Warm Springs and a Long Hike

With the Motor Vehicle Use Map and a hiking information sheet from the national forest service we took off in the Jeep to explore the Ashton/Island Park Ranger district. John chose to go to the Mesa Waterfalls driving on only back roads so as to avoid the traffic on the highway. It was a dusty but pretty drive that paralleled an old railroad line, crossed many fields and shared the road with big black cows! We also got our first look at the Tetons from the west.

Before we got to Mesa Falls we decided to divert to Warm River Springs to have a picnic lunch and take a short hike. Back in the early 1900’s folks determined that the water temperature would be perfect for raising trout then later the CCC came in and put in more permanent buildings and some troughs for the trout. It was closed in the 1970’s although a house is still available for overnight rentals. The location is very pretty with cascades of water shooting out of the mountain side and down to the river.

The short hike, however, turned into an all-afternoon affair! We hiked up the mountain side, across the top and then started down. We stopped to consider going further or turning around but since we had only walked for about 30 minutes we opted to continue down the hill. By the time we got to the bottom, we didn’t want to turn around and go back up so we walked along the creek for a ways. By the time we thought we should maybe turn around it seemed that we were probably about half way along the hike and it would be about the same going forward as going back. So we continued on in the hot sun on a path that was less than shoulder width and mostly hidden by arm-pit tall grasses, weeds and bushes. And we walked on, and on, and on! Finally we came to the trail that would lead us back to Warm River Springs, or so we thought. It went up, and up and up, then down and down and down and still we had so sign of the river or the buildings. We had started about 1:30 and it was now 5:30. We sat down, finished our water and hoped we were close to the end! The last mile took forever!

In the end we hiked for 4 hours and covered over 7 1/2 miles of forest, field and mountain!