Little Anderson Creek is in the beautiful Boise National Forest. The trail starts just north of Garden Valley which is noted for its large Elk population. This trail was originally used to drive cattle from Scott Mountain to market, and the logging industry brought their timber down to Horseshoe Bend until Boise-Cascade shut down the mill in 1998. Today, it's all about recreation and it's in a popular hunting area as well. During this trail write-up, elk, deer, and turkeys were spotted as well as a hunter looking for a bear. After every storm, you will encounter downed trees so be prepared to remove them or limit your time on the trail. Remember to "Stay The Trail". In most instances, you couldn't go around them even if you wanted due to the shelf nature of most of the trail. There are several no-name spurs off this trail for dispersed camping away from the main trail.
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Travel north on Highway 55 for 14 miles to Banks and turn right on Banks Lowman Road. Continue east 10 miles to 668 Granite Basin Road and turn left. Continue on Granite Basin Road 2 miles to the trailhead on your right.
This trail should be called the "Give your vehicle racing stripes trail". Do you remember racing stripes, from the 90s? I had the haircut. Two stars for the trail because it was fun to get out in the middle of nowhere, didn't see another vehicle at all. That fact gave the trail an extra star, up from 1 because all the stupid bushes beat up my car. It's pretty tight in some places and you just hear the high pitched scraping.
Lots of great views on this ride! Also, lots of pot holes. I think pot holes are my least favorite obstacle when off road. The trip took me a lot more than an hour and a half. It was about an hour and 45 minutes one way for me. Maybe I have to take it a little easier running it in an Outback though. Had a nice lunch close to the end where you look out over a cool valley. I loaded the GPX track into GAIA and it worked perfectly!
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Dennis Clark was born in Los Angeles in 1942 and after 76 years of living in So Cal he moved to Emmett, Idaho with his wife Patricia, has four adult children with many grand and great grandchildren. He has loved the outdoors since his Cub Scout and Boy Scout days while camping with the family. He's an archer, hunter and fisherman but no longer wishes to harm animals. He has been involved with photography since the 1960's. He became more of a serious hiker in 2010 when he started Geocaching and has hiked the three tallest peaks in So Cal, Mt San Jacinto, Mt San Gorgonio and Mt Baldy, along with most of the lesser peaks in search of caches. Geocaching started his love for the USFS Trail system as he used the trails frequently to get to certain trailheads. He had a 2002 Ford Ranger 2wd and its amazing where that little pickup took him. In 5 years of weekly geocaching he was only stuck once in some Palm Springs sand. His 2016 Wrangler Sport Unlimited was purchased in 2015. He has become quite lazy in the hiking department as he can now drive to most locations. He's looking forward to posting some trails and don't hesitate to ask him for any help you might need.
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