Burgdorf Hot Springs
In the lightly-trafficked Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho, a simple backcountry lodge encircles natural hot pools as it has since its inception in the late 1800s as a resting spot for entrepreneurial miners. While the amenities are limited, the terrain is plentiful and served by a large network of well-maintained snowmobile trails—a kind of backcountry luxury that is hard to quantify. A crew of Idaho natives explore unridden pastures in their own backyard.
Quarter-sized snowflakes cake onto the windshield as Martin Campbell, Dylan Holt, Evan Williams and I pull up to a large parking lot outside of the small western Idaho town of McCall. A handful of cars and trucks are buried under several feet of snow, but a steady flow of people move through the lot. Some are year-round residents on grocery runs from the old mining towns of Secesh and Warren, which are only accessible via snow machine during winter. The rest are slednecks in search of late-March powder.
Our destination bridges the gap between the two groups—we will be making the 20-mile journey to Burgdorf Hot Springs near Warren in search of solitude and rarely ridden lines in the Payette National Forest…