Heaven's Gate Lookout

From Riggins, Forest Road 517 climbs west out of the Salmon River canyon for about eighteen miles, steep, narrow, gravel and switchbacked most of the way, into the Seven Devils Mountains. It ends a few hundred feet below the top of Heaven's Gate, and a short trail finishes the climb to the lookout at 8,429 feet.

The view is the reason to come. To the west the ground falls away into Hells Canyon, the Snake River more than seven thousand feet below — too deep to see the water, not too deep to feel the drop. Beyond it rise the Wallowa Mountains of Oregon. To the south stand the peaks that gave the range its name, He Devil and She Devil, the Goblin and the Black Imp, and to the east the Salmon River canyon and the long ridges of central Idaho run toward the Bitterroots on the Montana line. On a clear day the horizon takes in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Montana.

There has been a lookout here since the 1920s. A log cabin with a cupola went up in 1924 and lost the cupola to a wildfire in 1958; the lookout that stands now, a cab on a two-story concrete base, dates from 1978. The Forest Service still staffs it from early summer through fire season, and the lookout on duty keeps a register for visitors to sign.

The road opens once the snow is gone, usually in July, when the high slopes around Windy Saddle fill with lupine, penstemon and paintbrush. It is no road for a trailer, and low cars struggle on it.