Mallard Larkins | St. Joe National Forest, Idaho

We were trying to decide where to go and finally settled on the Mallard Larkins Pioneer Area in North Idaho. We did a trip here 3 years ago and the place blew my mind. While not being far from civilization when you look at a map, being there is another story. As the crow flies the trailhead is maybe 40 miles from where I live. To get there though, takes about 3 hours.

The stats for this trip would put this in the category of a moderate hike for me. Less than 10 miles per day, less than 2000' gain per day. Somehow hiking here feels a lot tougher than that.

From the trailhead we dropped steeply into Sawtooth Creek then started working our way up the other side. We departed from the Northbound Creek trail, taking the Martin Creek trail instead. The trail from the creek to the junction with Skyland Lake was brushy, but not too bad.

We camped our first night at Skyland Lake. The main campsite there is nice and large and we had no problem finding trees for all of us (5 hammocks) to hang from.

We set out the next morning up the Martin Creek trail looking to get up to the Heart Pass trail. We lost the trail shortly out of camp. We bushwhacked up the hill and stumbled in to it again. It was a brushy hike up to the ridge, but we managed to get up there and only lost the trail a couple times.

From there was ridge walked the Heart Pass trail over to the Heart Lake cutoff and down to the lake. Though it was a ridge walk, there was still plenty of climbing to get there.

The next morning the mosquitos had massed and executed a full assault on our camp. It was some of the worst I've seen. We packed up and got out of there as quickly as we could.

We hiked back up to the Heart Pass trail and backtracked our route from the day before. We passed the Martin Creek Junction where we had come up the day before and continued on to the Mallard Peak Lookout. The views from the lookout were spectacular! I love getting to check out old lookouts, the Mallard Peak lookout dates back to the 1930's.

From the lookout we continued on to Fawn Lake which might've been the most scenic of them all.

The next day we were hiking out. We started off by losing the trail right away. After some searching and bushwhacking we found it again. It seemed like a repeat of hiking out of Skyland Lake, except it seemed like this brush was fighting back!

Eventually we made it down to the Northbound Creek trail. We cameled up at Sawtooth Creek and made the hike back up to the saddle to complete our trip.

Quick Links:
01:39 - SAWTOOTH CREEK
03:23 - SKYLAND LAKE
04:54 - DAY 2
06:21 - BUSHWHACK TRAIL 479
09:22 - HEART PASS TRAIL
11:12 - HEART LAKE
14:00 - DAY 3
17:12 - MALLARD PEAK JUNCTION
17:39 - MALLARD PEAK LOOKOUT
21:23 - FAWN LAKE
23:29 - DAY 4

Видео Mallard Larkins | St. Joe National Forest, Idaho канала Mountain Wanderer