The Decompression of a Boomer

A couple weeks ago (August 21-24, 2016) our family made a trip to Redfish Lake Lodge in the Sawtooth mountains near Stanley, Idaho. Our group of 7 included David, Megan, and me, son Adam and wife Meredith from New York, and David’s siblings – Paul from Kenosha, WI, Pauline from Arizona. My brother, Eric, a.k.a ‘mountain goat’ met us at the lodge.

Redfish Lake is about a 4-hour drive from Idaho Falls. Traveling west on Highway 20 past Arco you come to Craters of the Moon National Monument. Craters of the Moon is one of the best-preserved flood basalt areas in the continental United States. We had to stop. Five of our group climbed to the top of Inferno Cone. A short but steep trail up the cinder cone leads to an overlook of the entire monument. Five of our group hiked to the top. I snapped a photo of them on their way back down.

Family portrait on Inferno Cinder Cone

Bottom left is Paul, then David, Pauline behind, and Adam and Meredith on top.

Next we walked the 1/2-mile trail to Indian Tunnel.

Megan leads the way

Craters of the Moon

We all made it to the tunnel but only Adam and Meredith went through it. I met them at the exit and captured photos as they emerged. First Meredith’s head pops through

Meredith is reborn

Then Adam

Adam emerges

This Indian tunnel link gives you a photo of the tunnel opening just before you find your way back out.

Adam and Meredith scramble up

and we follow the cairns imbedded in the molten rock surfaces to get us back to the trail.

Heading back

An hour later we lunch in Ketchum and then head toward Galena Summit. Beautiful day! We keep an eye on the car in our rear view mirror – it’s Paul driving my blue Avalon with Adam and Meredith

toward Galena Summit

Check out the Galena Summit view! What?

Galena Summit

The far peaks, by Redfish Lake, are socked in with smoke. Oh well. We had already heard about the Pioneer Fire in the Boise National Forest, northeast of Boise, that had started on July 28 and was working its way toward Stanley. The fire is still burning today (Sept 3, 2016) and will likely keep burning into October. Check out this link to the Pioneer Fire – published two days ago, on Sept. 1. It shows a video of the Pioneer Fire taken from a helicopter four days ago, on August 30. Hot, dry weather this week caused the wildfire to grow much larger. There are more than 1,100 people working to contain the fire, and as of August 31, it was 58 percent contained. It has grown 13 times larger since July 28.

There are multiple fires in Idaho this summer due to a considerably long dry period combined with excessive amounts of old dead timber. This summer has been one of the driest summers on record in Idaho.

Onward to Redfish Lake, those aren’t rain clouds ahead!

smoky ahead!

We’ve reached the blanket of smoke now

Pioneer Fire near Stanley and Redfish

The Sawtooths are coming into view. Mount Heyburn is the jagged peak on the left.

5:30 PM. We’ve pulled into Redfish Lodge – time to check in, in what should be broad daylight. Eerie.

Check out the sun, Megan!

(We made a trip to Redfish August of last year as well, during beautiful weather. I took lots of photos of the Sawtooths and blogged about it exactly a year ago. – click on the link here to see clear photos of Redfish Lake Lodge and the magnificent Sawtooths in late August 2015…)

We check in at our cabin. Then gather for dinner at the Lodge. “Hey Paul, Adam, Meredith – pose for a photo!”

Bloggers are annoying

That’s better :0 :

Eat, rest, and be merry, all, but mostly, build up strength, because tomorrow we’re doing the 10-mile round trip hike to Hell Roaring Lake. Yeah, I guess we are. My brother Eric met us at Red Fish Lake Lodge for dinner and somehow talked us into it.

Adam, Meredith, Pauline, Eric, Megan at dinner (David, Jody and Paul missing from photo). Meredith loves to be photographed

Sure, Eric. We’ll do it. Does that sound like a potential death march to you?

Tags: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Indian Tunnel at Craters of the Moon, Inferno Cinder Cone at Craters of the Moon, Pioneer Fire in Idaho 2016, Red Fish Lake, Sawtooth Mountains

This entry was posted on September 3, 2016 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Idaho, Redfish Lake, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.