The Seven Devils mountains on the western edge of Idaho butt up to the nation's deepest canyon, Hells Canyon. The wilderness here is dry, rugged, remote, and difficult. It's also extremely beautiful. My family lived near here on the forest service ranger station in Riggins, Idaho, almost 60 years ago.

My brother decided it would be fun to drive from the midwest for hiking and fishing in the high alpine lakes cradled in the bowls between the Seven Devils summits with hospitable names such as He Devil, She Devil, Devil's Throne, the Ogre, and the Goblin. Silly me, I agreed.

About 2.5 years ago, I had to cancel a planned adventure, but this Seven Devils trek turned into the most discombobulated expedition for me so far. It was still an enjoyable trip, but nothing like we had planned.

After driving nearly 2 days, we reached the Windy Saddle trailhead into the Seven Devils at about 4pm. 'We' being my brother (Ed), his adult son (Kyle), and myself. We were to meet a college friend (Scott) and his adult son (Andrew) to start our hike. Scott met us there, but his son had been delayed and would reach the trailhead later and hike in to catch up with us. So, at 5pm under a still blazing sun with temps around 80f, we started in.

The plan was to hike, fish, and camp for 5 days. We would use the Seven Devils Loop (trail #124) to access two main groups of lakes and see what we could catch on flies. That plan lasted almost an hour.

Less than a quarter mile into our hike, Scott decided that his ankle was not going to be up for the ruggedness of this hike. He had injured it a few months ago and thought it was good to go, but it was too bothersome. So, after a short discussion, he turned back to the trailhead.

Another hour of hiking found us still under a mile from the trailhead. The thin air at ~7600 feet, arid air, and temperature were bothering my brother. We were making progress, but it was rough. After a few rests and starts, he decided it would be best to turn back also. That was fine with me since fishing on some Idaho rivers would be fun, too. But, Kyle had really wanted to do some hiking and, between the two of them, convinced me to continue with Kyle. So, now we were down to 2 with possibly a 3rd finding us later.

Now, Kyle and I had to reach a place to camp with water before it got dark around 9:45pm. That gave us 3 hours to go about 3 miles, so it shouldn't be a problem. As we hiked, a helicoptor flew around and landed a couple times off in the distance at a lookout tower. We didn't know what they were doing.

When we finished our first long uphill section, we had this great view out over the Hells Canyon to the west. A 1,200 foot downhill section on scree and shale would get us to the forest and our campsite by Sheep Creek.

As soon as we turned east and started down, we saw why the helicoptor was around. Smoke was rising from the rocky mountains ahead and above us. Should we continue forward or retreat from the fire? It was over a mile away, not very large, and with what seemed to be very little around to burn. So, we continued down to camp, watching the helicoptor fly circles over the smoke while it scooped water from a lake and dumped it on the fire. This went on for almost two hours.

Well, we reached our campsite on the west fork of Sheep Creek just below Devils Tooth around 8:30 and it was great. A beautiful, but noisy, waterfall and plenty of room. Tents up, dinner eaten, and we hit the hay with plans to continue up to the lakes to fish tomorrow.

Andrew did not show up as had been the plan. Kyle and his dad each had a Zoleo communication device. These wound up being great assets, allowing text messages to keep each other up to date. It turns out that Ed had texted Scott so he waited at the trailhead while Ed hiked out. Andrew got to the trailhead and hiked in to meet Ed and make sure he got out ok. Then, all of them headed down to Riggins to camp along the Salmon River.

We started our second day by hiking up more scree towards the first set of lakes. No problems with Kyle navigating and my navigation app deciding to die. As we reached a flat, open, almost desert area after a long climb, an airplane could be seen circling above us. Hiking on, we watched the plane drop pairs of smoke jumpers - 8 people in all. That was followed with 3 low-elevation passes right over us to drop supplies on a hill just ahead. It was all very interesting, but we wondered just how this fire was doing.

We reached Basin Lake with a great well-used camping area. We set up our tents and got day packs to hike up a few hundred feet in elevation to Sheep Lake, or until we ran into the fire. Well, the fire was closer.

At Gem Lake, we ran into a firefighter that had just landed and was hiking to the fire. He was chill and said we could just go on hiking. So, we did.
But, very soon after that, we ran into smoke rising on both sides of the trail. So, we scrambled up some rocks to see what was above and still stay away from the fire - which was not very large.

We stopped to watch another firefighter that was busy knocking down burning spots, and decided that it would be a better idea to head back down. The firefighter noticed us and helped us with that decision. :-) On the way down, we met another firefighter that said we'd be fine walking up around the fire, but we continued down.

We would not get to fish in Sheep or Gem lakes, and the wind was whipping around so we weren't even sure if we'd be able to stay where we were at Basin lake. So, we decided to change plans again. We packed up our camp and headed farther east to the next set of lakes. We hadn't planned on it, but now we would hike the entire loop around the Seven Devils and come out a day early.

Our final mishap happened about an hour later. A sharp left turn near Lily Pad lake is required to take the Seven Devils Loop. We wound up taking a trail towards Bernard Lakes which includes a 350 foot downhill. Once that was figured out, we retreated back uphill to the intersection where the mistake was made. At this point, it was getting late in the afternoon, our frustration level was pretty high, and we were hot and tired - a bad time to make any decisions, but we did. We decided to just head back.

So, after a long day of hiking, we camped right back at the same spot from the night before. It was definitely a challenging, interesting day. The next morning, we were up early to beat the heat and climbed the big hill out. We had some clouds, breeze, and plenty of water so it wasn't too bad.

The Zoleo texting meant Ed was waiting for us at the trailhead so it was simple to pile in and head down to do some fishing the next few days on the Clearwater, Selway, and Lochas rivers. It wasn't the trek we had planned, but it was a good time.

Hike On!