Explorer: Your Own Private Idaho

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 08 Agustus 2013 | 17.35

Joe Jaszewski for The New York Times

The Salmon River flows in the shadow of the Sawtooths in Idaho. More Photos »

The "Entering Stanley, Idaho" sign seemed more like a friendly warning than a welcome. "Population 63," it read, as if to say: Congratulations, you've made it to the middle of nowhere. Stanley is the entry point to the Sawtooth Valley, a time warp of a place with four saloons, five mountain ranges and not much else. My husband, Josh, our two children and I had driven three hours from Boise along an empty, winding two-lane scenic byway for a week of summer adventure. Still, as we strolled down deserted, dusty Wall Street looking for a lunch spot, it was hard not to wonder: Where is everyone?

They certainly weren't on Highway 75, which we followed nine miles south from Stanley along the Salmon River, until we spied our home base, the historic Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch, hidden in the foothills of the White Cloud Mountains, with a bull's-eye view of the Sawtooth Range. After we checked into our rustic-luxe log cabin — on a little prairie, it was one Ma and Pa Ingalls would have envied — the first people we saw not wearing cowboy boots were my East Coast family: Mom and Dad, sister, brother-in-law and their children. They rolled in as we rocked on the front porch, captivated by the view: 10,000-foot snow-frosted peaks towering behind a trout-filled pond; bright white clouds suspended in a big, blue sky; buck fences lining fields of happy little sagebrush.

The first words out of my brother-in-law's mouth: "I feel like I'm in a Bob Ross painting."

Various national parks had been tossed around as potential destinations for this family trip: Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton. But I was hoping for something different. Can we please skip the parks? I begged. I love them in Ansel Adams photographs, but as a place to spend a weeklong summer vacation, the parks — and the bus tours and traffic, high-heel-teetering tourists and standardized cafeterias that come with them — are not my idea of good family fun. I know a place that's just as pretty, I'd promised, but without all those people.

Established by Congress in 1972 and managed by the federal Forest Service, the 756,000-acre Sawtooth National Recreation Area, which includes the 217,000-acre Sawtooth Wilderness, is arguably more rugged and wild than any national park — in large part because it's not one.

Annual visitation at each of the brand-name parks we had considered hovers around three and four million. (Great Smoky Mountains, in Tennessee, attracts the most, at about nine million a year.) Though equal in size to Yosemite, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area estimates just 1.5 million visitors. And since there are no welcome gates or entrance fees, Ed Cannady, the Forest Service recreation manager for the recreation area, said that figure is probably inflated, as it includes cars just passing through; he estimated the actual number of annual visitors is closer to around 700,000.

With 700 miles of trails and only a fraction of the annual visitors actually hiking them (exact statistics are not compiled), even the easiest, most accessible trails in the recreation area still feel like the backcountry compared with Yosemite's valley floor. It came close, but the Sawtooths dodged the national park designation decades ago. And that's a lucky thing, say locals, who proudly tout its unofficial slogan: "The Tetons, without the handrails."

Indeed, the next day I could have used one, as I clung to the side of a boulder with one hand and sheepishly reached for my hiking guide's arm with the other.

We were en route to a nameless high-alpine lake tucked beneath 10,751-foot Thompson Peak. The initial approach followed a sun-drenched trail through aspen groves and fields of balsam root, past views of snowy spires, until we climbed a couple of thousand feet and the trail all but disappeared, turning into a dirt-and-boulder-strewn slope, and it was time to scramble.

On the heels of our guide, Bill Leavell, a longtime local who regaled me with tales like the one about watching a wolf pack take down an elk outside his living room window, I made it across the scree, over a rocky bowl and up to the lake. It was still frozen and — with the jagged peak of the Sawtooths' tallest mountain looming behind it — worth every step. I took a seat on an icy rock, pulled out my lodge-made turkey-prosciutto sandwich, and picnicked in the falling snow. Save for a scurrying rabbitlike pika and some well-camouflaged mountain goats, we were totally alone, as we were for almost the entire trek.

The next day, we left grandparents and kids behind (again), to hike to Goat Lake, another off-trail "attraction" in the area, still floating with chunks of ice. As we crossed creeks on slippery logs and inched along rock slabs, our new guide, Drew Daly, in his seventh season in the area, summed up what I was thinking: "If the Sawtooths were a national park this would be a paved road to a vista point; one of those 10-mile drives for a three-minute walk." Instead, once again, on this late-June day, our foursome was the only group on a half-blazed trail.


Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Explorer: Your Own Private Idaho

Dengan url

http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2013/08/explorer-your-own-private-idaho.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Explorer: Your Own Private Idaho

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Explorer: Your Own Private Idaho

sebagai sumbernya

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar

techieblogger.com Techie Blogger Techie Blogger