Books

Bigfoot Boy

by Margaret Fuller  Available Now!

An adopted eleven year old boy in central Idaho searches for his birth parents with surprising results.

Introduction, by Margaret Fuller: About Bigfoots

"Bigfoot, sasquatch, or the yeti has been a popular myth worldwide for hundreds of years. In the early days there was a story in an Idaho newspaper about an Indian named Nampa, meaning "Big Foot." Many people claim to have seen a bigfoot and two California men once made a movie of a supposed one, the Patterson-Gimlin film.. There are even organizations that keep track of "sightings" and conduct expeditions to search for bigfoot. A professor in Idaho, Jeff Meldrum, studies them seriously and believes they are real animals.

5 Kids on Wild Trails: A Memoir 

by Margaret Fuller  Available Now!

This is the story of how Margaret grew up going to grandfather Stanford law professor A.M. Cathcart's cabin at Fallen Leaf and how with the help of her five young children she wrote the first comprehensive guidebook to any wild area in Idaho. Trails of the Sawtooth and Boulder-White Cloud Mountains was first published in 1979.

Tom Lopez, author, says this about the book:

"Like all good memoirs, this book not only relates interesting history but also puts us in Margaret’s life, times, mind and soul. Margaret’s adventures exploring the Sawtooth, Boulder and White Cloud mountains are a priceless documentation of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area’s (SNRA) early years. From a historical perspective her narrative of those years adds a much needed eyewitness account of the way things were and of how they evolved. However, the memoir is much more than an Idaho time piece.

She somehow found the time to not only successfully raise five children but to also instill in them a love of mountains. All the while this grand venture proceeded she was sewing sleeping bags and down jackets from kits to outfit her family, overcoming her fear of bears and the resistance that many locals had to anyone publishing an Idaho guidebook. Many locals found it sacrilegious that anyone would consider letting the world know about Idaho’s secret places. As a fellow Idaho guidebook author I can attest that the resistance to Idaho guidebooks was real even in the 1980s. Margaret paved the way for all Idaho guidebook authors who came after her.

All of her adventures and struggles documented in this memoir coalesced in the publication of the definitive guide book to one of America’s greatest treasures, Trails of the Sawtooth, and Boulder-White Cloud Mountains. In the process of exploring and writing Margaret Fuller became an Idaho treasure."

Trails of the Sawtooth and Boulder-White Cloud Mountains 

by Margaret Fuller (updated and expanded 6th edition, 2017)  

This new edition provides GPS coordinates for all trailheads. 143 trails for hiking, horseback riding and biking in and next to the Sawtooth National Recreation Area are described. Includes 3 new wilderness areas: Cecil d. Andrus White Clouds, Hemingway-Boulders, Jim McClure-Jerry Peak. In updating the book, Trails of the Sawtooth and Boulder-White Cloud Mountains, Margaret added some difficult hikes and ones in remote areas, three of them backpacking trips, although she is now 82. These were to cover one of the new wildernesses, the Jim McClure-Jerry Peak Wilderness.

"...this is the perfect reference and trail companion for those who explore this section of the Idaho backcountry." - Cecil Andrus  

A few miles north of Sun Valley, Idaho, the Sawtooth Mountains rise thousands of feet above the headwaters of the Salmon River, like saws set on edge. To the east of the Sawtooths above wrinkled, wooded foothills the Cecil d. Andrus White Clouds Wilderness mountains soar in summits of vanilla ice cream. 

Closer to Sun Valley, along the Big Wood River, swirl the pink and gray stripes of the Boulder Mountains. All three ranges are within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. This book is a comprehensive guide to that area. Trailheads included in the Sawtooths are at and near Alturas, Pettit, Redfish and Stanley Lakes, and Grandjean, Graham and Atlanta. In the Cecil d. Andrus White Clouds Wilderness, trails covered begin at Pole Creek, Fourth of July Creek, Fisher Creek, Rough Creek, Slate Creek and along the East Fork of the Salmon River. In the Cecil d Andrus White Clouds, some of the trailheads covered are the North Fork of the Big Wood River, Gladiator Creek, Three Cabins Creek and the Bowery Guard Station. In the Jim McClure-Jerry Peak Wilderness some of the trailheads covered are Herd Lake, Bowery Creek, Sage Creek, Toolbox Creek, and Hunter Creek Summit.

Excerpt from Trails of the Sawtooth and Boulder-White Cloud Mountains (click on the link): Born (Boorn) Lakes Trail  

$23.95, published by Trail Guide Books, ISBN 978-0-9911561-2-2  

Ski the Great Potato: Idaho Ski Areas, Past and Present

by Margaret Fuller, Doug Fuller and Jerry Painter

Ski the Great Potato: Idaho Ski Areas, Past and Present

You'll find the histories of the 21 current Idaho ski areas and of the 72 historical or "lost" areas in this interesting new book. The book gives the basic facts about each area and how it started, and it includes little stories of some of the people who skied at each one. There are stories of stolen snow plows, an exploding stove, and a young woman who on a very cold night froze to the seat of a porta-pottie.  

While researching the microfilms of Idaho newspapers, we found many hidden and forgotten stories of ski area startups in the weekly papers. It was almost always a community deal: meet in the basement of the drugstore on Tuesday night; we are forming a ski club, says the paper. A rancher, farmer, or mechanic promises to donate an engine for the rope tow. No rope for the tow? No problem, we'll hold a box lunch social, or sell ski club memberships that include free skiing. No land for a tow?  

We can arrange for Forest Service land, or lease land from private owners, have it logged, and pay the lease with the proceeds.  One ski area made a movie of cars and buses stuck in the mud and showed it around town to motivate public officials to pave the road.  

Many Idaho ski areas were successful only because of the major support and pure goodwill of community businessmen like Warren Brown and Jack Simplot.  Most of the ski areas had the investment of several local businessmen who are not as well known as those two, but were vital in developing small ski areas such as Cottonwood Butte and Rotarun.  

Our research uncovered the amazing determination of the few men and women who started Idaho's ski areas, especially the ones in remote areas. A 13-member Lions Club built a ski area from scratch, including buying a used Pomalift from a bigger ski area. When cement trucks couldn't drive up its steep hill to pour the foundations for the towers, they used a backhoe bucket and shovels to mix the cement by hand. Then they hauled an old schoolhouse 20 miles on dollies to the base of the lift for a lodge. Another area converted an old chicken coop.  No ski lift or likely way to get one?  One early ski hill was run by boy scouts who used horse-drawn toboggans as ski lifts.

Excerpt from Ski the Great Potato: Idaho Ski Areas, Past and Present (click on the link): Quigley Gulch 

$22.95, published by Trail Guide Books, ISBN 978-0-9911561-0-8

Trails of Eastern Idaho  

by Margaret Fuller and Jerry Painter (updated and expanded 3^rd  edition, 2010)  

This guide of Eastern Idaho includes a scramblers guide to Idaho's 12,000-foot peaks, 103 trails and routes in 19 mountain ranges and on the Snake River Plain.  

“This dream team has produced no fluff. They have meticulously done their research and present the plain and accurate facts of Eastern Idaho trail and peak hiking. Here and there, trail descriptions are supplemented with tidbits of natural and social history. You can see Margaret Fuller’s influence here. Her longtime and passionate love affair with the Idaho outdoors has given her a sensitivity for natural history – a topic to which she has devoted two previous books. And you can also see Jerry Painter’s touch in the carefully drawn maps and the crisp, no-nonsense approach to trail descriptions that comes naturally from his years working as a journalist and editor of a trails newsletter.” – Ron Watters  

This is a great resource for outdoor lovers looking for trails in Eastern Idaho. Eastern Idaho is a landscape of variety. It includes black lava, grotesque granite towers, multicolored cliffs and unearthly turquoise water. 

The book guides you to trips in 19 mountain ranges and among the lava flows of the Snake River Plain. Whether you are an Idaho visitor or a resident, you will find fun trails for day hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, horseback riding, and peak bagging. A guide for reaching the tops of Idaho's nine 12,000-foot peaks is included.  

Excerpt from Trails of the Eastern Idaho (click on the link): Webber Lakes  

$18.95, published by Trail Guide Books, ISBN 978-0-9664233-9-6

Trails of Western Idaho  

by Margaret Fuller (updated and expanded 3rd edition, 2006)

This guidebook of hikes in Hells Canyon, the Seven Devils, Owyhees, Smokies, Pioneers, around McCall and Lowman and around Boise includes 107 trails, including 13 new trails in this edition. 

“Margaret Fuller has done it again.  Her latest guide book to Idaho’s hiking trails is a ‘must’ for outdoor enthusiasts who desire an accurate description of an area.  It is also appropriate for people who need suggestions of where they might visit.” – Cecil Andrus  

In southwestern Idaho, landscapes vary from sagebrush deserts cleft with canyons to Douglas fir or lodgepole forests, mountain meadows and glacial cirques. In its mountains, aquamarine lakes contrast with gray and black peaks streaked with white, copper, and rose. Except for the Hells Canyon Wilderness, the hikes are in non-wilderness areas. 

There are hikes in the Payette, Boise, Sawtooth, and Salmon-Challis forests, and in the lower Snake River, Shoshone and Vale districts of the Bureau of Land Management.   Also included are a few state parks like the Bruneau Sand Dunes and Malad Gorge. Trails under other management include the Boise Greenbelt and the 85.7-mile-long Weiser River Trail.  

Excerpt from Trails of Western Idaho (click on the link): Halverson Lakes  

$17.95, published by Trail Guide Books, ISBN 0-9664233-3-X (no copies left; being revised)

Trails of the Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness

by Margaret Fuller  (updated and expanded, 3rd edition, 2020)

This 2.3 million acre Idaho wilderness is carved by the Salmon River into a maze of deep canyons and rugged peaks. In the third edition, which includes for the first time GPS co-ordinates for the trailheads, 101 trails are described.

"The great contribution of this book is not only to make the almost inaccessible accessible to the outdoor person, but also to permit the armchair enjoyment of someone who will explore this vast area only through Margaret’s words and eyes." – Bethine Church  

The Salmon River and its tributaries have carved the Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness into a maze of deep canyons and isolated peaks. From any high point a gigantic relief map of ridges extends to distant blue crags. The crags and ridges hide cobalt blue lakes and bubbling hot springs. 

In most sections, the footprints you see will be those of elk and deer, not humans.

Margaret's guidebook has been the only guidebook to the trails of this area for more than 30 years. Updated and expanded for the second time in 2020. 

Both popular areas like the Bighorn Crags near Challis and remote areas like the Big Creek drainage near Yellow Pine are included in the book. Several of the roads to trailheads, such as the road to Sleeping Deer and the Nez Perce Trail Road are adventurous in themselves and 4-wheel drive is advised for some of them.. 

$20.95, published by Trail Guide Books, ISBN 978-0-9911561-3-9

Excerpt from Trails of the Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness (click on the link): Sleeping Deer Lookout  

Eastern Idaho Sweet Spots 

by Jerry Painter and Matt TeNgaio (updated and expanded 3rd edition, 2016)

This guide to rock climbing, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and hiking trails in eastern Idaho is an excellent companion to Trails of Eastern Idaho by Margaret Fuller and Jerry Painter. Hundreds of easily accessible trails and climbing routes in Eastern Idaho are detailed in this book.  

Jerry is the author of other trail guides: Great Trails for Family Hiking in the Tetons, Hiking and Biking Trails in the Idaho Falls Area, Hiking and Biking Near Idaho Falls, Vol. II, 10 Peaks in 10 Weeks, (all now out of print) and with Matt TeNgaio, Eastern Idaho Sweet Spots: Hiking, Biking, Skiing, and Climbing. He writes a weekly outdoor column for the Idaho Falls Post Register (a daily newspaper). He and his wife, Julie, live in Idaho Falls. They have five children and three grandchildren.

$20.95, published by Trail Guide Books, ISBN 978-0-9911561-1-5

Wild Berries of the West  

by Margaret Fuller and Betty Derig (2001,5th printing, 2014)

This field guide identifies the most common berries of the West for hikers and foragers. Over 150 fruits and berries are described with color photographs, edibility, historical uses. Recipes, maps, tips about locating plants, gardening and more, are included. 

This book includes detailed plant descriptions and tells whether or not each berry is delicious, edible, insipid or poisonous. The more than 50 recipes are old time ones the authors gathered from relatives, friends and neighbors. The book decribes how Native Americans and early settlers used the berries and their shrubs or trees. The guide also tells how to grow wild berries in the garden. 235 pages, 2 maps, 43 drawings, 185 color photographs.  

Excerpt from Wild Berries of the West (click on the link): Blueberry Molasses Cake Recipe  

$16.00, published by Mountain Press Publishing Company , ISBN 978-0-9664233-6-5  

The Weiser River Trail: Idaho’s Longest Rail Trail  

by Margaret Fuller and Anita VanGrunsven (4th Edition, 2021)

Excerpt from The Weiser River Trail:  Idaho’s Longest Rail Trail (click on the link): Grizzly Creek To Goodrich

 $20.00, published by Friends of the Weiser Trail, ISBN 978-0-578-76458-0