After I decided to stop my Idaho Centennial Trail hike for the year, Ambrose and I decided to drive around to the place where he would have been picking me up. That way, when I do it next year, we will know exactly where to expect to meet instead of getting lost…
The only place to take a vehicle between the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness is a road called the Magruder Corridor. It’s a single lane dirt road that runs between wildernesses between Elk City, Idaho and Darby, MT. It’s 101 miles that can take more than 8 hours to drive – if you have 4 wheel drive. Folks driving on it are advised to carry cutting tools, plenty of water, and a properly inflated spare tire.
We drive a Ford Focus sedan. It really isn’t meant to drive on that kind of road, but we were going to give it a go – only to Dry Saddle, where the Idaho Centennial Trail comes from the Frank Church and then follows the corridor for a spell before heading into the Selway.
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Caution signs at the start of the road – only 33 miles to Dry Saddle. |
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The road started off decently. |
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We reached 14 mile campground in about an hour. |
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The Elk Creek Road junction at the start of a large burned out area. |
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The trees being burned did at least allow us some expansive views. |
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Poet Creek Campground where we took a little break. |
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Graffiti on the inside of the privy at Poet Creek. |
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The road got rougher after this and I was too busy clenching and urging Ambrose and the car on safely to take many pictures. |
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Oh yeah, we got a Ford Focus up to Dry Saddle. And we didn’t bottom out once! |
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What a gorgeous view of the wilderness, looking towards Montana. |
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We didn’t see any Bigfeet or clowns. |
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The car is right in front of the trail head. I’ll be either leaving from here or coming out here next year, depending on whether I decide to do the section southbound instead of northbound. |
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Ambrose and I hiked the trail out a bit to see what we could see. |
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Ambrose on the trail. |
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Wilderness selfie! I borrowed Ambrose’s hat because my hair was so short I could have gotten a scalp burn without it. |
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Dry Saddle had a privy – but no toilet paper (we had some in the car though). |
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Hard to get a good picture from a moving car – even at slow speeds since there were a lot of bumps in the road. |
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A tease of a flat section before we re-entered the living forest and the one place where water crossed the road in a scary ditch. |
It took us over 3 and a half hours to get up to Dry Saddle. We ate lunch there and hiked a bit before heading back down. Down wasn’t any easier than up. We started up Magruder about 8 am and didn’t get off it until 4 pm. A whole day to travel 66 miles.
Ambrose is a badass driver for making that happen in a stick shift sedan, but yeah… next time we head up there, it’s going to be in a rental SUV 🙂