The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness straddles the Idaho and Montana line along the Lochsa and Selway rivers, some 1.3 million acres of steep, roadless country. Its one tagged spring, Stanley Hot Springs, is a beloved backcountry soak reached by a forest trail from the Wilderness Gateway area above the Lochsa River, with a series of natural pools in a cedar forest setting. It is a full day commitment in and out, and worth every step.
Stuart Hot Springs is a little-known wilderness soak at the edge of a grassy meadow in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, in the Lochsa Ranger District of North-Central Idaho. It is reachable only at the end of a long, arduous, multiday trip involving multiple river fords — one of the most committing hot springs approaches in the state.
Stanley Hot Springs is a chain of rock- and log-dammed pools in the ancient forest of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, more than 20 miles east of Lowell, Idaho — not to be confused with the town of Stanley in the Sawtooths. The pools sit at the end of a grueling 6-mile hike on a rough trail, and the reward is a deep, wide soaker in one of the wildest settings in North-Central Idaho.
Prospector Hot Springs is one of the least-documented soaks in Idaho: a remote hot spring deep in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, in the Lochsa Ranger District of North-Central Idaho. Almost nothing is published about the pools themselves — reaching them is a hard-to-find, multiday backcountry trip in its own right.
