Solar Eclipse at Sawtooth Wilderness National Park

Until the last, we did not know where to go to see the total solar eclipse, we followed the weather forecasts in neighboring states. In the end, we decided to go to Idaho, to Sawtooth National Forest.

Many people don’t know where Idaho itself is, not like Sawtooth NF (which I also did not know anything about until I started looking for an eclipse from where), so here is a map of our trip.

I am not a fan of camping for the sake of camping, but I am ready to sleep in a tent when it is required to complete the task. We left much in advance, on Friday, so that there was time to find where to leave the car. I was worried that we weren’t the only ones so smart and the Idaho forests would be invaded by thousands of astronomy lovers (which was fully confirmed by hotel prices on the eve of the eclipse). But in Sawtooth, under the additional parking lot, whole large fields were allocated, where hundreds of cars would have had enough space. We easily stood near one of the most popular Alice Lake Loop trails:

Threw backpacks on shoulders and went to wilderness. From Saturday to Monday we walked 27 miles, spent two nights in a tent and, of course, saw a total solar eclipse. But even without an eclipse the campaign turned out remarkable in many respects.

We crossed forest streams. Where on stones or logs:

And where you had to take off your shoes and wade.

Lost the trail among the snowy fields:

And they drank water from four lakes:

We walked in mountain passes:

And swamps:

At Sawtooth Wilderness at the end of August, everything just thawed, and all around you were a lot of flowers, lush grass and swift streams.

In the mornings I had to put on jackets and hats and be immediately covered with hundreds of mosquitoes:

In general, this place is a paradise for lovers of mountain lakes.

The famous Alice Lake seemed to me not even the most beautiful. But there it is easy to see from the mountain ranges why these mountains were called Saws of the Saw.

I knew that Idaho is not only a desert and potato fields along I-84:

But now he saw how beautiful (and free) forests are there:

They even have their own Aydah El Capitan (hi Yosemite):

In Wilderness, unlike a national park, there can be no houses and forest roads. Therefore, rangers use mules to deliver goods:

Riders must pass everything. Sometimes it’s even amazing how they can famously move along mountain trails:

In our wanderings, we went through the entire 18-mile loop with an additional trip to Imogene Lake.

Those who are really interested in maps, here we started on Saturday at the big red star, went clockwise:

I marked the places of two nights with crosses (we were afraid that all good places would be grabbed in advance, but even though there were a lot of people in the forest, there were easy places for a tent). The red line - where we reached on Sunday, until we turned back. A circle with a dot is the place where we watched the eclipse.

Leaning out of the tent on Monday morning, I was slightly alarmed by the smell of smoke that filled the lowland where we had to go:

No wonder bonfires are forbidden in these places. But it turned out that the smoke brought by the wind from afar, as recently in Seattle. But most importantly, there were no clouds.

Around 10:20 in the morning I looked at the sun through dark glasses and saw that a piece of it was already bitten off. We found a good place to view the eclipse.

They say that it’s funnier to watch in a crowd of people, but we looked together with siskins and chipmunks:

A partial eclipse is noticeable only through dark glasses. When the moon had almost closed the sun, through the glasses I took only a narrow sickle:

Around it was still light, as an ordinary day:

If you take a 90 +% photo of the screened sun not through the glasses, you get the same round luminous spot:

But a total eclipse is a completely different matter. Very quickly - faster than in the evening - it becomes twilight, cool, a frightened dog barked somewhere in the distance:

And finally, for 2 minutes a crown appears, which you can look at without glasses:

I couldn’t take off my soap dish better. But we saw him. I do not presume to advise whether it is worth going to the wilderness for the sake of an eclipse, but an eclipse can be an excellent occasion to go to such beautiful places as Sawtooth National Forest, the existence of which I would not have known without an eclipse.