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A Big Weekend

Summer is almost here, and that means it’s lookout season. It’s time to put the books away, retreat from the maps and planning, put actual boots on the ground, and go do LOOKOUT STUFF, as we like to say.

Of course, Mother Nature had other plans and decided Saturday would be a good day for thunderstorms, hail, and rain. While we like to pretend we are hardcore, but we aren’t “go hike to lookouts in hail” hardcore.

On Saturday, we hopped in the exploration rig and drove to Avery. In Avery, we met with Dan at Idaho Fly Fishing Co. and had a fantastic conversation about what we do—lookouts, backpacking, and more. We’re excited to share that you can now buy our Arid Peak and Surveyors Peak stickers at the Idaho Fly Fishing Co. It’s a great way to support a local Avery store and our lookout mission! Don’t forget to grab some ice cream while you’re there.

It was time to escape the hustle and bustle of Avery and head into the mountains. We wanted to do a little recon on some trailheads and camping spots for upcoming missions. Next thing you know, we found ourselves at Dunn Peak!

Dunn Peak Lookout felt like an old man doing his best to keep his role in looking out over the forest below. Weathered paint, missing stairs, and hastily mounted poles for electronic gear hung off his roof. He was a shadow of his former self but still stood straight and tall. His mission was replaced by the massive, shiny solar panel system standing beside him and the generator/electronics shed below.

As we drove off the mountain, the sun came out to say hello, and we enjoyed a nice drive over Gold Pass to St. Regis, returning to Idaho via Montana, which is always a nice little jaunt.

Sunday morning came bright and early, and I met Cat and Gary Weber at the Coal Creek trailhead. We had a simple plan: take my truck to Moon Saddle, climb towards Graham Peak, head down to the Coal Creek/Graham Peak connector, and then bushwhack to Nira Point to search for lookout ruins. Then we would bushwhack back to where we left the trail and climb down Coal Creek, where Cat and Gary’s vehicles were parked. Then have Cat run me back up to my rig at Moon Saddle. It should be just under 12 miles, but overall, it’s simple, right? The answer is no; it’s never simple.

Cat and I had done Moon Saddle to Graham Peak less than two years earlier, and while it’s not the most challenging hike to a lookout site, it’s one of the more deceiving. You crest a hilltop only to realize another hilltop between you and the destination. And then you do that again and again. In the famous words of Cat House, “We are halfway there.” But she also tried to convince me that it “Can’t really be 5 miles, it’s just right there” the first time we went, so I’m not sure I trust that. At least this time, we had cool temperatures and some cloud cover.

I think Newt was over it, and I felt bad for her. She seemed to lay down at every chance. By the end of the day, my reaction was, “Same, Newt, same!”

When we finally got to where we expected to bushwhack to Nira Point, we got a pretty cool surprise: a TRAIL! Gary had a trail on his old map from the 60s, but no current map showed one. The original plan was to bushwhack the roughly mile to the point, but now there was no need; we had a trail!

We followed the trail right up to Nira Point. There was lots of #9 wire along the way and some shaley rock towards the top, but it didn’t take too long to summit Nira Point. The first thing we encountered was a downed tree with two large nails. For a split second, we thought maybe we had found a Lookout Tree, but it was just one set of nails, and while large, they weren’t quite as large as climbing spikes.

There was an odd rock wall that had been knocked down near the base of the tree as well. We explored more of the mountaintop, but other than a rock cairn and a little bit of a twisted knee on my part, we came away with a big fat nada. So we went back to that previous spot. On reinspection, we also realized that is where the #9 wire ended. We found a limb with the #9 wire was wrapped around it, and Gary pointed out the base of what must have been a massive tree. While we didn’t find any complete “AHA THIS IS IT” items, when you put them all together, we are pretty sure this is where the lookout was.

Slightly defeated but still happy to get the checkmark, we headed back off the point. But now we had a decision to make: follow this nice trail back to the Coal Creek trail and keep to the original plan to get back down to the cars. Or, the trail we followed also wraps around the front of the mountain and down to the river road, at least according to Gary’s map from the 60s. So far, it has been a great trail, and while it’s not on any current maps, the trail we were on did match Gary’s map. Confidence was high, so follow the new trail it was!

As we dropped in elevation, the trail got smaller and smaller, eventually turning into a game trail and dying out. By the time it died out, we had already dropped quite a bit of elevation quickly—definitely a steep section that we did not want to go back up. I loaded up the GPS, and the trail didn’t even go where Gary’s map showed it as going; we were much further east.

At this point, we would have to go a mile and a half or more back and up some steep sections or bushwhack to the bottom. We chose to go down rather than up. I’m not sure if that was the right choice or the easier choice, but it’s what we did, and it was brutal.

We tracked through lush sections of forest with so much greenery that you couldn’t see your next footfall, to heavily canopied sections with no ground growth at all. We slipped and fell between rocks, rotted tree limbs, and slippery pieces of timber. We caught ourselves falling on ferns and roots as we dropped another 1500ish feet in elevation in under a mile. It was slow going, but as long as we went downhill, we knew we were making progress.

We eventually found ourselves in a drainage that would drop into Graham Creek. This would add many miles to where we expected to pop out, but we knew it would probably be the easiest route in the long run.

The only one who survived unscathed was little Artie, the wonder dog. Newt took breaks when she could. The twisting and turning turned my knee from a throbbing pain to a shooting one, and I was falling behind. Cat took the lead, Gary was in the middle, and I brought up the rear. At times, I felt like I was 30 minutes behind everyone, but in reality, we all reached Graham Creek within minutes of each other.

The final drop to the creek was so steep that I had to slide down on my boots, and wading across calf-high freezing water was the highlight of my afternoon. Only 150 feet later, we were on a proper trail—the Graham Creek Trail. It’s one both Cat and I have hiked many times. We still had two miles to hike out to the road, then two miles down the road to the Coal Creek trailhead where our cars were stashed.

I was going slower and slower while Cat amassed some super energy and was able to pull off her 16-mile day and grab her car.

It was the definition of type 2 fun. We all had some choice words, and I know I at least muttered one 42-character newly created word that was an amalgamation of my favorite four and five-letter words. But looking back, there is a sense of pride, knowing that when the going gets tough on the mountain, this crew can make it back to civilization in one piece in time for dinner, with another lookout location under our belt.

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