30B430 #19 Part 4

I was in the mood for some adventure so headed out early one Saturday morning for the Owyhees. I was joined by the Flock sisters, who had their own stories of hikes and adventures out in the Owyhees but since I had already been to Jump Creek several times, I was looking for something different. This time, I was headed to Leslie Gulch and a canyon hike I had found online. The drive to Leslie Gulch was a bit deceiving- twenty miles outside Marsing on the highway were easy, peasy, but twenty miles on terrible gravel roads that looked paved were certainly were not, took a lot longer. There were moments where I almost felt like we were hydroplaning if we were exactly in the same tracks of the cars that had come in front of me.

Leslie Gulch was beautiful- there were some wild flowers, sage brush, small evergreens, but also huge massive rock formations that glowed red in the sunshine and reminded me of the tors in Dartmoor. The goal was to try and find this canyon and while it didn’t quite work out (even with me running ahead for a little while), we got to do some rock scrambling and some hiking over formations. It certainly wasn’t a strenuous hike in the slightest, with slight up and down hills but it was stunningly high-desert beautiful and I was able to do a little bit of recon to see about some future camping trips to the area. It was very different from my excursion out to Shaffer Butte a few months before but in it’s own way, it was still gorgeous, especially when the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Only one more new place in Idaho and I’ll have this checked off! Any recommendations?