Graham Creek Coeur d'Alene National Forest, Idaho

Every trip I do I make a plan. I have a general idea of where I'm going to go and how long it'll take us to do it. This trip was no different. I had a plan for this trip. It involved linking three trails together along with a little road walk to make a loop. The trail we were going to was completely new to me so I had only seen the route on a map. I use an app on my phone that uses GPS to show our location on a topographical map. These tools are pretty incredible but they're only as good as the person using them. Before I left my house I thought I had loaded the maps we needed onto my phone but I never tested it. When I got onto the trailhead I realized I didn't have the maps on my phone. I had scouted out the trailheads where they intersected the main road so I had an idea of where we needed to go to start up the mountain. I believe that you should always have a plan when you're walking into the wilderness but sometimes things don't go according to plan and this was about to be one of those trips. We're about geared up here. We are at the Cold Creek trailhead. Got a mile and a half road walk before we hit the trail up, trail 33. Okay well we have done our road walk. We're sitting down here at what I hope is the trailhead of trail 33. I was wrong. The trailhead we needed was another quarter mile up the road. Time to start heading up Grand Creek and start the climb and it has started to drizzle on us. All right it's about 12 o'clock now. It's been maybe a half hour or 45 minutes since we've been on this climbing this hill. So I believe we are way a little, let's see, way south of where we're supposed to be. So this road is heading north now so hopefully this takes us to the trail. I knew immediately we were not in the right place but since we were on a forest road and the walking was easy we continued up the hill hoping that it would intersect the trail. Forecast called for heavy rain all weekend but so far we were getting lucky and just got sprinkled on. Well we are currently on the road that is the access for the power lines which means we're not far off the river road and we're off course a little bit. So we're trucking back. This trail should be right here but still having a good time getting starting to get some good views too. When we finally made it over to the Graham Creek drainage it looked incredibly steep down to the creek. At that point we decided to go off the road and try to intersect the trail up the draw a bit. That way we wouldn't have to hike all the way down to the creek just to have to hike back. Well we're just taking a break here on the side of the hill. I figure that the main trail that we're looking for is on the other side of this gulch and it's a pretty long drop so we're going up the draw and trying to intersect it but tough going. Okay well Grandin and I finally made it off the mountain. So that was one of the steepest toughest hikes I've done with a backpack on. That was crazy and my knees are screaming. I was starting to feel like this canyon didn't have a bottom but we're down here. I think the peak is out. We're not going to make it. We did too many side trails we'll call them but we've spotted the main trail and it's actually across that creek. Deciding whether we're going to camp on this side or see if we can get to the other side because the trail is on the other side but yeah that's where we're at. I'm bunking. Got the superfly ready for war. It's a bit low. Hammock's good but I wanted to set the tarp higher. I think I'm gonna go with it for tonight. No guarantees yet. We just started. Well we are struggling with this fire. We thought we did enough prep and when you think you've done enough prep do some more. Fires haven't been easy to come by so far this year but it is still officially winter so I guess that's to be expected. Well good morning. Morning day two here on Graham Creek. It's raining on us. A little chilly. It rained off and on all night so I stayed dry. Hopefully Brandon did too. I'm gonna set up a little improvised shelter here and get on making some coffee. Here we got a little temporary lean-to. Had to fix my stove but now I got some water going. There's our view. Got my coffee. Things are shaping up. It's even let up on the rain a bit I think. About time to start loading things up and thinking about walking out. We are packed up. It is 11 o'clock. We're gonna go downstream about I think a half mile maybe. Hook up with the power lines again. Take that trail over to Cole Creek. That is the plan and we just got to do it. This half mile is going to be challenging. There's no trail. All right well Gia and I thought we saw a road heading up away from the creek towards the power lines so we jumped on it steep, steep, steep and now it's kind of run out and we've come out on a game trail up here. Looks like it's starting to open up. We'll have to cut left up here and get back to the power lines. This is some off-trail adventures here. Well you can't even see the bottom but we just hiked up that and we're back up where we cut into the woods right in there somewhere yesterday. We are on the power lines ready to walk the road over to Cole Creek. We're just slogging up this hill and I believe the Cole Creek drainage just on the other side of that hill so hopefully we'll start dropping down. Shortly after this point the road we had been walking up ended up far above Cole Creek. We didn't have the energy to hike down the game trails to the bottom like the day before so reluctantly we decided that we should head back the other way. On a way back the storm came over the mountain and caught us out in the open. It was heavy rain and even hailed on us at one point. Well it is just ******* pouring on us. I think we've decided to call it. We're just the my navigational blunders this trip have have cost us our second night and following these power lines has just been a ******* dead end. So I think we're now on the road that should take us down to where we first started and then we'll have to ******* road walk back but that's it. It's ******* pouring. We're both soaked and we're just trying to get to the truck now. All right well we made it to the bottom. We're at the main road now. This is where we turned in so a mile and a half walk back to the truck on the main road and I think it let up a little bit so we'll take advantage because it still looks dark. Well that's it. Made it back to the truck. Brutal. That was a brutal hike today but we look forward to some warm and dry place to go. So I have to say that this trip yes is a disappointment. The weather is just fighting us right now and we fought the good fight but navigational blunders. We did so much hiking we didn't need to do but we powered through so we'll call this one done. Until next time.