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the Degree Confluence Project
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United States : Idaho

13.3 miles (21.4 km) SW of Salmon, Lemhi, ID, USA
Approx. altitude: 2080 m (6824 ft)
([?] maps: Google MapQuest OpenStreetMap topo aerial ConfluenceNavigator)
Antipode: 45°S 66°E

Accuracy: 5 m (16 ft)
Quality: good

Click on any of the images for the full-sized picture.

#2: lThe point is in the clearing, from about 70 meters #3: View of Williams Lake, the Salmon valley, and the Bitterroot Mountains from a nearby hill #4: GPS #5: Geologists' monument up on the hill #6: Me and my confluence truck (complete with deer imprint in the grill)

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  45°N 114°W (visit #1)  

#1: View southwest into central Idaho from the hill

(visited by Eric C. Lincoln and Michelle Lincoln)

25-Aug-2001 -- For a brief weekend vacation, we drove about 8 hours into the mountains, only hitting one deer on the way, and camped at Williams Lake.

The various maps seem to indicate that you should approach this point from the northeast end of the lake, starting heading south. This road quickly forks into various branches, all of which start screaming about private property. So, forgetting about the online topo maps, and the local BLM (Bureau of Land Management) maps, we followed the larger scale DeLorme map and headed West (FR 028), going past the BLM campground and boat put-in, and around the west end of the lake.

This works well unless you suddenly find yourself at a gate with a big "stay out" sort of sign... We backtracked a few hundred feet, and followed the other fork (staying on FR 028), which wanders across a couple of cattle guards through an easement over the same "Happy Hollow" ranch.

The road then wanders up into the hills. When you reach the intersection marked as the road to "Rattlesnake Creek", follow the signs to Rattlesnake Creek. No, we didn't see any snakes.

After passing the closest approach (about 70 meters), we found the first good parking spot at the intersection on the saddle above the confluence, and walked back. After cutting across country to the counfluence point, on a small knoll, we found that an old, partly visible logging road goes straight from the confluence back to the road at N45°00'03.3", W113°59'59.4"! If we wanted to, we could have driven the pickup straight to the confluence knoll, or at least parked at the wide spot there and walked on flat, cleared land!

From a nearby spot we could see a very large hill with a "road" up it, so we found the end of that "road" (which is NOT where it is shown on the topozone topo, but at N44°59'52.8" W113°59'54.4", where it is the least obvious part of a four-way intersection) and went up the hill, where we discovered that a team of Geologists from W.W.U. was there only a month ago building a small monument. We don't know whether they even noticed the nearby confluence.

From the top of that hill (about a third of a mile from the confluence) you can see forever in every direction, past Salmon to the Bitterroot mountains (the Montana border), and over a couple of mountain ranges in the other direction.

Very beautiful scenery on the trip, and only the sidetrip to the hill required the pickup to get there. Of course, our passenger car wouldn't have survived the deer either. :)


 All pictures
#1: View southwest into central Idaho from the hill
#2: lThe point is in the clearing, from about 70 meters
#3: View of Williams Lake, the Salmon valley, and the Bitterroot Mountains from a nearby hill
#4: GPS
#5: Geologists' monument up on the hill
#6: Me and my confluence truck (complete with deer imprint in the grill)
ALL: All pictures on one page