Coeur d'Alene River National Recreation Trail Idaho Panhandle National Forest, Idaho

It's July 2017 and we're back in North Idaho. A few years back I put together an improvised loop of the Coeur d'Alene River National Recreation Trail. I lengthened the route a little bit for this trip and it was going to be our most ambitious hike of the year so far. Almost to the first trail. Then, in my opinion, the worst part of the trail's over. Still got all the climbing to do. The route started out with a mile road walk to our first trail. From there it was a 2,700 foot climb to where we'd camp for the night. Getting up to the first hill now. It's hot and since our last hike through here last year somebody has come and cleared the trail. I'm very thankful for that. I don't think we've crossed a single blow down yet. Plenty more to go. I've got this steep hill ahead of me. Trav's up there somewhere. Decide to take a little break and what do I see? The perfect little strawberry that's going to taste amazing. This has been a brutal climb. Very hot up here. At Cataract Creek we filled up all our water stores and prepared to make the final climb up to camp. All right we're just here at Cataract Creek. You can see the bugs pretty thick right now. We are cameling up. We are almost out of here. So we're just working our way out of Cataract Creek here. The trail just disappears in there. It's the third time I've gone through there and the third time I've got lost. So we're bushwhacking up a steep slope here trying to get back to the trail. Hopefully we're cutting out some of this elevation that we're gonna have to climb. All right let's find this trail. Well we're still bushwhacking our way out of Cataract Creek here. We got on the point where the GPS said the trail was. Nothing but game trails. So we're kind of pushing up the hill now. Long bushwhack. We're an hour out of the creek now. All right we found the trail again. That bushwhack did a number on me. We'll keep pushing on. Got a couple more hours of daylight. Looking forward to getting to camp today. Our off-trail adventure from Cataract Creek really took the steam out of us. It was a slog trying to make it up the rest of the way. Took all we had but we finally crested the hill. No tarps tonight. Under the stars. Val's under a bug net. Well what a first day and even after I said I was done hiking for the day. I find myself with a little scotch and looking for a night cap and uh well had to walk back up here. This was tough today and we earned it. Cheers. So last night about two saw lightning down to the south. So we both got out of bed, strung up the tarp. Boy it thundered and lightning for uh I don't know at least a few hours. Thought we were out of it but looks like we're not out of it yet. Wind's picking up. Storm's here. We'll probably hunker down in the hammock for a little bit and wait this out. We set out the storm as long as we could but in the end we had miles to make if we were going to be able to complete our loop. It was time to get moving. Rain or no rain. We started the day with the six mile road walk to get to the northern terminus of the Coeur d'Alene River National Recreation Trail. With the storm just moving out temperatures were cooler and perfect for hiking. I think we're getting pretty close to the creek. We might push through this water spot. We'll have to decide when we get there. I think we got enough water to make it to the river. When we hit the river it was just about lunchtime and we were ready for a break. This is what lunch looks like. Oh yeah. Heading out from lunch. Finally we stepped onto trail 20 and began our journey down the river. The north fork of the Coeur d'Alene River is a truly beautiful place. The trail winds right alongside the river. Sometimes right down next to it and other times well above it. Okay climbing up out of Clark Creek. By far my favorite rest stop on this trail. Just the waterfalls there. Just beautiful. So we got about two and a half miles to go. Been a long day of hiking for sure. Okay doing the creek crossing. Let's go bud. Oh yeah. That feels pretty good. Real slippery. Good job. When we finally found a camp for the night we had done nearly 12 miles that day and we were wiped out. We grabbed something to eat then we climbed into our hammocks. The next morning despite having done pretty tough hikes the last two days we were feeling pretty good. That was a good thing because we had seven miles to go to get back to the truck. Right out of camp. Wet feet. Well this is it. We're just taking our last rest break here at this uh this campsite that I love. It has a great overlook. About a mile from the truck so uh we're just wrapping this up. Okay we are close. You can see the road now.