So here we are alongside the Boise River and today I am backpacking Sheep Creek Trail.
I hear Sheep Creek Trail is just a
stunning place and a beautiful short backpack. There are wild flowers all over
the place. I hear there are a ton of chance encounters that you can have with animals.
It kind of reminds me of Warm Springs and the Warm Springs Creek
backpack that I did a couple weeks ago. So leaving Boise heading towards Idaho
City you go over the Mores Creek Bridge and you turn right on your way to
Arrowrock Dam and the city of Atlanta. Reset your trip odometer there, you're
gonna go 29.8 miles so it's a hell of a drive but it's
stunning. You go past lucky peak, you go past Arrowrock Dam, you continue past
this little resort that I have to check out one of these days it's called
Twin Springs Resort and eventually you will get to this substantial size bridge.
This is about 29.7 and a half miles. You want to go over this
bridge and immediately on your right side is the trailhead. The problem was is
what I read was it would be a signed trailhead and there's no sign. It looks
like maybe some sort of damage has been done to the trailhead, there's parking on
the north side of the road. I'm gonna backpack this and I'm gonna camp on
Sheep Creek Trail. If you don't want to do that there's camping all around here.
Troutdale is right up the road which I visited back in December when I was
visiting Loftus Hot Springs which is also right up the road. This area is rife
with hot springs and I heard there was one right when you get to Sheep Creek so
immediately at the Sheep Creek trailhead you can go left and you can head up hill.
That's the trail but also there's this little footpath to the right and it
takes you down to this, I guess it's a hot springs there's hot water flowing
out of the ground. There's no place to sit right now, I do see that there
is something that looks like a pool and hot water has been diverted so what I'm
gonna do is I am going to do some landscaping here and see if I can get
that filled up and then tomorrow on my way out I'll go for a soak.
This place is weirdly alive. As you're hiking around, the bushes are moving,
you're seeing snakes, beetles, the creek is moving, you're hearing things rustling.
It just seems like this area has... you can feel the energy here
that the new spring energy. I have found this lovely ponderosa grove that I was
looking for. It is a mile and a half away from the trailhead. The trail was not
that hard of a hike honestly it's up, it's flat, it's down. I think you've gained
like 400 something feet in elevation so compared to other things like Warm
Springs Creek it's really simple. Well I'm gonna set up camp and then I'm
gonna read up on what's around this place because there were so many freakin
trails. I mean there's probably miles you can go
back here and I've got most of the day left and I think I'm gonna go explore so
I'm gonna set up camp and then we're gonna go and do that. Before we go any
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So Sheep Creek is a three-mile out and back and since it wasn't that much of a strenuous
hike I wanted to explore some more. There are two paths you can take, one is it's
at the marked junction that takes you down to the campsite instead of going right
there you go left or east and that takes you back back back and a mile down there
is another bridge that crosses Sheep Creek and then you disappear into the
wilderness of Idaho. That hike is definitely very exposed, there's not much
shade, there's not many wildflowers over there.
I read that area was damaged by a super hot fire in 1992 and you can see it.
You can still see the remnants of that fire. The second side hike that you
can do is to travel west across Sheep Creek. Right next to my campsite there is
a bridge, it is a beautiful bridge right over Sheep Creek and I liked that hike
a lot more. It was dense Pacific Northwest, wildflowers poppin, butterflies
everywhere, and then all of a sudden after a short little climb you just
burst out into this wonderful meadow with killer views. Couldn't be more than
a half mile up the trail and from there that trail continues to climb
and you are now on the Corral Creek Trail. There is a way to connect the
Corral Creek Trail and this trail and turn it into a thru-hike. That was not my
plan for this and I didn't do any research so I just kind of walked up
the trail a little bit and now it's time to relax and hang out in camp and I am
sweating pretty heavy. Down the road here is a nice little pool. It's not
a hot spring, it's definitely just the Sheep Creek water which is fresh spring
runoff and it's cold so I might at least stick my feet into the pool and cool off
a little bit.
I'm walking around barefoot and all of a sudden I hear (rattlesnake sound)
The one thing I do like about rattlesnakes is that they are polite, they tell you "Hey I'm here."
Unfortunately he coiled up under this big tree which is about ten feet from my
tent and I really didn't want to share a campground with a rattlesnake, fun times.
I mean it was pretty when I got here last night, but holy cow this place
really shines in the morning. What more can we say about Sheep Creek. It is a
beautiful hike, you have wildflowers, you have rock and desert terrain, you
have this nice grove of ponderosas. It's only three miles out and back. I bet
soaking in Sheep Creek during the super hot summer is really nice. All right
we're gonna take a break from hiking and backpacking so I can rest up and make
some new plans. In the meantime we're gonna be exploring Chad and I's hometown
of Boise Idaho, the capital of Idaho, one of the most livable cities in the country.
We will be showing you adventures in and around town from classics like
floating the Boise River and riding your bike on the greenbelt, to dirt biking
in the foothills, to Bogus Basin in the summer, and after that we'll be back with
the hiking and backpacking in the crown jewel of Idaho, the Sawtooth Wilderness.
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