6 Idaho Drives Idahoans Should Take Before Winter Closes Them

The gate on Silver City Road closes every November 1 and doesn’t reopen until Memorial Day weekend.

Snow has nothing to do with the date.

Idaho’s back roads run on calendars set months in advance, and a few of the best ones have less than two weeks left.

These are the Idaho drives Idahoans should take before winter closes them.

1. Sawtell Peak Road

Sawtell Peak Road dead-ends at a federal radar tower, and for seven months of the year, nobody can drive there.

Forest Road 024 climbs out of the Island Park area in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, switchbacking up to the Sawtell Federal Aviation Radar Tower at the summit.

The Forest Service names the peak in the tagline it uses for the whole forest, promising adventure that runs from Sawtell Peak to Minnetonka Caves.

The tower up top isn’t for show.

It’s a Federal Aviation Administration installation, tucked at the end of a road many drivers only reach a handful of months a year.

A standing Forest Service order shuts Forest Road 024 down every November 1 through June 1, from the gate at the forest boundary all the way to the tower.

The reason is blunt: Crews need the road clear to remove snow safely.

That’s a full seven months without a single vehicle at the summit.

2. Trail Creek Road

Trail Creek Road climbs east out of the Sun Valley and Ketchum area, crossing Trail Creek Summit at 7,910 feet before dropping into the Big Lost River valley near Mackay.

Locals treat it as a shortcut, skipping the long paved route around through Craters of the Moon country.

The Blaine County Road and Bridge Department and the Lost River Highway District jointly maintain the nearly 70 miles of pavement and gravel.

The shortcut doesn’t survive winter.

Idaho’s tourism office says the summit closes each fall with the first significant snowfall and doesn’t reopen again until spring, usually sometime in May.

Blaine County targeted May 22 for this year’s reopening, just ahead of Memorial Day weekend, after part of the route washed out and needed repair.

Both agencies wait until the route is clear of rockslides and snow before they’ll call it open, calendar or no calendar.

3. Silver City Road

Silver City Road climbs out of Murphy and up the flank of the Owyhee Mountains to one of the best-preserved mining ghost towns in the West.

About 75 buildings dating from the 1860s through the early 1900s still stand at 6,200 feet.

The Idaho Hotel still takes overnight guests the way it has for more than a century.

Nobody burned it down, and nobody built a gift shop over it.

It just emptied out.

The gate on Silver City Road closes every November 1 and doesn’t reopen until Memorial Day weekend, the town’s historical society says.

Owyhee County officials make that call, not the county’s road crews.

4. Magruder Corridor Road

Bitterroot National Forest describes Magruder Corridor Road as a 95-mile primitive road offering a rare glimpse into some of the lower 48’s most remote, undeveloped landscape.

The road connects Elk City, Idaho, to Darby, Montana, climbing over ridgelines between two enormous wilderness areas without passing a single town.

The first 20 miles out of Elk City start as smooth gravel.

After that the road climbs above 6,000 feet and stays there.

The route traces the edge of the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness areas past the old Magruder Ranger Station.

Cell service disappears fast.

A backcountry guide to the route, not the Forest Service, puts the road’s usual closing window at late October, once the first hard snow falls.

The same guide says the road often doesn’t reopen until mid-July.

That’s close to nine months without a car on the road.

5. Warren Wagon Road

Warren Wagon Road runs north out of McCall toward Burgdorf Hot Springs and the gold camp of Warren, following the route freight wagons used a century ago.

Soakers drive up just for Burgdorf’s steaming pools, and history buffs push on to Warren itself, one of Idaho’s better-preserved mining towns.

Valley County, by county law, turns the road into a designated snowmobile route every late November and keeps it that way through April 30.

Some drivers go around the closure signs anyway.

That puts snowmobilers who think they have the road to themselves in the path of a truck that shouldn’t be there.

In practice the road has often stayed shut into late May or early June.

Valley County now says it’s working to get the road plowed and open by the second week of May instead.

6. Upper St. Joe River Road

St. Joe River Road turns to washboard gravel past Avery, and that's where Idaho's plows call it quits every fall.

The road runs about 89 miles total, tracing the St. Joe River from St. Maries to the Montana state line.

The first 47 miles, into the town of Avery, stay open through the winter.

Idaho's parks department says Avery anchors a groomed snowmobile network.

Four trailheads leave town for roughly 180 miles of groomed trail, with a prime season that runs December through March.

Past Avery, the road stops being a road for cars at all.

The National Scenic Byway Foundation puts it plainly: That stretch toward the Montana border is closed in winter and used as a snowmobile route instead.

A gate, not a plow, decides when a driver gets that stretch back.