By Michael Lanza
We emerge from our tents on a mild Augustmorning to discover that the waters of the upper and middle Cramer Lakes, inIdaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, have transformed overnight. Where last evening theselakes on either side of our campsite had been rippled by mountain breezes, nowthey lie perfectly still; they are glassy mirrors offering inverted, sharp reflectionsof the forest and jagged peaks surrounding the lakes. A few hours later, ourbackpacking party of three parents and six teenagers hikes across wildflowermeadows and past alpine tarns to proudly reach a mountain pass at over 9,000feet on the Cramer Divide, overlooking a turbulent sea of razor peaks stretchingto every horizon.
It’s an inspiring panorama. But to me,there’s more to this pass than the view: We also happen to be standing at oneof the highest points along the most remote and wild long-distance trail in theLower 48—and the newest. And thanks to the help of some conservation leaders inIdaho, this trail has, metaphorically speaking, come a long way from a notion inmy mind to fruition.
A few years ago, I brought an idea to mygood friend, Justin Hayes, then the program director of the Idaho ConservationLeague and now ICL’s executive director. I told him that Idaho deserves to havea long-distance backpacking trail that traverses its three signature federal wildernessareas.
From north to south, they are the1.3-million acre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, which by itself is larger thanmany national parks, including Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Glacier; the nearly2.4-million-acre Frank Church-Riverof No Return Wilderness (aka “the Frank”), largest in the Lower 48 and biggerthan Yellowstone; and the217,000-acre SawtoothWilderness,protected as a primitive area since 1937, among the first places protected inThe Wilderness Act of 1964, and now Idaho’s best-known and most belovedmountain range for its jagged peaks and hundreds of alpine lakes.
Taken together, these three very specialplaces comprise nearly four million acres of almost-contiguous wilderness, avast realm of mountains and canyons divided by just one rural highway (ID 21 outsidethe small town of Stanley) and two remote dirt roads. If these threewildernesses were contained within one national park, it would be America’sthird-largest and the biggest outside Alaska.
I already had a name for this new footpathwhen I approached Justin and ICL: the Idaho Wilderness Trail. Not only do Ilike how it sounds, but that name speaks volumes about the quality of the backpackingexperience the trail delivers.
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Linking up existing trails (requiring no new trail construction), the 296-mile-long Idaho Wilderness Trail (IWT) crosses mountain passes over 9,000 feet and threads its way past peaks rising over 10,000 feet; follows three designated wild and scenic rivers, the Middle Fork of the Salmon, Main Salmon, and the Selway; traces the shores of innumerable alpine lakes; and meanders below dramatic spires from the Bighorn Crags in the Frank to the Sawtooths.
It traverses pristine backcountry that is hometo mountain goats and bighorn sheep, elk and moose, black bears, hundreds ofwolves (a population estimated to be at least seven times as many as live inYellowstone), and abundant trout—and which offers some of the nation’s bestremaining habitat in the Lower 48 for restoring a viable population of wildsalmon.
Perhaps most uniquely, the IWT offers thekind of solitude you simply cannot find on most long-distance trails. In fact, manybackpackers have never even heard of the wilderness areas the trail traverses.
Imagine that: Discovering a newlong-distance trail that’s not just one of the best in America, but has beenhiding in plain sight.
Now it’s ready to be explored bybackpackers.
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Birth of a New Long Trail
Having backpacked through much of the Sawtooths and parts of the Frank and Selway-Bitterroot over the course of living in Idaho for more than 20 years—as well as many of the very best backpacking trips the country—I knew that a north-south trail linking those wildernesses would constitute one of the most spectacular, diverse, challenging, and lonely long-distance trails in America.
With the help of ICL staff, includingCommunity Engagement Coordinator Lana Weber, who served as ICL’s point personon the project, and a couple of hard-working interns named Hannah Zimmerman andJohnny Whittemore, we mapped out a route following existing trails across thethree wilderness areas.
We learned that while the 11 national scenic trails in the U.S. were created by acts of Congress, many established long-distance trails—including the John Muir Trail (JMT) and other well-known footpaths—have no official designation: They have simply, over time, come to be widely known by a certain name to backpackers. In other words, we could “create” the Idaho Wilderness Trail simply by making people aware of it.
The IWT stretches for 296 trail miles—nearly 350 miles when including three remote road sections, where backpackers may be able to catch rides—through these three wilderness areas, between its northern terminus at Wilderness Gateway campground on US 12 to its southern terminus on the outskirts of the tiny town of Atlanta. It can be hiked as three or four distinct sections or thru-hiked in a month or less—a more-reasonable distance and time commitment for many backpackers than the AT or PCT. (See my tips and more information on backpacking the IWT in the Take This Trip section at the bottom of this story.)
I’ve backpacked theJohn Muir Trailand parts of the Pacific CrestTrail,Appalachian Trail, and otherlong-distance footpaths. The IWT matches them for scenic beauty, but far eclipsesthem in terms of solitude.
And while the AT, JMT, PCT and other long-distance paths are generally well-marked and well-maintained—and mostly beginner-friendly and popular enough that you’re likely to regularly encounter other backpackers who might offer help if you need it—the IWT poses significant challenges for its remoteness, dearth of people, and possibly rough condition along some stretches. I’ve hiked through parts of the Frank, for instance, where trails go years without maintenance. I’ve seen footpaths that have essentially disappeared beneath overgrowth. However, I believe most of the existing trails comprising the IWT are likely in good condition.
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Much of the Idaho Wilderness Trail is nobeginner backpacking trip.
Among the unique qualities of the IWT are some that don’t always come immediately to mind when you think about backpacking. Camping in these wilderness areas, you will gaze up at one of the darkest night skies in America—the Milky Way looks like it was painted across the heavens. A 1,400-square-mile area encompassing the Sawtooth and neighboring White Clouds wilderness areas has been officially recognized for the untainted blackness of its night sky with the designation of the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, the country’s first dark sky reserve.
And those night skies aren’t just in theSawtooths. I have also gazed up at night skies in the Frank andSelway-Bitterroot so dark that I’ve at stared for endless minutes, transfixed.
And nowhereelse will you breathe as easily. Designated a Mandatory Class I air qualityarea by the 1977 Clean Air Act, the Sawtooth Wilderness has the clearest air inthe continental United States.You can bet the air in the Frank andSelway-Bitterroot is nearly if not just as clean.
Beyond introducing more backpackers tothese wildernesses, a primary objective of our effort is to use the IWT as acommunication vehicle to promote wilderness values and, hopefully, graduallygrow a larger constituency of people willing to pitch in to protect andmaintain it. That support is desperately needed because these places sufferfrom decades of chronic under-funding that has created shocking trail-maintenancebacklogs throughout the U.S. Forest Service.
Because loving anything isn’t enough by itself. You have to show the love. (Want to help on volunteer trail crews and see some of the most pristine wilderness in America? Contact the Idaho Trails Association or Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation.)
Plan your next great backpacking trip in Yosemite, Grand Teton, and other parks using my expert e-books.
True Wilderness
Twenty summers ago, I backpacked a roughly160-mile, north-south traverse of central Idaho’s wilderness, from a remote, grassairstrip on Moose Creek in the Selway-Bitterroot—where a friend and I steppedout of a six-seater prop plane to begin our trek—to the end of a remote dirtroad at the foot of Sleeping Deer Mountain in the Frank.
That friend accompanied me for the trip’sfirst week; I did the second week solo, until two other friends met up with methe last night before I finished. During those two weeks, I hiked throughrugged, breathtaking mountains, and canyons thousands of feet deep thatimpressed upon me the scale and remoteness of these places.
Few backcountry experiences in my life,before or since, have given me such a powerful sense of wilderness and solitudeas that trip. Just two Alaskan adventures come immediately to mind, in fact:backpacking in Denali National Park and sea kayaking inGlacier Bay National Park.
Much of what I hiked that summer long ago isnow the Idaho Wilderness Trail.
And the defining characteristic of that two-weekhike—what made it feel so different from the many other backpacking trips I’vetaken in some of America’ssignature wild landscapes—was the solitude. While I encountered rafters andkayakers along the Main Salmon and Middle Fork Salmon rivers (and was the gratefulrecipient of meals generously offered by them), I saw exactly two otherbackpackers in two weeks. And they were on the Middle Fork Salmon Trail. Forseveral days of backpacking through the mountains between those canyons, I saw noone.
Where else in the Lower 48 can youbackpack for two weeks in the peak of summer and see not another person fordays?
More recently, in July 2015 and again in July 2019, I floated the Middle Fork of the Salmon through the Frank with my family and 20 friends (on each trip), guided by my favorite river company, Middle Fork Rapid Transit. Besides running scores of exciting rapids on a wilderness river, one of the most unique features of floating the Middle Fork is the abundance of side hikes to waterfalls, hot springs, high points, and along tributary creeks. We took several hikes on the Middle Fork River Trail, which parallels much of that river, sometimes hugging its banks, sometimes meandering hundreds of feet above river level to afford long vistas of that canyon of indescribable beauty.
Hiking the Middle Fork River Trail—which the IWT follows—gave me a fresh perspective on the magic of the Idaho Wilderness Trail. That now has me planning to backpack the IWT’s longest section, over 130 miles through the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
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The Most Remote and Wild Trail
As the ICL team and I worked on creating the IWT, we settled pretty quickly on a slogan that epitomizes the IWT: “The most remote and wild long-distance trail in the Lower 48.”
Much of the IWT lies at least a day’s hikefrom the nearest road—in long stretches of it, multiple days. Even in theSawtooths, the smallest and most accessible of the three wildernesses traversedby the IWT, backpackers must devote significant time and effort to explore thetrail.
On that August backpacking trip in theSawtooths that I described at the beginning of this story, our group left awonderful campsite beside Edna Lake on our third morning and started hikinguphill toward Sand Mountain Pass. And within minutes, we turned at a trailjunction and left the Idaho Wilderness Trail behind—having spent only about twodays, cumulatively, of our four-day trip on it.
But that illustrates the IWT’s remoteness:Even in the relatively accessible Sawtooths, the IWT traverses the mostinaccessible corners of those fabulous mountains.
Take my advice: Walk this trail. You willdiscover some of the finest wilderness lands in America, and an experienceevery backpacker should have.
See all of my stories about the Sawtooth Mountains and the Frank Church-Riverof No Return Wilderness at The Big Outside.
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Take This Trip
THIS TRIP IS GOOD FOR fit, experienced backpackers with expert navigation and backpacking skills—not beginners—at least on the more difficult, remote, and in spots infrequently maintained sections of the Idaho Wilderness Trail, especially in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness and Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. On other sections, particularly traversing the Sawtooth Wilderness on the IWT, trails are generally well maintained, obvious, and signed at junctions—appropriate for beginner to intermediate backpackers.
Challenges include significant elevation gradients of 3,000 feet to more than 5,000 feet separating valleys and canyon bottoms from mountainous terrain; mountain passes reaching over 9,000 feet; possible thunderstorms and other weather; and the physical and mental rigors inherent to any long, remote trek. Some stretches of the IWT—again, mainly in the Frank and Selway-Bitterroot—lie multiple day’s walk from the nearest road. Resupply opportunities are few and far between and arranging transportation between IWT stages may be complicated.
Trying to figure out if you’re ready for the remote parts of the IWT? See my story “5 Questions to Ask Before Trying That New Outdoor Adventure.”
See also my expert tips in “How to Prevent Hypothermia While Hiking and Backpacking” and “8 Pro Tips for Preventing Blisters When Hiking” and all stories sharing expert backpacking skills at The Big Outside
The Itinerary
The Idaho Wilderness Trail stretches for 296 trail miles through three wilderness areas, including short stretches of trail outside of wilderness boundaries. It can be thru-hiked in a month or less in either direction, or hiked as three or four distinct sections. Its northern terminus is at Wilderness Gateway campground on US 12, and its southern terminus is the Middle Fork Boise River Trail no. 460/Atlanta Power Plant Trailhead on the outskirts of the tiny town of Atlanta.
The four IWT stages when hiking southbound are:
- Stage 1: 70.3 miles through the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness from Wilderness Gateway campground on US 12 and the Lochsa River to Paradise Road 6223.
- Stage 2: 37.3 miles through the northern Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness from Magruder to Corn Creek on the Salmon River.
- Stage 3: 130.9 miles through the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness from Garden Creek/Horse Heaven Trailhead Panther Creek Road (just off the Salmon River Road) to Marsh Creek Trailhead near Cape Horn on ID 21 northwest of Stanley.
- Stage 4: 57.5 miles through the Sawtooth Wilderness from Stanley Lake Trailhead to the Middle Fork Boise River Trailhead on the outskirts of the tiny town of Atlanta.
But considering transportation logistics—the relative ease of traveling to US 12, the Salmon River Road, and ID 21, versus the remoteness of the Paradise and Magruder roads—the IWT is more feasibly hiked in three sections, with the first two described above (Wilderness Gateway to Paradise and Magruder to Corn Creek) hiked together as one 107.6-mile section, plus the 15-mile road section connecting them.
The trail distance above does not include a total of 53.6 miles of paved and dirt roads separating the trail segments in three places:
- 15.1 miles along Paradise Road 6223, a dirt thoroughfare between the Frank and Selway-Bitterroot that’s as wild, remote, and untraveled a road as you will find anywhere in the contiguous United States.
- 19.9 miles along the Main Salmon River Road from Corn Creek—the launch site for Salmon River float trips, where, during the summer float season, backpackers might easily hitch a ride along the road—to Panther Creek Road 55.
- 18.6 miles from Marsh Creek Trailhead to Stanley Lake, mostly along ID 21 west of Stanley, a low-traffic rural highway and the only paved road the IWT crosses. Backpackers can arrange or probably catch a ride to avoid walking along the highway.
Read the comments at the bottom of this story, where some backpackers who’ve hiked the trail share helpful, specific details about it.
Maps See an overview map of the Idaho Wilderness Trail at drive.google.com/file/d/11GOZEV1ufser-wbHh9SniDkdXeJKyN2Q/view?ts=5ce5d90e. The Idaho Conservation League hosts a website describing the IWT at idahoconservation.org/events/plan-your-own-adventure/idaho-wilderness-trail.
These are links to the four IWT stages maps on Gaiagps.com:
Gaia map of IWT Stage 1
Gaia map of IWT Stage 2
Gaia map of IWT Stage 3
Gaia map of IWT Stage 4
Will Gattiker, who thru-hiked the IWT with his father, Tom, in 2022, created a map of the route they took, including some variations necessitated by wildfires and poor trail conditions, at caltopo.com/m/R171T.
Permit Free permits can be filled out at various trailheads along the Idaho Wilderness Trail. No reservation is needed.
Want to make your pack lighter and all of your backpacking trips more enjoyable? See my story “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking.” If you don’t have a paid subscription to The Big Outside, you can read part of that story for free, or click here to download that full story without having a paid membership.
Find categorized menus of gear reviews, expert buying tips, and best-in-category reviews at my Gear Reviews page.
Guide/Outfitters/Rentals Various guide services offer backpacking, river float trips, climbing, fishing, and other trips in these wilderness areas, providing access to parts of the Idaho Wilderness Trail. My family has taken a couple of outstanding, six-day float trips down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in the Frank Church Wilderness with Middle Fork Rapid Transit (middleforkrapidtransit.com), an adventure that offers almost daily opportunities to hike parts of the IWT that overlap the Middle Fork Salmon Trail through that magnificent canyon.
Resources Perhaps most challenging, some sections of the IWT follow trails that have not been maintained in years—or never maintained—especially the IWT’s northern sections in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.
Anyone considering a thru-hike or a backpacking trip on any section of the Idaho Wilderness Trail is strongly advised to read through the very detailed and well-researched blog posts written by my friends Tom and Will Gattiker, who thru-hiked the IWT in September and October 2022. Will’s report focuses on critical logistical details and recommends variations off the IWT to avoid abandoned/unmaintained trails: safesexandgoretex.com/2022/11/idaho-wilderness-trail-nitty-gritty.html. Tom’s report is more of a travel log about the experience: click here.
See this blog post from Boise ultra-runner Steven Palmer, who traversed the Sawtooths section of the IWT in a day and a half.
Contact Idaho Conservation League, https://www.idahoconservation.org/events/plan-your-own-adventure/idaho-wilderness-trail/
Contact Idaho Conservation League, idahoconservation.org/events/plan-your-own-adventure/idaho-wilderness-trail/
