Idaho's high desert hides a rugged chasm most travellers have never heard of. Wolverine Canyon, sitting northeast of the small city of Blackfoot in the state's southeast, offers the kind of dramatic canyon scenery people usually road-trip to Arizona for — just with yellowish-gray limestone walls instead of red sandstone, and almost nobody else around. Where the Grand Canyon pulls roughly 4.5 million visitors a year according to the National Park Service, this BLM-managed stretch of wilderness barely registers: a couple dozen Google Maps reviews and no formal visitor infrastructure at all.

The appeal here is partly the freedom. There are no marked, maintained trails — the land is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, which permits hiking but doesn't designate routes, so visitors basically roam at will. The longest crowdsourced option on Hiking Project is a 16.3-mile out-and-back following gravel Wolverine Road from the Blackfoot area toward the canyon's narrow, cliff-lined section known as the Narrows. Short on time or energy? 40 Horse Cave, a small cave set into the hillside above the road, is reachable via a steep shale scramble of under 0.2 miles, with a slightly longer but gentler alternative path. There's even a creek at the base of the trail where you can cool off.

Camping is similarly rough-edged. Dispersed sites and camper pull-offs dot the gravel road, some with fire rings, but there's no running water or electricity — bring everything you need, plus plenty of water, and download offline maps before you lose signal. Mountain biking and wildlife viewing round out the options, with sagebrush plateaus and foothills framing the views.

The logistics are friendlier than the landscape suggests. Blackfoot is about 30 minutes away by car, Pocatello roughly an hour, and even Boise is a manageable four-hour drive. If sleeping without a tap nearby sounds like too much roughing it, Blackfoot itself makes a comfortable base, with a reputation for solid comfort food and conventional lodging.

For travellers who love the idea of the American Southwest's big canyon country but not the crowds, shuttle buses and permit lotteries, Wolverine Canyon is the sort of place that rewards self-sufficiency: wild geology, backcountry hiking and a campsite to yourself, all within an hour of a real town.