Moose hunt

There are no moose at Red Deer Lake. Not today anyway. A few people have told us they've seen moose in that area, so we thought we'd check it out on snowshoes.

We planned to drive up to the trailhead at Camp Dick but there was a winter closure gate, so we had to park at Peaceful Valley instead -- practically right on 72. No problem, just a longer day by a mile each way.

The well-traveled Buchanan Pass trail led us to a 4WD road, which then took us back to the trail. Good views of the Sawtooth and other mountains that were familiar to us from our summer backpacking trip.

We turned north up the drainage but never found the Red Deer Cutoff trail, so we made our own way up the steep hillside. Seemed to take forever but we finally got to the lake.

By that time we had gone 7 miles and it was already 1:30, so we didn't spend much time at the lake. Instead of going back the way we came we followed the lake's drainage for a while, then headed down the steep hillside back to the 4WD road. Since we were short on time and getting tired, we just took the road all the way back.

In all we snowshoed 14 miles in 8 hours. No moose. Some other time.