© 2009 Brian Davidson/Uncharted Staff

I, for one, am grateful many people consider Idaho’s Lost River Desert ugly. That means fewer people stomping about with their great lummox feet in the places I love to explore, the places where I’m reminded God, too, loves to play with rocks and dirt, the places so silent the only thing you can hear is a slight breeze peppered with the peeps of sparrows and the calls of meadowlarks.

The lava trails at Hell’s Half Acre are one of those unspoiled spots the uglifiers drive past, despairing the hours of this landscape they must endure as they travel from Idaho Falls to Boise. Keep driving, folks. Keep driving. Don’t spoil my fun.

And it is fun. And lonely. And quietly beautiful.

Imagine the rolling hills of Iowa or the rolling hills of North Idaho’s Palouse. Strip the hills of soil and grasses, revealing the earth’s rocky skeleton. Now stretch and wrinkle that skeleton until the earth as far as the eye can see is a collection of cracked hummocks pocked with dark, shallow caves. Now bring in a little soil, only a dusting. And bring back plants, but not the grass. Green the rocks with lichen. Plant moss in the cracks where moisture is trapped. Throw in clumps of grass, toss in random Utah junipers, scatter in some sagebrush. Conceal in the foliage and rock the high desert’s Easter eggs: prickly pear cactus, Indian paintbrush, primrose, blue bunch wheatgrass, delicate, reedy wildflowers of purple, blue, red, and yellow. Next allow the scuttling insects: small, rock-hard spiders, ants. Yes, ticks. And then the beasts: lizards to watch with obsidian eyes as humans cross the lava. Birds to perch and sing and fly. Mice and voles to scramble into the dark places of the rock. Add a few larger ones (though I’ve never seen them there, others have): mule deer, rabbits, coyotes, bobcats. Many, many winged or furred wanderers.

Hells Half Acre is their home. And some humans dare call it ugly.

For the novice, there are two ways to get into Hell’s Half Acre. At the Interstate-15 rest area north of Blackfoot, the BLM has put in a series of looped asphalt trails through the lava, posting the trail with signs detailing the area’s geography, botany, and wildlife. The trails are worth a stop if you’re traveling through the area, but they’re not exactly getting you off the beaten path. For that, head west of Idaho Falls on U.S. Highway 20, just past mile marker 287, and follow the signs to the “Lava Trail” south of the highway.

Here you’ll find two trails, but trails only in the loosest sense. The first is a one-mile loop through the lava where you scramble up cliffs, down ramps, and over cracks, following a series of poles dipped in blue paint and jammed into the rock. At the halfway point, you’ll start seeing poles tipped with orange paint. These lead you on an eight-mile round trip journey to the vent from which the lava flowed. As I had two young boys with me, I could not take this route, but plan on taking it the next time I visit.

My boys and I loved this hike, because it's more than just a little walk. There's a lot of clambering and climbing, but on rocks where footholds abound. There were only a few moments where we found trouble -- and it all came form my oldest boy trying to find the shortest route to the next blue-tipped pole. At one point he climbed a steep hill, jutting from the plain at about a 30 degree angle. I climbed up to rescue him, and stayed up there for a few minutes just gazing out over the broken rocks and cracks from horizon to horizon. Off in the ditance you cen see the Eastern Butte, one of three enormous volcanoes that burst from the plain thousands of years ago.

I had one rather surreal moment out there. Leaping from rock to rock over a series of cracks, I ended up on a narrow strip of rock perched between two cracks in the Earth. As I stood there, I noticed the rock I was standing on -- a slab about as big as a queen mattress, but twice as thick, was loose. By jiggling my feet, I could wiggle the rock like a massive loose tooth.

Lava started flowing at Hell’s Half Acre itself about 5,200 years ago when a mile-long vent, paralleling the Great Rift that helped form Craters of the Moon National Monument six miles further westward, opened in the earth’s crust. Lava flowed off and on in this area over about a thousand years, forming a flow of about 220 square miles. The sticky, viscous lava flowed in two forms: the smooth, ropy pahoehoe lava resembling thick syrup poured on a pancake, and the blockier A’a lava, which flows smooth and slow as molasses until it cools and the pressure from beneath lessened. As the lava cooled, it buckled and cracked, forming craters where lava lakes remained bubbling at 2,000 degrees Farenheit, flowing into lava tubes left behind underground today.

Getting there: From Idaho Falls, travel west on U.S. Highway 20 to mile marker 287. Travel another third of a mile and watch for a dirt road to the south, with signs pointing to the “Lava Trail.” Travel south on the dirt road about another third of a mile to the trail head, which features a portable toilet, picnic area, and fire pit.

When to go: Definitely go in the spring, preferably after most of the snow has melted. This is when the area’s greenery will be at its finest, including its abundant wildflowers. We went on a cloudy day with temperatures in the 50s, and experienced no discomfort. The trail is open from spring through fall, but the longer you wait, the hotter it’ll get.

What to bring: Sturdy shoes. Only about the first 25 yards of the trail is on dirt, the rest of the time you’ll be climbing ramps, leaping over cracks, and scaling short cliffs. Bring a camera, binoculars, and some water. If you take the eight mile trail out to the vent, water and food is a must, because you’ll be out there a while. You don’t gain a lot in elevation, but there are a lot of ups and downs. Bring a flashlight to explore caves at the vent area.

What to know: Our walk on the mile-long loop took us about an hour and a half, but we had two pairs of short legs. Adults on their own could expect to complete the loop in under an hour. But remember, there’s no rush. After you’ve hiked for a bit, sit on a rock and enjoy the silence. You might be rewarded by spotting a bit of wildlife if you sit still long enough.

While you’re in the neighborhood: 17-Mile Cave, an easily accessible lava tube, is only a few miles further west. Read more about it here.