please remember you can click on a photo to see a larger version & highlighted text are links to additional information
Please click here for Part One
Into the High Country
Our initial plan was to fish Johnson Creek, a tributary to the South Fork of the Salmon River. It was a Sunday. We imagined we’d encounter weekenders on their way out and we’d find a bit of the solitude we seek. At Landmark we turned south on the road to Yellow Pine that runs down Johnson Creek. We could not believe the line of vehicles coming at us, vehicles from large motorhomes to small sedans, all on this graded dirt mountain road. Many were pulling trailers of all sizes and shapes. Most traveled in large groups as if they were in fear of loosing sight of another vehicle. The dust was suffocating. We pulled over to the side and stopped multiple times as, honestly, most drove like it was their first time behind the wheel. We pulled into a campground. It was full. We stopped and talked with a woman. “Was this the weekend of the Harmonica Festival in Yellow Pine?” we asked. The answer was yes. It ended today. What a mistake.
The Landmark Stanley Road is a delightful alternative to pavement. It’s a route we’ve enjoyed in the past. Retreating and then heading south, the road was quiet. The large valleys that hold the headwaters of Elk Creek and Bear Valley Creek are magnificent. We stopped along Elk Creek and watched muskrats and bald eagles.
We moved on to where Elk Creek joins with Bear Valley Creek. We were last here in 2011. Traditional tribal taking of Chinook Salmon was not curtailed at that time.
We had returned to look for returning spawning salmon. No luck, the runs are now almost nonexistent.
The Shoshone – Bannock Tribes are taking an active role in monitoring steelhead and salmon numbers. We visited the monitoring sites set up on both Marsh Creek and Bear Valley Creek. Tribal hunting on Bear Valley Creek ended on July 20, 2025.
The tribes were also working toward removal of the Snake River dams that block salmon migration is both directions. With the current administration and majority in Congress, there's not a snowball's chance in hell of that ever happening.
The number of returning spawning salmon and the number of downstream migrating juvenile salmon are posted on sign here. The numbers show a steep decline over the last years. Me, I’m a realist. There is no hope. I fully expect that the wild salmon runs up here and other places we visited on this trip will be gone in our lifetime. There is no hope.
We found an incredible small dispersed site along Bear Valley Creek to set up for the night.
We took a long walk in the evening. We walked up Bear Valley Creek to look for both salmon and moose.
We walked through the Bear Valley Campground and met an interesting and very knowledgeable fellow traveling in a box truck converted into a camper. The only giveaway was the wood stove chimney protruding from the roof. As the evening waned we shared fly fishing stories with “two fake knees and a hip” as he described his limitations on “not getting around like I use to.” He was spending the summer fly fishing across the West and he’d just come from the St. Joe River in northern Idaho. “You should go there!” he enthusiastically endorsed our doing so. “We could do that,” we told him. We returned to camp as darkness came.
It was close to midnight when the Lady wiggled to life. “There’s somebody outside walking around with a headlamp,” she told me, a bit foggy still from sleep. “There’s been flashes of light across the window.” I leaned across her to look out the window on her side. A flash lit up the sky.
“It’s lightning. There’s a thunderstorm far in the distance, far enough away we don’t hear the thunder,” I offered my take on the light show.
“Think it will come closer?” she asked.
She puts up with my usual answer and she knew it was coming. “We’ll find out,” I said.
It was quite a storm. We could not fall back asleep. With continuous lightning, thunder soon was audible. We began counting the seconds between lightning flash and the associated blast of thunder; 3 miles, 2 miles, 1 mile. It came right over us with at least 5 strikes right around us. Rain only came as the storm moved past us. Now we kept an eye out for the light from possible fire starts. What seemed like hours later we finally drifted back into sleep.
Morning was glorious with the mist and fog burning off with the sunrise.
We drove east and came upon the first lightning strike fire just north of and above Bear Valley Creek. A blackhawk helicopter was working on it with bucket drops from the creek.
Clouds were such that we knew thunderstorms would be back that afternoon and evening.
We like to use Sunny Gulch Campground along the Salmon River and south of Stanley as a base camp when venturing into the Sawtooth Wilderness on day hikes. We arrived late morning on a Monday. The campground is a combination of reservations and some first come first serve sites. We found one of our favorite sites empty and available and signed up for four nights. Evening light and clearing storm over the Sawtooths was magical.
Our first hike was a return to Goat Lake. We first hiked to this lake in 2016. Do not come to the Sawtooth Wilderness or to the Stanley area if you want solitude. Every time we come here it so reminds us of Lake Tahoe and the nearby Desolation and Mokelumne wilderness areas with the numbers and varied assortment of visitors. Many times we are left shaking our heads in wonder. How in the world have they managed to survive as long as they have already?
But the Lady had several hikes she wanted to do that included fly fishing. We’d grin and bear it. A young man working in a fly shop in Ketchum first told us about Goat Lake. “Good fly fishing for what trout species?” I asked. “Oh, I go there to swim. Don't know about trout,” he answered. In the nine years since 2016, its popularity has skyrocketed. With no established, maintained trail to it, it’s tough to reach. Perhaps the masses get some kind of bragging points on social media for making it there?
The use trail traverses across the steep slope and then goes, pretty much straight up the granite mountain side.
In 2016 there was one use trail. Now there are many. It is a mess. Once you enter the steep basin below the lake, you learn to either love or hate talus.
But this place is spectacular.
The main use trail takes hikers to the granite cliffs in the far left of the above photo. We like to finish off with the talus and find a place to be away from people on the south side of the small deep lake.
More and more people streamed in and crowded onto the granite. Three teenage girls were the first to jump into the mountain ice water. They were tough. Good for them. During our time at Goat Lake we counted 50 other visitors. And it was not quiet. I put the fly rod together and we snacked on food out of our packs. We were surprised that a man worked his way over the talus to reach us.
“Excuse me. I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you,” he started. “But I hope you can help me.” He directed his conversation to the Lady. “My daughter’s 15. She’s starting her period early and has bad cramps. Do you have any ibuprofen?”
Little did this man know he had come to the right place. 36 years a middle school physical education and health teacher. Her office adjoined the girl’s locker room. Her career was girls turning into young women.
They chatted as the Lady dug down into her pack looking for meds. I caught a couple small cutts on a dry fish.
“I have five boys and then the sixth was a girl,” he told his story. He was a breeder. “Boys are sure easier than girls,” he went on.
“Neither of us can take NSAIDs,”the Lady explained. “But let’s see what I find. I may have acetaminophen.” Coming up empty, I offered, “Check the first aid kit in the bottom of my pack.”
“Pay dirt. Here’s four ibuprofen,” the Lady exclaimed and handled the pills to the man.
“Thank you both so much!” the man said has he carried his treasure back over the talus.
We waited until late in the day to leave. Most others had left.
We encountered a young couple – with very little with them in their tiny packs. They were having a rough time, inexperienced and intimidated by the steep loose terrain. We offered instruction and guidance, stayed with them, and got them down the mountain side.
They thanked us profusely and remarked that we must be mountain guides. “We’ve been in the mountains some,” I quietly replied.
I suggested to the Lady that we hike up to Alpine Lake to fly fish as I knew a bit of information I hadn’t shared with her. I wanted to keep it a surprise. This was our objective for the following day. We started at the same trailhead, Iron Creek, but turned north at the first fork in the trail.
It’s only four miles up to Alpine Lake, but it’s steep with a lot of elevation gain. We do it fairly quickly with a good steady pace.
The use trail ends at a rock outcrop overlooking the lake and that’s where most visitors drop anchor. We know of an alternate use trail that easily took us to the less used opposite side of the lake, but it includes an interesting crossing of the tangled log jam at the outlet.
We started looking for trout.
Nothing. We saw no trout. We worked the edge. The Lady went high. Finally I saw one cruising and pointed it out to the Lady. “That’s a nice fish!” she said. “This might be a good day. Let’s find more.” The Lady was in her element. She went higher. She was on the hunt. There are not many trout in Alpine Lake, but they are well worth taking the time and effort to get here. They are not easy to catch. It is a challenge. The wind was blowing across the lake, concentrating wind deposited terrestrials on the far side. Trout were working this area. The Lady, from her high perch, pointed out a cruising trout. “Watch its pattern,” I directed. “Let me know when it’s going away from me. That’s when I’ll put the fly in its cruising pattern. I want it to come back to the fly and never see my cast.”
“Here it comes,” she said. She was hiding behind a small lodgepole on the top of the cliff about 25 feet above the water. “It’s coming toward the fly. It’s slowly rising. It’s looking at it.”
“Fish on!” I said as I set the hook.
“That’s not the trout.” the Lady called down.
“Yup. I was watching this one. It was cruising along the shore right in front of me. It beat your trout to the fly.”
“I’ll bring the net down.”
“It’s a nice heavy golden, isn’t it?” I asked.
"Golden Trout in Alpine Lake? You didn’t tell me that.”
“A surprise.” I replied with a smile.
Another golden cruised into range, working the windblown terrestrials. I made a cast far enough ahead that I hoped would not disturb it. It was heavy and sixteen inches, a gorgeous fish. It made two runs, pulling out line. It went airborne twice. We lost it right at the net. The Lady climbed back up to her perch.
“Here’s another big one,” she called down. “It’s coming around the cliff toward you.” She stopped and then, “Oh my god. There’s another trout coming behind it. It’s huge. It's following behind moving very slow. It’s only a foot out from the cliff.”
I was low, crouched beside a small lodgepole. I kept the cast beside me and as much behind me as possible. With a roll cast I put the fly ahead of the trout and right against the cliff face. It was slow motion as the head and back of this 18 inch golden broke the water, devoured the fly and went under, breaking off and taking fly and tippet with it. What an amazing fish.
It was 1630 hrs, late in the afternoon. At our pace on this trail, we’d be back at the truck in an hour and a half. It stays light late in this part of Idaho in the mountain time zone.
“How ‘bout,” I offered to the Lady. “We book another night at Sunny Gulch and come back up here day after tomorrow?”
“Can we? I’d like that!” she beamed.
That evening we discovered the father from Goat Lake and his family were in the campsite across from us at Sunny Gulch. Because of her help, the Lady was now his buddy. Several times during our stay I’d find that he’d intercepted her and were chatting. “He works for the Forest Service in rangeland management,” she brought back from a conversation. We were curious what his wife did for work. Can someone raise six children on a Forest Service salary?
There was heavy cloud cover the next morning, but first light streamed through an opening and illuminated the ridge line.
The Lady had spent time with the map and Margaret Fuller’s guidebook. She wanted to hike to Hell Roaring Lake. “We’ve not been to Hell Roaring Lake,” she explained. “I want to go there.”
The trail ascends Hell Roaring Creek with its beautiful crystal clear warter.
I enjoyed seeing this freehand routed sign.
Hell Roaring Lake is a spectacular setting.
The granite horn in the upper right is the Finger of Fate.
It was an easy 5 miles up to this end of the lake. We had plenty of time – keeping an eye on the weather—to hike up and explore around the far end.
We stayed on dirt roads to return to Sunny Gulch and came upon these speed goats in the late afternoon light. The buck carried an impressive set of horns.
That evening we drove over to Redfish Lake Lodge for fish tacos for dinner. That was about as much civilization as we could take. But the tacos were good.
It was a very different day from the previous when we returned to Alpine Lake.
There was no constant wind. The goldens were not keyed in on windblown terrestrials as before. We found two huge goldens – maybe up to 18 inches – slowly cruising two large coves with glass calm water. It was demanding conditions. I could get interest in a fly offering. The fish would approach, lay still and watch it up close, maybe give a touch with their head, refuse and move on. I’d try another fly – dry and nymphs – with the same result. It was like a science experiment in a lab. I went to a very long 6X tippet getting the fly further out from the fly line and heavier leader. This has worked many times in the past with persnickety cutthroats in calm water conditions on mountain lakes. It did not work today. We waited for an afternoon wind to come up carrying bugs with it. It did not happen. It still made for a great day. There were visitors coming in to the lake but they stayed on the opposite side. There’s a tiny inlet on the east side with a tree with low branches over the water. I noticed it made a great lie for trout. I gently cast a size 18 ant pattern under the branches.
In demanding conditions like this, one beautiful golden trout is more than enough reward.
Next up, we follow “two fake knees and a hip’s” suggestion. We head north. Our adventure continues in the upcoming Part Three.
No comments:
Post a Comment