Sawtooth Wilderness

A young girl hiker at Imogene Lake, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Sawtooth Jewels: Backpacking to Alice, Hell Roaring, and Imogene Lakes

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By Michael Lanza We sit on the bank of Pettit Lake Creek and remove our boots and socks to ford it. It’s the third week in June, and winter is just winding down in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. The creek barrels downhill, barking and bursting with snowmelt. My friends Chip and Jan Roser are already partway across, moving carefully over the …

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A hiker above the Middle Fork Salmon River in Idaho's Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

America’s Newest Long Trail: The Idaho Wilderness Trail

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By Michael Lanza

We emerge from our tents on a mild August morning to discover that the waters of the upper and middle Cramer Lakes, in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, have transformed overnight. Where last evening these lakes on either side of our campsite had been rippled by mountain breezes, now they lie perfectly still; they are glassy mirrors offering inverted, sharp reflections of the forest and jagged peaks surrounding the lakes. A few hours later, our backpacking party of three parents and six teenagers hikes across wildflower meadows and past alpine tarns to proudly reach a mountain pass at over 9,000 feet on the Cramer Divide, overlooking a turbulent sea of razor peaks stretching to every horizon.

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Horstman Peak, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Climbing Horstman Peak in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

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By Michael Lanza

Unless you’ve done a fair bit of peak scrambling in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, or have looked up at the seemingly infinite row of granite teeth rising above the Sawtooth Valley, or you are a local in one of the few, scattered little towns in the area, you’ve probably never heard of Horstman Peak. But for my friend Chip Roser and me, Horstman had developed into a mild obsession by the time we set out at first light one morning last September to make another attempt on its 10,470-foot summit, which had eluded us a year before.

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Monolith Valley, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Hiking to the Stunning Monolith Valley in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

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By Michael Lanza

Our day’s primary goal—reaching the 10,470-foot summit of Horstman Peak, which had eluded us on a previous attempt—was already behind us when my friend Chip Roser and I descended south off Horstman to hike across a valley that lies just a few miles as the crow flies from the busiest spot in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, and yet probably sees no more than a handful of hikers a year. We’d gotten distant views of the Monolith Valley before, but those glimpses hardly did justice to the spectacle of this stunning paradise of water and granite.

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McGown Peak, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Climbing McGown Peak in Idaho’s Sawtooths

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By Michael Lanza

Early on a sunny but freezing October morning, my friend Chip Roser and I set out from the trailhead at Stanley Lake, in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, hiking in the direction of the peak that forms the picturesque backdrop to the lake: 9,860-foot McGown Peak—not only one of the most-photographed peaks in the Sawtooths, but one of the most exciting, one-day hike-scrambles in the entire range.

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