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Tour Information:
This tour is being offered beginning June 2009. We will spend 3 days on the road and 3 nights lodging and will travel 735 miles through some of the most beautiful sections of Idaho. On the 1st morning, there will be a welcome aboard, get acquainted breakfast where everyone will meet, be provided with detailed trip and safety information, questions will be answered and your tour guides will introduce themselves. If you plan to arrive in Boise a day or more prior to the tour, keep in mind that this tour does not include any expenses incurred prior to the 1st morning of the tour. Following breakfast, we will proceed to the local High Desert Harley-Davidson® Dealer to complete all rental arrangements. Although a relativey short tour, this ride will introduce you to some beautiful mountain motorcycle riding along mostly two lane tisity roads. You are sure to create lasting memories of a most spectacular 3 day ride through Idaho.
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Hotel Information:
Our typical lodging will be as up scale as the geographic area we visit will allow. Part of the allure of this tour is to actually experience the “rugged west”. Some small towns we visit are very rustic. Accommodations can be sparse. Within the Parks, the management takes great pride in maintaining the facilities as it was 100 years ago. That may mean no phones, no TV, no air-conditioning. It can be a rough life but nothing a real biker cannot handle. Then again, we stay in a few places that are simply outstanding. It is all part of the adventure. One word of caution, by law, most establishments in the USA are designated as non-smoking.
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White Bird Hill
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Mountain Road
Idaho City Jail
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Sawtooth Mountains
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The Lolo Pass & Lost Trail Tour is 3 days and 2 nights of Harley® riding through some of Idaho's most scenic mountain areas. A 3rd night's lodging is also included in the price of the tour upon return to Boise. The ride also visits a small portion of southwestern Montana. During this tour you will experience the true meaning of the "Great Outdoors".
Idaho gleams with emerald green hillsides, rolling hills, lush farmlands and is sprinkled with lakes of all sizes. Rugged mountains and the largest wilderness areas in the lower 48 states. Two major rivers, the Salmon and the Snake span the lower two-thirds of the state. The Salmon "River of No Return" is famous for its whitewater and fishing. The Snake River is the deepest river gorge in North America.
After our welcome aboard breakfast, we climb aboard the Harleys® for our first day of the tour. We depart from Boise, Idaho and proceeds north through several small Idaho towns, such as Horseshoe Bend, Cascade, McCall, New Meadows, Riggins and Grangeville. Keep your eyes on the road and watch for deer as we traverse the twisting road through the dense mountain forest.
We stop briefly in the resort town of McCall, Idaho at Payette Lake which is a 5,330 acre expanse of clean, glacial water at an elevation of about 5,000 feet in the forests of Idaho. The lake offers excellent boating and several sandy beaches all with the backdrop of spectacular mountain scenery.
Our ride continues north where we arrive at “White Bird Hill”, located along the eastern edge of the Seven Devils Mountains and home of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. Looking back from the top of White Bird Hill we have a spectacular panoramic view of the Salmon River Canyon below. White Bird Hill is a steep, crooked, gorgeous climb up the highway grade. The truckers hate traversing this stretch of road which climbs 2,700' in eight miles.
We continue our ride north to Grangeville, Idaho where we turn east and proceed to Syringa for the evening layover.
The next morning our ride takes us along along U.S. Highway 12, also known as the Lewis and Clark Highway. This 80 mile section of highway is some of the most wild and scenic country you’ll ever experience. The two lane road follows the Middle Fork of the Clearwater, Selway and Lochsa Rivers. Rafting trips on both the Lochsa and Selway rivers are world-class whitewater adventures for rafters and kayaks with dozens of raft-bashing rapids.
Continuing our ride along U.S. Highway 12, we cross into Montana at Lolo Pass. This pass is famous as the location where the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the summit of the Bitterroot Range on their outward and return journeys in 1805 – 1806. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the United States. It stands, incomparably, as an epic journey in the exploration of the American West. The Idaho portion of the trail, which is on a tree-lined ridge high above the Lochsa River, represents the most difficult part of the Corps of Discovery’s trek across the western territory to discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean.
In Montana, we turn turn south at Lolo and soon join the Salmon River Scenic Byway, which begins on the Montana-Idaho border at the Lost Trail Pass (elevation 6,995 feet). Lewis and Clark passed through this area in 1805, and the spectacular view from this vantage point has changed little since that famous exploration of the West two centuries ago.
We spend our second evening in Salmon, Idaho.
The final day of our ride, we follow the Salmon River, also known as the “River of No Return”, through the Salmon-Challis National Forest. The river and its forks serve as important natural pathways into Idaho’s rugged back country. The elk, deer, and moose that often graze along the hills and meadows that line this road provide a glimpse of the wild country beyond.
As we continue following the Salmon River southwest toward Stanley, you’ll begin to see glimpses of the majestic Sawtooth Mountains. Stanley is located on the Salmon River and is at the center of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area.
At Stanley, Idaho, we ride west toward Boise on the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway. Leaving Stanley, we begin climbing to Banner Summet, one of Idaho’s highest monntain passes. The Byway squeezes between two of Idaho’s wilderness areas. On the left is the Sawtooth Wilderness Area and its 217,000 pristine acres of coniferous forest lands and wilderness lakes. On the right, the Salmon-Challis National Forest, entryway to the 2.3 million-acre Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, with more contiguous acres of roadless wilderness than anywhere else in the lower 48 states.
Continuing southwest, we cross the Payette River and proceed along a narrow two lane road filled with hairpin turns. We continue our ride through the Boise National Forest and soon arrive at Idaho City.
Soon after the discovery of gold in the Boise Basin, Idaho City became on of the largest cities in the Pacific Northwest. By 1865 it was home to some 7,000 goldseekers; nearly one quarter were Chinese At its peak the basin was home to some 20,000 miners. The area around Idaho City was one of the largest sources of gold ever discovered. More than 20 pioneer buildings from the 1860’s and miles of dredge workings are still visible. The population of Idaho City today is 458.
Leaving Idaho City, we start the final leg of our ride and all to soon, we arrive back in Boise from where we started this adventure a short three days earlier.
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