Heading for the North Fork of the Boise River from Featherville on September 25th, 2009.
 |
North Fork of the Boise River – Click for a bigger Image
A three day weekend provided us with some decisions and some opportunities. The first decision was where we would spend the next two nights. A "dream place" for me is exploring Nevada’s remote Jarbidge Mountains but the Featherville area of Idaho is a known quantity and easy to get to. The 7 day weather forecast indicated old man winter may shut down any further exploration of the higher elevations in our part of the world until next summer. We took the easy way out and headed north. Jarbidge Nevada would have to wait for another weekend.
We checked into the Feather River Motel, unloaded our ATV and headed up into the mountains. Our destination today was the North Fork of the Boise River. It’s a river I have always wanted to fish so I brought my fishing gear with me. We passed through Rocky Bar at the legal speed limit of "7 mile per hour" and then took Phifer Creek Road into the Middle Fork River Canyon.
 |
Steel Mountain in the morning. Click for larger image
The ride from the Middle Fork of the Boise River into the North Fork canyon was surprising to to us. The road was wide and quite tame but scenic. I had picked out a few side canyons along the way to explore and possibly do some gold panning. But all the three creeks were either dry or had just a trickle of water in the streambeds.
We did some exploring along the North Fork and found it to be quite beautiful but more tame than what we had in mind. The river itself was running high enough to fish but the time it would take to get my pole put together and make a few casts wouldn’t be worth it.
 |
Just west of the North Fork of the Boise River – Click for larger photo
It was starting to get late and we had a long trip back to our motel so we reluctantly headed back. Along the way we stopped on a bridge across the Middle Fork of the Boise. This river has to be one of the scenic rivers in Idaho just for the color of the water. We also stopped along a tributary of Phifer Creek and tried our luck with some gold panning. There was some color in the gold pan, but as usual, not enough to bother with at this time.
 |