Idaho Plus

Whenever Ken and I plan a backpacking trip, whether for a night, a weekend, or a week, I immediately start thinking about what we're going to eat. The menu needs to be easy to prepare, nutritious, and lightweight. For our trip into the Sawtooth Wilderness Area of central Idaho, I planned for six rounds of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.

The Beginning

I picked Ken up from work so we could begin our drive up towards Boise. We stopped along the way in Lovelock for a disappointing dinner at Sturgeons, and we found a place to camp just outside of McDermitt. Whenever we find a place to stop at night, it's always a surprise to see where we're waking up. Usually, when we stop, all we can see is a bit of sagebrush and whether or not the ground looks flat.

The next morning, after packing everything up, we continued up to Boise and on into the Sawtooths. The trip was planned to begin and end at the Grandjean trail head. We started up the trail around 3:30 and hiked about four-and-a-half hours before we decided to stop. We walked through a forest that had been swept by fire, crossed a few streams, and saw lots of butterflies.

Hiking through a fire-burned area

We stopped to camp at what looked to be a horsepackers camp, filtered some water, and it was time for dinner number one: Thai noodles with TVP (textured vegetable protein).

The fixings: 6 oz package of angel hair pasta; a ziploc baggie containing a cup of TVP with generous shakes of garlic powder, ginger, and cumin; sesame & olive oils; and a large handful of peanuts.

The process: I brought about a cup of water to boil, threw in the TVP, and let it sit. After scooping out the TVP and putting it into our bowls, I cooked up the angel hair pasta, threw it on the TVP, added liberal squirts of olive and sesame oil, and topped the whole thing off with peanuts.

Maybe we just weren't hungry enough. The angel hair pasta was overcooked and mushy, I hadn't added enough spice to the TVP, and I should have used salted roasted peanuts and not just dry roasted ones. The meal wasn't bad, it just needs a bit of tweaking. Even in its mediocrity, though, it was leaps and bounds over our disappointing meal at Sturgeon's the night before.

The Middle

We ate breakfast, were packed up, and on the trail by about nine. We put in about ten hours on the trail, crossed a few more creeks, and did a good job of wearing ourselves out.

Home Sweet Home

Dinner Number 2: TVP with Dumplings

This was incredibly easy to prepare. I boiled about two cups of water, threw in two packets of Lipton's Cream O' Chicken soups, added about a cup of TVP & the cubed remainder of the turkey summer sausage we had for lunch, and let it sit on the stove while I mixed 2/3 cup of Bisquick with a handful of powdered milk and enough water to make a thick paste. I spooned this paste onto the top of what was already in the pot, cooked it uncovered for two minutes, put the lid on and continued cooking for another minute or two. Then I turned the stove off but kept the pot with the lid on still on it. After about five minutes, we opened the lid and voila! TVP and dumplings. This was really, really good. The only improvement I'd make is adding black pepper to the Bisquick for the dumplings.

By day three we realized that our 7-day trip was not going to take us 7 days to complete. We decided to tack on an extra loop that would take us down by Ardeth and Edna Lakes. Even with the added miles, we were at Hidden Lake, the lake where we had planned to camp that night, by 3:30. We decided we'd prefer walking to sitting around camp, we pushed on over Cramer divide. Although we were expecting the ascent up over this pass, neither one of us anticipated the beauty of what we found on the other side.

Over Cramer Divide

We camped at the buggiest place ever (I know it's really buggy when I get bug bites on my lips), but the view was phenomenal and made it worthwhile. Plus, it was a place where no one else was camped so we had it all to ourselves.

Dinner Number 3: Curry rice.

The fixings: a ziploc baggie with a cup of instant brown rice and several shakes of garlic powder, tumeric, coriander, cumin, and pepper. While the rice was cooking, I used a bowl to mix together a few squeezes of peanut butter, a handful of powdered milk, and enough water to make the consistency a bit soupy. When the rice was finished, I transfered it into the other bowl and heated up the peanut butter/milk/ water concoction. When that was heated through, I divvied up the rice, poured the sauce over it, and added generous sprinklings of dried coconut and peanuts. Despite the bugs, this meal was fantastic. The coconut totally made it come together.

Our best meal

I high-tailed it into the tent immediately after finishing eating and left Ken to do the dishes. He doesn't seem to be as attractive to mosquitos as I am. I ended up with bites on my forehead, temple, and lips.

The bugs did not abate overnight and were still out in force when we rolled out of the tent around 7:30 am. We ate breakfast and packed up as quickly as we could. We descended down along the Cramer Lakes, came around to a popular entry point from the Redfish Lake trailhead, powered up to Alpine Lake where we ate lunch and totally lost the crowds as we continued up and over to the Baron Lakes Complex. We stopped a bit early that day, around 5 o'clock. I was feeling a bit grumpy and sore, and my feet were tired. So it's good that we stopped when we did.

Baron Lakes

Dinner Number 4: Stew!

We've had a food dehydrator for two years. Even though it has sat glaring at me from under the microwave, I had never used it. Like eating TVP, I associated dehydrating with the 1970's and never considered even taking it out of the box. Then I started planning food for this trip and came across a book of backpacking recipes that extolled the virtues of food dehydrating. The most important of which was being able to supply oneself with a balanced diet. Our meals do lack in fruits and veggies because they are cumbersome to carry and they don't keep well in the heat. So I bought the book and gave the Moroccan stew recipe a try.

I kind of followed the recipe. I sauteed onions, garlic, carrots, peppers, and mushrooms. I added 4 cups of broth. I mixed in a can of garbanzo beans, a can of chopped olives, a bit of lemon juice, and shakes of whatever spices I had on hand that I thought would be good (cumin, cinnamon, pepper, garlic, and coriander). I spread it out in the food dehydrator and let the machine do its thing. For three days. I was supposed to add couscous to the stew before dehydrating it, but forgot. At the end of three days I had a baggie full of dried flakey stuff.

And it was this dried flakey stuff we ate for dinner this night on top of couscous and it was really good. It was simple to rehydrate: I dumped it in the pot, covered it with about 2 inches of water, let it boil and added it on top of couscous I had already cooked. The dehydration process, however, took a really long time. I would do more dehydration, but in the future will probably just dehydrate leftover chili or soup or stew and not make a special pot of it to dry.

After dinner we recessed into the tent, read for a while, and went to bed. Then we woke up, ate breakfast, packed up the tent, stuffed everything into our packs, and were off once again. It was our last day on the trail and we completed our loop back at the Grandjean trailhead. Ken estimated we did around 55 miles. I was very happy to finally arrive back at the truck, especially because there were hotsprings nearby and I really, really, really needed to clean up a bit.

Not far from the Grandjean trailhead are the Sacagawea hotsprings. The Forest Service handout advises drivers to pull as far off the road as possible, which we did. The trail from the road to the river the springs fed in to was steep but short. We walked along the river bank trying to find a pool that had a good mix of hot spring and cold river water, but we found that there wasn't any place where the waters did a good job of mixing. Too dirty to be deterred, we splashed around briefly, scrambled back up to the truck, and decided to find showers in Stanley.

Awesome cloud formation on the way into Stanley

We rolled into Stanley just around dinner time. I was hungry, but I needed a shower more. We found a laundromat with a shower in it. We loaded up a washer and headed in to clean up a bit ourselves. I have never been more disgusted with the conditions of a bathroom than I was with this place. It was absolutely filthy. The trash was overflowing, there was hair everywhere, grime covered the sink...but I needed a shower. I felt really good when I was finished, but I wouldn't go back there. The laundromat is next door to a pizza shop (same owners). Originally I figured we'd shower then go eat pizza, but the bathroom was so ghastly, I didn't want to consider what horrendous shape the pizza kitchen might be in. So we ate elsewhere, which turned out to be fabulous. I opted for the trout almandine that came with a jacket potato the size of my foot and a nice helping of broccoli and cauliflower.

The Continuation

Because our trip ended up being two days shorted than we had planned, we had some extra time to play around with. We spent one day kayaking around Redfish Lake, which was a nice respite for my legs and hips but strenuous on my arms. We spent another day hiking around in the White Cloud mountains. This, too, was nice, but we weren't too sure what to do with the rest of our vacation.

On Redfish Lake

Then it came to me. Wheeler Peak. Nevada has two mountains over 13,000 feet: Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada and Boundary Peak in western Nevada. Wheeler Peak is higher than Mount Fuji but there was only about 3000 feet to gain hiking up (compared with the 5000 feet of Fuji). The sign at the bottom told us it would take 4-10 hours to go up and back and we did it in six. We had fabulous 360 degree views and had the top entirely to ourselves. We passed a dad and his six-girl-group containing his 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, & 14 year-old daughters. They made it all the way to the top.

The view from 13,065 feet (3982m)

As we were coming down off of Wheeler, we were again confronted with that pestering question: What should we do next? We decided on making our way to Austin to go to Spencer hot springs.

We spent that night in Monitor Valley. I had come up with what I thought was an ingenious idea. Since we would be out that way, I thought we should go on a hike! I looked at our Nevada atlas and chose a trail up to White Rock Mountain in the Toquima range. We followed a bunch of dirt roads that took us through the geographic center of Nevada and lead us to our trailhead.

The geographic center of Nevada

We only made it about two hours before we decided to turn back. It was hot, it was brushy, and the hotsprings were calling us. We went back to the truck. From there, the plan was to continue across the Toquima range to the springs. We drove, we looked at the map, we drove some more. The road was overgrown and looked like it hadn't been used in years. We looked at the map and drove some more. We went up and down hills. We got out and walked ahead a bit to make sure the road was going to be passable. We drove some more. The road seemed so untravelled we weren't sure we were on the right road and that perhaps we had ended up on an unmarked road.

Overgrown road

We drove a little more, began doubting ourselves even more, and turned around. We went back up and down hills, drove, and drove, and drove. Eventually we arrived back down into Monitor Valley and had to drive more, more, more, more, and more to get back to US 50 where we drove by the Toquima range and after a long eternity reached the turnoff for the hotsprings. And we drove even more. Finally, we got to the springs. I jumped out of the truck, stripped, wrapped a towel around me, and dipped my toe into the water.

The water was too hot. I sat down on the edge and gently put my foot into the water. Too hot. I got up and walked around the pool looking for a cooler spot. It was all too hot. I sat for a few minutes, hopefully dipping my feet into the water, but I couldn't stand to keep them submerged. Resignedly, I threw on what I hoped were passably cleanish clothes and we went to Austin for dinner.

Spencer Hot Springs

While we were waiting for our food to arrive, we checked out our map trying to determine where we were on that dirt road earlier. We just couldn't figure it out. I stood up and walked over to the bulletin board by the door and grabbed a brochure about self-guided driving tours in Austin. Although the road we were on wasn't on their map, another road that cut across the Toquima range we were trying to hook up with was on the map. We decided to spend the night near Austin to try to find where our little road was supposed to feed in to this other road.

We woke up the next morning, made coffee, ate breakfast, and were off. We drove up to the Toquima Caves and checked out the 3,000-year-plus cave drawings. On our way back down we were keeping our eyes peeled for any possibility of a road coming in. We found one road that may or may not have been where we would have come in, but nothing definitive. We were at that point where we didn't want to pursue it any more. And with that we headed back to Reno.