August 2019 - Day 8/21 Up into the Sawtooth

Thursday, August 15, 2019 - Sun Valley, Idaho up into the Sawtooth today - (60 miles):

I just take State Hwy 75 North.

After a good night's sleep, and a great breakfast, I said goodbye to my host and hostess:


The Sun Valley ski resort/mountain looks pretty nice:


Mailed Ellie's postcard:

and got out of Ketchum:

(look on the map - they are right next to each other)

Going up Hwy 75 North is a beautiful drive:






And, of course a deer ran across the road!


I got up to Redfish Lake Lodge by 10:30

As you can imagine, it is right on Redfish Lake:


It is so unbelievably "family-friendly" that I feel like I'm staying at the Chappaquiddick Beach Club!!

I changed into hiking clothes, and headed up to do the Bench Lakes:




It was a beautiful day to be out on the trail:


and pretty soon you are high above Redfish Lake:


I took the side-trail to Bench Lakes:


I had started at 11:40, and reached the first "Bench Lake" at 1:50



Pretty as it is, DON'T STOP THERE. 10 minutes later I was up at the second "Bench Lake":

and that is where the "official trail" (the red dots) ends.

But keep going up (small paths, just go straight when nothing is obvious). Beautiful meadow:


You scramble up over a rock field before looking back down:

but keep going up to the third "Bench Lake":

which I reached about an hour after the first.

The 2 guys in the picture are leading some youth groups (with the backpacks in the trailhead picture). They were up here scouting around for campsites, but had not had much success (over to the right). The path around this lake to the left looks VERY BAD, so I headed off to the right, but a little higher in the trees than they explored. I found a perfectly appropriate trail, plus a bunch of campsites, and went around AND UP. 40 minutes later I was up at the top lake:

with a really great view back down:


Since I have been having some glitchy experiences with MapMyWalk (and my return path is right back down the same way), I finished MapMyWalk here (6.67 miles in 3 hours 50 minutes):

Google Earth view from the ridge above top Bench Lake:


Nice late-afternoon view of Redfish Lake:


I finished at 6:30 - today's hiking trails were in EXCELLENT Condition, and a pleasure to walk/hike on. Nice cheeseburger by the lake as the sun goes down:



The Sawtooth Mountains sure are pretty! Thank you God for this wonderful adventure day!

I like starting the morning off listening to books-on-tape. William Gibson (my sci-fi author from last year's trip) wrote another trilogy (known as the Blue Ant trilogy [Hubertus Bigend]): Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). Because it is cold in the morning (windows up), today I continued with "Pattern Recognition", cd 4: