Moscow Mountain is the highpoint of the Palouse Range located near Moscow Idaho. It’s a popular spot for anyone wanting to get up and out of the wheat fields and into the pine trees. It also has 2083' of prominance, good for #88 on the Idaho Prominence List. After spending a fun afternoon with my niece, I had a few hours to burn in the evening and decided to take a hike up Moscow Mountain.
After driving to Troy, I was able to make it up through the maze of logging roads to within about a mile of the summit. Unfortunately it got dark earlier than I’d planned, so the entire hike had to be done with headlamp. By the time I started hiking, the sun was down and there was no moon, so I missed out on seeing any scenery.
From where I parked the car, I started up an old logging road, and scared up some animals in the dark. Pretty sure it was a couple elk, but hard to say for sure. So after my heart rate slowed back down, I continue a little bit further to a gate across the road with a sign that said “foot traffic only beyond this point”. Not far after the gate, the road wound through a couple dilapidated buildings with a few old vehicles parked nearby. It was a bit eerie, but I continued on up the road, which was getting more and more over grown with vegetation the further I went. Pretty soon it was just a faint path through the bushes.
It wasn’t long before I reached the summit. I could see the lights from Moscow in the distance, and various other lights sprinkled across the Palouse. I fiddled around trying to get my camera to capture some low light shots, but was unsuccessful. So after a few minutes, I hit the trail back to the car. Wandering through the dark forest in an unknown area was a bit spooky at times, but made the two-mile hike into a unique adventure. I’ll have to go back to see it during the day at some point to see what I missed.
Map of the route, covering about 2 miles round trip.
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Moscow Mountain summit benchmark.
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Rocky summit area on Moscow Mountain.
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