Tag: family-friendly
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Wilson Flat Loop
While most Boiseans are familiar with our local reservoirs, Lucky Peak and Arrowrock, a surprising number haven’t made the trip to nearby Anderson Ranch Reservoir. Only 20 miles northeast of Mountain Home, where the sagebrush hills meet the forested mountains of the Trinity and Boise Ranges, the lake is held back by an earth rockfill…
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Rainbow Basin
The Trinity Peak fire lookout tower watches over some of the most magnificent and expansive terrain in the Boise Mountain Range, including the nine lakes along Rainbow Basin Trail, all of which can be hiked to in one day along this 12.4-mile route. If you’re seeking a trail that is as strikingly beautiful as any…
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My Favorite Hikes in Boise’s Ridge to Rivers Trail System
Boise’s Ridge to Rivers trail system encompasses more than 230 miles of hiking, biking, and horseback riding along over 150 trails, stretching from the highpoint of Boise Ridge at Shafer Butte all the way down to just shy of the Boise River, as the name aptly suggests. In the summer of 2021, I achieved my…
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Sage Creek
My first hike of spring 2022 is in the books! Up to this point, the posts I’ve written were hiked in either 2020 or 2021, making this my first “live” update of the blog. The weather in Boise has been warming up and conditions are perfect in the Owyhees, so my girlfriend and I headed…
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South Fork Boise River Scenic Byway
Most Boiseans probably know Black’s Creek Road as the last interstate exit before entering Boise proper, or the route to historic Bonneville Point, where Captain Benjamin Bonneville and his expedition party first laid eyes on the Treasure Valley and the seam of green running through it, prompting exclamations of “Les Bois! Les Bois!” However, those…
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Granite Peak to Tripod Peak Lookout via West Mountain Trail
There are hundreds of fire lookout towers on the high peaks of Idaho’s forests, many of which are still manned in the summer as the first line of defense against wildfires. One of them sits precariously atop Tripod Peak, which looms over Round Valley, Long Valley, and Cascade Reservoir, with expansive views north to the…
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Three Fingers Rock
Three Fingers Rock sits just a few miles over the state border in Oregon, one of the most prominent features of the northern Owyhee Range, whose geology forms the western boundary of the Treasure Valley. Named for it’s three distinct skyward-jutting “knuckles”, the rock is a relatively easy hike and scramble that rewards explorers with…
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Smith Creek Lake and North Star Lake via Upper Lava Mountain Trail
High in the Boise Range, two pristine alpine lakes sit largely undisturbed, seldom visited by hikers despite their proximity to the Boise metro area. They are the two major landmarks along Lava Mountain Trail, which travels east-west from the town of Prairie to the western slope of Trinity Peak. From the upper trailhead, both lakes…
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Big Bend of Sheep Creek Canyon
If you drive an AWD/4WD vehicle with ground clearance and enjoy desolation and the borderline feeling of vertigo when standing on the edge of a gorge and looking down, you’ll love the Big Bend of Sheep Creek. This waterway flows north through a deep canyon from Nevada down the Owyhee Plateau before turning east at…
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North Fork of the Boise River
2025 Update: A rockslide has dammed the river about 1.75 miles from the trailhead. The rest of this trail is inaccessible without swimming through the pool created by the dam. The Forest Service has been notified, but it’s unclear if they will attempt to blast out the dam with explosives, or leave the new trail…
Exploring Boise's Wilderness 