Priest Lake, ID

Location Overview
Priest Lake Airstrip (67S) is a public-use, U.S. Forest Service-owned airstrip located a few miles south of the small community of Nordman, in Bonner County in the Idaho Panhandle. It sits on the west side of Priest Lake, though the lake itself is a couple of miles away rather than immediately adjacent to the runway. The field occupies about 40 acres at an elevation of roughly 2,611 feet, in forested, mountainous terrain typical of the Selkirk range that frames the lake.

Camping & Recreation
There are no camping facilities at the airstrip itself, and it has no tiedowns and is unmaintained, marked only by a windsock. That said, the strip serves as a handy gateway to the broader Priest Lake recreation area — several lodges and resorts in nearby Nordman and Priest Lake will pick up flying guests directly at the airstrip. Nearby Priest Lake State Park offers more developed camping, boating, and lake access across its Dickensheet, Indian Creek, and Lionhead units, and the surrounding national forest land provides hiking, fishing, and huckleberry picking for visitors who fly in and want to explore on foot or by vehicle.

Notes & Warnings The single runway, 14/32, is roughly 4,400 feet long and surfaced in turf and gravel, generally adequate for typical general aviation aircraft, though pilots should treat it as a backcountry strip rather than a paved field. It has no winter maintenance, so it's unsuitable for snow-season operations, and there's a Forest Service helipad on the field, along with a weather station pilots are asked not to park aircraft within 100 feet of. As with other Idaho backcountry strips, density altitude, surrounding trees, and variable canyon/lake winds are worth respecting; nearby similar lake-adjacent Idaho strips have seen accidents tied to high density altitude and misjudged tailwind takeoffs, so an early-morning arrival/departure and a careful check of wind and aircraft performance margins are good practice here as well.

History Priest
Lake Airstrip traces its roots to the U.S. Forest Service's long history of using backcountry airstrips to support fire management, ranger access, and administration of the surrounding national forest lands in Idaho's rugged Panhandle region. Like many of the roughly 100 backcountry strips scattered across Idaho, it grew out of an era - beginning nearly a century ago - when miners, loggers, homesteaders, and forest managers relied on small aircraft to reach remote areas otherwise cut off by terrain. Today it remains part of the Idaho Airstrip Network, a cooperative effort among the Forest Service, state aeronautics division, and volunteer aviation groups such as the Idaho Aviation Association that maintain and preserve these strips as recreational and access points, with Priest Lake valued by visiting pilots as a scenic stop near one of the state's most picturesque lakes.