Black Canyon Route

Dogs Unknown

Features Cave

A short out-and-back past old caves and an archaeological site in a rarely-visited Wilderness Area.

This is a historical area on BLM land without an outlined trail. It's outlined in Sheldon Bluestein's Hiking Trails of Southern Idaho (1981). Most of the trails in this book do no exist anymore but provide some excellent places to explore as they are or were all located in remote desert BLM lands.

This route starts from a well-graded dirt road just east of Howe, it quickly goes to a singletrack and fades by the end of the canyon. But, you won't notice or care much because the canyon walls on either side are full of small caves. Some of the caves are easy to reach and are full of old smoke rings that are remnants to a time when they were occupied long ago. Exploring all of them will take most of a day.

The route is easy but there isn't a lot of shade, so it's best to do this in the spring or fall.