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    Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee
    Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee
    Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee
    Ebook162 pages1 hour

    Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee

    By Jeanne Bustamante

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    About this ebook

    Hike along with Jeanne on a solo backpacking adventure. Experience the beginning of the Idaho Centennial Trail from the Nevada border to the small town of Hammett.
    The book includes over 180 full color pictures.
    "I walked down a highway that rolled just enough to prevent me from seeing very far in the distance, with wind trying to blow me directly back the way I came, and trucks roaring by with their own eddies of wind and dust to contribute.

    And I thought about my goal for the hike.

    I wanted to hike 100 miles.

    Why?

    Because it would be cool. It was a good number, a round number. But it was also arbitrary. Sure, there were sections of the ICT that would require 100 miles of me, and this was a safer section to practice that. And 100 miles would be a nice chunk out of the 900 miles I am planning to travel over the next decade or so. But the end point of 100 miles was a crossroads that might not be accessible by car, and I knew that even if I could push my body to complete the 100 miles, it would take just about all that I had.
    So what was the purpose of the hike? The real purpose, not the arbitrary, cool-sounding sound bite of a goal.

    I was out there, in the blazing sun, dirty, sweaty and in pain, to learn."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJeanne Bustamante
    Release dateNov 12, 2017
    ISBN9781370542468
    Hike with Me: Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee

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      Book preview

      Hike with Me - Jeanne Bustamante

      Hike with Me

      Idaho Centennial Trail Owyhee

      by Jeanne M. Bustamante

      Boise, ID

      © 2017 by Jeanne Bustamante

      All rights reserved.

      All photos by author unless otherwise noted.

      This book is an account of one hiker’s experience, and does not constitute instruction or guidance.

      Introduction

      Driving to the Border

      Day 1: Surprises

      Day 2: The Goal

      Day 3: Push It

      Day 4: Call It

      Introduction

      The plan was to hike the first 100 miles of the Idaho Centennial Trail. The idea behind such a distance was to prove to myself that I could make a trek of that distance, because there are parts of the Idaho Centennial Trail that will require that of me, simply because they are not accessible to cars for stretches at least that long, and I aim to section hike the Idaho Centennial Trail, even if it takes me twenty years of summers. That was one purpose, perhaps the most obvious purpose, the easiest to parse from the outside.

      But it wasn’t the only purpose. I wanted to go out and test myself against the Owyhee Desert. I wanted to see if I could find water where there wasn’t supposed to be any to be found. I wanted to see if I could really hike 20 miles in a day several days in a row, especially with the bonus of mostly flat terrain that would allow for faster hiking than last year’s roller coaster up-and-downs through the Sawtooths.

      And I found my answer.

      Technically, it was a no. I could not hold myself back enough to hike just 20 miles in a day.

      I hiked 23 miles, 26 miles, 24 miles and 15 miles. Approximately. It’s hard to know the exact mileage, but I know I had to have reached certain minimum distances per day to have ended up where I did when I did.

      My husband claims 92.8 miles for me over the trip. And that’s about right, as long as we count the little excursion we took together on Sunday out and back to the Nevada border from Murphy Hot Springs as part of my official three and a half days.

      I could have kept going. I really could have. But I think I was wise not to. My body had been pushed near its limits by the distance that I went in the time that I took and any farther might have entailed a longer recovery time.

      Over a week later, I still had some numb spots on my right foot. My left big toenail was purple and sore. Four months later, that toenail hasn’t yet returned completely to normal. The consequences of going as far as I did as fast as I did were long reaching, but it was worth it.

      Because not all the consequences were negative. Not all the consequences impacted my body. This hike taught me, and I hope to share some of its lessons with you. Come, hike with me.

      Driving to the Border

      On Sunday April 30th 2017 my husband and I drove out to Murphy Hot Springs, about two miles from the border of Idaho and Nevada. To get there, we drove first to Mountain Home, ID by way of 84, a fast highway drive that seemed to take no time at all. We stopped at a grocery store there to stock up on water, because we don’t head into the desert for days without a good supply of water in the car. I might not be able to benefit directly during my solo hike from all the water Ambrose had in the car, but it was at least as important for him to have sufficient water as my support crew.

      On this section of the trail, I was going to have a good number of chances to meet up with him. The idea of doing 100 miles partly came about because there are going to be sections of the Idaho Centennial Trail that will absolutely require me to travel 100 miles at a stretch. Carrying more than 5 or so days of food will make for a pretty heavy pack, so I’ll need to be able to cover that 100 miles at a good clip. But those other sections will be much more remote. So this was to be a practice run of sorts that would allow me to figure out how far I could hike in a day with a heavy pack.

      Sure, on this trip I’d only be carrying three days worth of food at a time, but I’d have to carry all my water as well, and water weighs a lot more than food. My three days of food plus snacks weighed less than 5.5 pounds. A mere 5 liters of water, that I was hoping to last me two and a half days, weighs 11 pounds. Twice as much and it wouldn’t realistically last me two and a half days. I could drink that much water in a day and a half, easy.

      The other part that will be challenging for the more remote, northerly sections is the elevation. I finished the highest point on the Centennial Trail on last year’s hike through the Sawtooths section, but just because it’s lower than the highest doesn’t mean it isn’t high. From the border, I’d be starting around 5000 feet and wending my way down to around 3000 feet. There would be a few little climbs, but nothing like last year’s 1000 feet over the course of a mile.

      After the grocery store, we headed south on 51 towards Bruneau, ID.

      The paved road didn’t have very interesting scenery until we crossed the Snake River. Even there, the terrain was mostly flat or rolling, scrub covered hills in cloudy morning light. We turned off before entering Bruneau proper, onto Hot Springs Road. We took that to Hot Spring, ID.

      My impression of Hot Spring was a small concentration of buildings, including one on the corner of Hot Springs Road, where we turned and found ourselves on a dirt road, heading deeper into the deserts of southern Idaho.

      From there, the most notable features of the landscape were the cows. We saw a few deer along the road, possibly

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