weather here has been unseasonably warm. reaching mid 60's in town, the spring bug has been biting hard for getting out. so since all our friends were doing separate things for love day, we decided to escape the city for a weekend away from the house and city. wife gets off work late so we decided to leave sat morn instead of trying to get camp setup in the dark.
this is the route we took. i should mention that most years this route will not be accessible this time of year
https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... EweN7xbW0U
this is my first trip report, so if anyone has suggestions, im all ears. especially a better program to map routes on.
once the pavement ends near aarowrock dam (point a), the road goes to crap fast. this is the only way to and from atlanta and it gets hammered during the winter months. if you can air down, it is highly recommended. we noticed the reservoir is at full capacity already. not common for mid feb here. we went up the road to cottonwood creek canyon (point b) and did some exploring as we had never been that direction. ran into snow about 4 miles up the road. it was getting a little late, so we picked a spot below the snowline and started unpacking and gathering wood.
our camp for the night.
it got really cold, really fast once the sun was off of us, so we cooked up some chow and retreated to the van about 9pm and watched a few episodes of brickleberry and enjoyed a few drinks. got up the next morning around 7am (which is sleeping in for me...) and needless to say, it was cold. i started up the van to take the edge off for the wifey. otherwise, she would have never actually got out of bed. while we idled, i watched a few episodes of archer. once i was warmed up i pulled off the reflectix and opened one of the penthouse windows. i was amazed at how quickly it got cold inside the van. the reflectix really does make a solid difference. anyhow, once i looked outside, this is what i saw.
of course the propane bottle was iced over prior to crashing out, but all the other surface hoar was from the overnight temps. brrrrrr!
we had pretty much explored all that was available under the snowline in the area we were camped, so we decided to take the long way home and see an area i have wanted to check out for years, the blacks creek area. we traveled up the road to point c where the bridge over the middlefork is.
downriver towards boise.
upriver towards atlanta.
the road after this bridge was in amazing shape. you could travel 35+ mph no problem. we found some really neat camping spots starting about 6 miles from the bridge. all of the spots were obviously rarely used. we will be back to investigate further...maybe even this weekend, lol. a lot of these camps were old hunting camps. there were fire rings, but you couldnt id the way in and out of the spots. that interests me a lot
a few pix from one of the hunt camps we stopped at for bfast/lunch.
i had been into blacks creek to the southfork from the highway a few times, but never inbetween the middle fork and the southfork of the boise river. i must say, it was a really great drive. very scenic. the canyon the southfork is in was amazingly deep. kinda freaked me out driving on the edge of a sheer cliff with muddy and frozen spots all over. some of the grades were dam steep. anyway, heres a few snaps from along the way.
a nice little creek waterfall that was working on washing out the road.
this is where jackass creek dumps into the southfork.
there were a few ranches along the way. some really nice properties. some defanged sabertooth mountian cows we shared the road with for a while.
this is looking back up the canyon. kinda gives a bit more of a reference to how deep the canyon is.
looking downstream at the bridge that crosses over the southfork. just after this area is where it dumps into aarowrock res.
looking back and waaay down at the aarowrock res.
we stopped at a trailhead just before we got back to pavement for a snack and a short hike. the wife sprained her ankle over the holidays, so our hike was short as her ankle started bothering her. this is looking back towards the highway where we turned around.
our pix are pretty weak from the area as the wife didnt bring her good camera (for some reason
), so these are all cell pix. for that i apologize. we are going back up to camp at cottonwood this weekend with a few friends. im thinking about doing this route again and planning time for some real photos. if we do so, i will post them up.