That was longer than we anticipated, since we were really trying to save our legs for tomorrow's adventure. So we soaked our feet in the cold water of the Salmon River right below our camp site, as we prepare ourselves for tomorrow's epic hike. Stay tuned.