Salmon River, Bandit Camping

I passed nonstop through the hustle, beauty, and glitz of Ketchum and Sun Valley, and quickly found myself alone near dusk, driving up Galena Summit, the pass through the high Sawtooth mountains, heading west. There was snow on the ground, and it was crispy and beautiful.

I descended the other side, turned onto a dirt road for four miles, drove through a brook,
and set up my free bandit camp at the actual headwaters of the Salmon River, just as the sun set. What a sight. Soup and tea for dinner in my solitary little tent, snug as a bug in my favorite sleeping bag.
It went down to 22 degrees by dawn, and I was out of camp fast the next morning, driving a few miles down the valley to where the Salmon turns into a real river, and in the early-morning sun I soaked in the hot springs


that feed into the Salmon. The springs are about 150 degrees, so you find a mixed pool at a temperature that suits you. Steam everywhere, warming sun, natural hot-tub water, Salmon River… ahhhh!