The trail is easy … just follow the old road … at least that’s what the trails book indicated. Well, “easy” it was not. The old road has fully returned to nature … small saplings, tangles of shirt shredding briars, piles of downed ice storm branches, trees and logs to be navigated around, stepped over or crawled under. In two hours of bushwhacking we had covered only six tenths of a mile. At this pace we feared there might not be sufficient time to continue to Sandstone Castles and return to the car before dark.
Fortunately, in just over another half mile, the trail opened up, we made much better time and … WOW, all our efforts were rewarded with our first successful visit to Sandstone Castles.
The entire Richland Creek Wilderness area is awesome but I believe we may have found a place almost as spectacular as Twin Falls. Plus, this can be appreciated whether the creeks are flowing or not.
Located high on Big Ridge at over 2000′ this bluff line is a nature photographer’s treasure trove. There are cavernous rooms large enough to shelter a Boy Scout Troop of campers. There are connecting passageways, naturally carved windows overlooking the Richland Valley, and numerous natural bridges, massive columns and hundreds of yards of etched bluff lines.
Jim Dailey 
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