Although I haven’t settled in to the serious business of actually writing up my trips (or reading Ambrose’s or Bill’s trip reports), I have decided what I’m going to call each of my Hike with Me books this year.
For the fly-in trip, I’m going with Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Frank Church Finale. I thought about doing Part 3 instead of Finale, but I wanted to emphasize that I was finally finished with the Frank. It took me a long time to get through it, and there are definitely choices that I made that I might not make if I do the trail a second time. (Sorry Dry Saddle, you are gorgeous, but the trails from Sheep Hill Lookout to the Salmon and Burnt Knob down to Poet just aren’t there anymore.)
The title for the other book was harder to come by. Although I’m heading to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, technically, the trails I hiked were not in a Wilderness area. Not quite. I straddled the edge of the Selway when I hiked along the ridge from Burnt Knob, but once I turned off downhill towards Poet Creek, I was no longer in any Wilderness, just the Nez Perce National Forest. So this isn’t really the 1st Selway hike.
But it was a challenge. I took nearly ten hours to complete ten mostly downhill miles. I took long enough that Ambrose started to get worried about me. A large section of trail simply wasn’t there anymore, and if I hadn’t had GPS and a huge stubborn streak, I would have turned around. Or maybe my streak was a combination of stubbornness and optimism; I really did hope that the trail would become trail again at any moment.
So even though that was only two day hikes on the Idaho Centennial Trail, with the planned third day cancelled due to fire at Warm Springs Bar, I’m going to call it: Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Challenge. That’s going to be the main angle that I’m approaching that one from; the challenge of getting through the first day, and the challenge of actually getting up the next day and hiking again with my destroyed body.
Next, I’ve got to start setting aside some time for writing, hopefully each day in September. Once I stop going on backpacking trips on weekends, I’ll set a word count, maybe 500 words a day. That will be enough of a reminder to get my butt in the chair and start typing without being an impossible goal on days when I’m tired and/or in pain.