Hike to the ISU Columns

I finished up all of the projects I wanted to work on today a little early so I decided to take a short hike. From my office window I have a good view of the ISU columns. On the middle/east side of campus there is a pretty big hill with four large Greek columns at the top. Apparently, in the 1960s someone was having a funeral home here in Pocatello torn down. Apparently, these columns were part of the funeral home and rather than get rid of them, he donated them to ISU. After spending a little while trying to figure out where on campus they should go, they finally decided to put them on top of Red Hill. Some time during the move process the top of one of them broke, so now there are three connected columns and one stand alone one.

View from my office window.

It was a pretty nice hike. Probably just a mile each way from my office with a good 360 view of Pocatello from the top.

North view from the columns. You can see the stadium on the right and my office building is right in front of it.

This is the south view from the columns. The place where I am staying is about two miles past where you see the highway.

This is the west view. You can see some of campus right below and then the old downtown area of Pocatello.


There was a trail that continued on along the ridge farther south so I hiked for probably about another mile. It was a nice way to break up my day. On the hike I saw a lot of dragonflies and crickets, but then also three hawks and a lizard. I even saw a wild cactus - I guess this part of Idaho maybe does count as a desert.

The cactus is right in the middle of the picture.

Maybe next week I will try to do a tougher day long hike up one of the surrounding mountains.