After our strenuous hike to
Horton Peak, we needed a "down" day to let our bodies recover for the difficult Saturday hike we had planned to
Goat Lake. We originally were going to hike the relatively flat
Fishhook Trail, but when we awoke to a heavy fog, we quickly changed our plans. We decided to leave the Stanley Valley and head north along the Salmon River to visit an old ghost town and gold mining dredge.
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Yankee Fork Gold Dredge . . .
Shipped from Minnesota in 1940 and was assembled on site . . .
It would have been incredible to see this piece of machinery operate |
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It weighed almost a 1,000 tons and dredge mined 5.5 miles along a section of the Yankee Fork River . . .
It ran 24 hrs. a day for 12 years and was operated by only three men on each shift! |
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Just a mile past the gold dredge is the town of Custer . . . Idaho's best preserved ghost town
The last resident left in 1911 when the Sunbeam Mine closed
(It was closed on the day we visited, so we couldn't go inside the buildings) |
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| But that didn't keep us from looking in the windows! |
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| And wandering the grounds of the property |
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| The historical society that keeps Custer running has done a nice job restoring and maintaining the town |
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| This is part of a stamp mill that was used to crush ore for the extraction of gold |
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One of the many interpretive signs told how this family shingled their roof by flattening out tin cans . . .
Pretty ingenious! |
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These three sisters died when a snowslide swept down Bald Mountain
and pushed their home into the Yankee Fork River . . . .
The parents survived, but due to other snowslides in the area,
they could not bury them in the Bonanza Cemetery a few miles away |
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| Wonder when the last time the door knob and key were used |
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Allison took this picture by looking through one window and focusing on the other wall . . .
Really makes you feel like you stepped into an earlier time, doesn't it |
By late morning, the clouds and fog began to lift and we decided to return to Stanley to hike the
Fishhook Trail near Redfish Lake and Lodge. This allowed us to stretch our legs and get an easy workout in preparation for Saturday's hike. The trail ended at Fishhook Creek Meadow and gave us outstanding views of many of the higher peaks in the Sawtooth Range.
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| The Fishhook Creek trailhead serves as a "jumping off point" for many other popular hikes in the area |
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The trail is an easy 5-mile (r/t) hike/walk with minimal elevation gain (300 ft) . . .
It is well suited for all ages |
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| Much of the early portions of the trail follows along the crystal clear Fishhook Creek |
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| Spruce Grouse |
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The trail ends at this beautiful meadow . . .
Two of the Sawtooth's highest peaks, Mt. Horstmann & Mt. Heyburn, both over 10,000 ft,
are showcased from this vantage point |
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| Mt. Thompson (10,751 ft), which is the highest peak in the Sawtooth's, can also be seen |
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After our hike we decided to stop in and check things out at the Redfish Lake Lodge . . .
Kent, having previously worked for a park concessionaire, enjoyed seeing how the property was being managed |
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| Redfish Lake |
If you're feeling like you'd like a little more hiking, you can extend the Fishhook Creek Trail by an additional 1.5 miles. At the meadow, where most people turn around, the trail continues on. It crosses over into the Sawtooth wilderness and eventually ends at a creek coming down from an unnamed lake off Mt. Thompson. We didn't find anything extraordinary about this trail, but it did allow us to make this a 6.5 mile (r/t) hike.
