Running the River Both Ways
In February, in the Successful article I shared that I’d drawn a Main Salmon float permit…put in date, Wednesday, June 25. Don’t ask me why I picked that date. It was a combination of: look at the snowpack at the end of January, check the five-year hydrograph for the Corn Creek launch site that comes with the permit application, stir the tea leaves and spit into the wind. So, people were asked, plans were made, people accepted, people backed out, plans were changed, etc, etc. Lordy, the gas prices! I figured it was about a 1,300 mile round trip, and the transportation costs were going to be significantly higher than in the past. I queried shuttle companies for their rates, scribbled estimates, scratched my head. Then somebody, I think it was Paco, said “Have you looked into a jet boat shuttle?” Hmm, hadn’t thought of it. It would only be a drive of 155 miles from Lewiston up to the Vinegar Creek boat ramp. And, by jetting up from Vinegar to the Corn Creek put in, we’d get to see the river twice! To the phone again. Our group size was oscillating between 11 and 13, with 4 to 5 boats. The only company I found with a boat large enough to accommodate us was Arctic Creek Lodge & Tours. I contacted Jim O’Connor at Arctic Creek and hmm, he listed the big boat’s capacity as “13 people and 3 rafts or 5,000 pounds.” So, I put on the pressure for people to commit and we ended up with 11 people. Back to Jim, “Can you take 11 people and four rafts, with maybe a small fifth one?” He pondered and said, “Well, it depends on the Budweiser factor. If you go light, we can make it happen.” So the deal was made and the deposit sent off. Things progressed swimmingly until a couple of weeks before the launch date. This year the Salmon River drainage had a super snowpack, well over 100% of the 30-year average. Plus, we had a much colder than normal spring. Around May 20, the river peaked at 90,000 cfs (on the Whitebird gauge, downstream from Riggins, Idaho), then dropped pretty steadily to 35,000 by June 14. Ah, but then we finally got some hot weather, and…lo and behold, there was still a lot of snow in them thar hills. In less than a week, the river had climbed back up to 50,000 cfs and I got a call from Jim. He said that when the Whitebird gauge is above about 42,000 cfs, Chittam Rapid, right above Vinegar, gets difficult to run in a heavily loaded jet boat. He really wanted to take us, but if the river continued to stay high, it might not be safe to run Chittam. Gads, only about a week to go and we don’t know if we’re going to be able to jet boat up or have to scramble to find a road shuttle! I asked Jim if, since the problem rapid was right there at Vinegar, would it be possible to take half our load up above the rapid, drop it off and make a second run with the other half. He said he’d also been thinking of that as an option. We decided to make Saturday, the 21st, our go/no-go date. Of course, while all this is going on, I’m phoning and emailing the rest of the crew to keep them up-to-date. Everybody’s scurrying around putting the final touches to boats, food, looking for dog sitters, etc. We had a great crew. Also from NRS was Ashley, who works with the Marketing Team, takes most of the NRS product photos you see in the catalog and on the website – dedicated kayaker and rafter. If you’re ever in the NRS Retail store here in Moscow, you’ll see the excellent displays put together by Paco; creativity generated by his many years in the retail outdoor industry. He’s also been a raft guide, he’s a great cook and it’s always fun when he’s involved. Tyler was then working as Wholesale Support Coordinator (he’s now moving into a wholesale rep position). He’s spent many seasons as a raft guide and is the best IK boater I’ve ever seen. My dear friends, and longtime boating companions, Dave and Liz McConnell, were in, along with her son, Robert, and his friend, Richard, both of whom I’ve boated with multiple times. Elton and Codi Jones are more favorite folk. Elton turned 15 on my first Grand Canyon trip back in 1988 and I’ve relaxed on many a river beach with him and his dad, Alan. And my boon buddy, Arthur, was up from Albuquerque for the trip. We’ve shared many adventures over many a year. Dave, Liz, Elton, Codi and Arthur also shared the 2006 Grand Canyon trip. Back to the shuttle. On Friday the 20th, Jim called me. “I think I’ve got it figured out. We’ll do what we talked about; take half the load at a time. We can do it regardless of the flow. I’m going down early to check it out, make some practice runs. See you there on the 24th.” Great, decision made, we’re gonna run the river both ways! Loaded the trailer on the evening of the 23rd. Five rafts – my E-150, Dave’s 16’ AIRE, Elton’s 1983 NRS Sport II (which he bought from me), a company use E-161 and Dave’s other boat, a little 12’ Achilles. Being typical rafters, we were pretty disorganized, didn’t get everything on the trailer that night. So, in spite of the plan to get an early start on the 24th, we didn’t.
Tori, the lead summer intern manning the launch site, gave us our pre-trip dos-and-don’ts talk and we were on our way. The Corn Creek ramp gauge was at 5.9 feet, which translates to a bit over 20,000 cfs, which the Forest Service rates as a “high” river level.
The first rapid you come to is 1.6 miles below Corn Creek. Killum is a Class II in lower water, but has some bodacious waves at this level. Robert, who tends to live on the edge, chose to hole-dive…and flipped the raft, putting the two of them in the drink. Arthur also took a swim. We were off to a good start. Other rapids followed; some washed out, some bigger than normal for this time of year. On down to camp in good time. We were averaging five-six miles per hour, without having to row much. Motor Campsite, so named for a large engine left there by early placer miners, is large and comfortable. Elton and Codi served up a delicious meal of grilled bite-size steak and shrimp, with all the trimmings.
Down past Magpie Campsite, one of my favorites. Bailey Rapid is nearly always good and that day was no exception. Upper Allison Campsite was home for the night. Sandy, lots of driftwood from the earlier high water. Arthur made up a mean shrimp Creole, plus we added salad, French bread, appetizers, wine, clam diggers and brownies for dessert. Not a hungry belly left on the beach.
Whiplash Rapid is only big in high water; I’d never seen it bigger. We ran it without scouting and did fine. At Buckskin Bill’s place we had lunch, bought ice cream and candy bars and toured Bill’s museum and outbuildings. For those not familiar with Bill’s story: he was born Sylvan Ambrose Hart and came to the Salmon River in 1931. He became renowned for the many items he built for himself, including hand crafted firearms. He died in 1980. I never got to see him at his river home but did visit with him at a country fair, where he had a number of his handicrafts. He was quite a character. Tyler and Arthur were running all the big stuff in the IKs. Making it look easy. The Main is pool and drop, with lots of flattish sections that in lower water can be trying in an IK or a raft for that matter, especially with upstream winds. These higher flows helped take the work out of it for all of us. Now we were looking for a layover day campsite. There is a great camp in the South Fork of the Salmon, just upstream from the mouth. At some flows you can slip boats up along the near bank far enough to put you in a position to row hard against the current and ferry across to a large, shady, sandy camp. We pulled around the cliff at the river mouth, to be greeted by a huge whirlpool. At one time we had four rafts circulating in it, going round and round! We finally all caught the upstream swirl and took a look at the possibilities. Tyler and Arthur took their IKs further up and made it across. After assessing the situation, we decided it was going to be a lot of work and possibly iffy to cross the river with our loaded rafts. Plus, we knew there was a large group behind us; they had pulled into Buckskin Bill’s as we were leaving. So, we pushed on – destination, Indian Creek Bar. I’d done a number of layovers there, visiting Greg and Sue. The camp is good, the creek is a pleasant refuge on a hot day and it’s interesting to hike the three miles to the ranch. Campsites are pretty sparse below Indian, so I stopped at Swimming Hole Camp and hiked up as far as I could to try and see if there was already a group camped at Indian. But, I couldn’t see around the bend. As I walked back, a lone raft with a couple of people aboard came down the river. “Crap, it’s probably the lead boat of that large group!”
Great! We cruised on down and Indian Creek Bar it was. We’d made over 25 miles that day, hardly breaking a sweat. We quickly got the kitchen, River Wing, tents and chairs set up. Ashley served up a fine meal of gumbo, Greek salad, and angel food cake, strawberries and whipped topping for dessert. We shared our food with Mike and Beth and they shared their pulled pork and Dutch oven dessert with us. Sitting around the campfire that night, we got to know our neighbors. Mike and I found we were contemporaries, both having started rafting in the 70s. He’s done a lot more boating in the Southwest. We all swapped tales and had lots of laughs. Beth has come only relatively recently to rafting and this was her first high, cold water trip. Seems Mike got a bit close to the hole in Elkhorn and ended up dump trucking them both into the drink. Beth was still a tad sensitive about that.
We floated about three miles down from there to Lower Bull Creek and called it camp. It was early afternoon, so we had lots of time to set up and enjoy the day. Robert and Richard fixed burgers, Dave and Liz did Dutch oven Au Gratin Potatoes and cherry cake. Oh, you don’t lose weight on one of these trips!
Dried Meat Rapid had some kick to it. Then we got to Chittam. The river had dropped about 10,000 cfs since we jet boated up, but Chittam was still ferocious. I misjudged the right hand pull and put the E-150 up on its side – exciting! Of all of us, Paco had the prettiest run. Sad to lose Ashley, Paco, Tyler and Liz at Vinegar. The three NRS folks had to return to work and Liz had an ill sister that she needed to check up on. We loaded out their personal gear and Arthur took over the oars on the E-161. We said our goodbyes and pushed off downriver. Originally, we’d planned to float all the way out on the Salmon to the Snake River. However, the water was still too high. Slide Rapid, in the lower five miles of the Salmon is a bodacious raft-flipper above about 20,000 cfs and the level was still in the mid-30s at Whitebird. The returning crew drove our two shuttle vehicles to the Pine Bar Boat Launch, the lowest easily accessible spot on the river. Vinegar Rapid was fun, then we got into crazy, swirling currents that made forward progress difficult. We were looking for Cable Hot Springs, an interesting one a good hike up from the river. None of us had ever been there, but we had directions from Tyler, “Look for some rock work, pull in and the trail starts near there.” I found some rock work; we pulled in and decided to eat lunch first before taking the hike. We settled in among some rocks in the shade. Richard came up and leaned over to catch himself against a big boulder, in preparation for sitting down against it. As his hand touched the rock, he looked and two feet from the hand was a rattlesnake, well camouflaged on the mottled boulder! Fortunately, it was not aggressive. It didn’t coil, simply slowly crawled away. It took quite a while before Richard’s pulse returned to normal. After lunch we attempted to find the trail. I forged ahead and ripped my legs up in the blackberry brambles on faint trails, but found no clear path. We decided we were in the wrong spot, and sure enough, further down we found another rock wall and a trail visible up the slope. By that time, the thought of hiking a mile up a hot, exposed hillside to soak in a hot pool had lost any appeal, so we kept on trucking. Ruby Rapid was big and wild; then came Lake Creek. Hmm, should we scout it? To heck with it. Approaching it, the standing wave in left center loomed bigger and bigger. Right of it or left? At the last moment, I chose left. Slipped past the huge hole, then pulled back to the center and rode out the wave train. By the time I could get out of the current, I was near a small beach on river right. A lady was sitting in a camp chair, near a small dome tent, on the upper end of the beach. I pulled in further down the beach, she walked down and we chatted. I was tired and it was camptime. I asked if she’d mind if we camped on the far end of her beach. She said she was going into Riggins to spend the night with her son, so have at it. Cool, we had our camp. It was a narrow strip of sand, but big enough for our reduced group. We gathered, set up Roll-A-Tables and sweltered in the heat. Cold beer tasted good. The sky was overcast with black clouds, looking very threatening. We debated whether it would rain, some said yea, some said nay. Some started to set up tents and we dug for raingear.
We hadn’t planned a meal for this night, so we dug out leftovers. We mixed together shrimp Creole, breakfast casserole and gumbo. That, leftover sandwich bread and other bits pulled out of coolers and dry boxes made a pretty darn good meal. We got a fire going but we were tired, so we didn’t make a late night of it. Tuesday morning was a leisurely get-up. We discovered a couple of cantaloupes we’d forgotten about; they made a nice breakfast addition. It was a lazy float down to the town of Riggins. Heard lots of bird songs – the liquid trill of a meadowlark, the first canyon wren I’d heard on the trip. Made me realize that with the higher water flow, we’d never really been in a quiet section of the river corridor before now. Even the flatter sections had a background sound of rushing water. Riggins is a real river town. Years ago the sawmill was the big employer. After it burned, they looked for other ways to keep the town alive and discovered the tourist appeal of whitewater rafting and fishing for steelhead and salmon. Several outfitters have their headquarters there, offering half and full-day trips and multiday excursions down the Lower Salmon. We pulled in by the public boat launch and went shopping for more groceries, ice and propane. Just downstream from Riggins, you pass under the US 95 Highway Bridge, which is the local dividing line between Mountain and Pacific Time Zones. The rapid there is officially called Race Creek, but most call it “Time Zone.” The waves there were fun, though not as big as in lower water. Some of the other rapids were washed out but Chair Creek Rapid had some big waves, with punch. Here, the river runs primarily along the highway and we hoped to find a campsite away from the traffic. Down below Blackhawk Rapid (big water at this flow), the river makes a couple of big horseshoe bends away from the road. Our search for a campsite there was frustrating. Many nice, newer homes have been built there, for the same reason we wanted to camp in the area – beautiful scenery, no highway noise. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit being pissed that all the nice beaches have outstanding views of picture windows, decks and hot tubs. The only other beaches were small, mosquito-infested and swampy. We finally settled for a nice sandy, multilevel beach, with a great view…of the highway. Ah, well, such is life. We settled in and consoled ourselves with a meal of driftwood fire seared steaks (with Bill Parks’ marinade recipe of soy sauce, orange juice and minced garlic), corn on the cob, salad and cookies.
The texts on the signs would read, “Observe a group of Idaho rafters (who refer to themselves as ‘dirtbag boaters’) as they camp along the banks of the beautiful, historic Salmon River. Watch as they go about their daily chores: fixing breakfast and drinking coffee…lots of coffee. The scratching you observe is not merely a sign of an underprivileged upbringing; it is also a product of poor hygiene, insect bites, sunburn and sand irritation. Even when they seem to be inactive, sitting around and drinking canned beverages, important things are taking place – stories are being told, retold and embellished. Rapids are being dissected and the merits of various brands of canned beverages are being debated. Show respect when they are using their environmentally correct toilet (which they euphemistically call a ‘groover’); no cat calls or whistles, please. For more information on rafting our great rivers, go to www.enjoyidahothengohome.com.” That was good for a half-hour of fun; it doesn’t take much to amuse us. There was a degree of wildness, even in our public campsite. A small herd of deer came down to drink just upstream. Bird calls reached us during traffic lulls. It was a nice relaxing evening of stories told, retold, etc. Morning was leisurely, drinking coffee and waving at honking motorists. Drifting downriver we passed a large heron rookery; it’s always amazing to see those long, lanky birds perched in a tree. Again, the quiet of the gently flowing river let the multitude of bird songs through. Down to the BLM Hammer Creek Launch Site, where we picked up the self-issue permit required for floating the Lower Salmon. Now we were away from the highway and once again into the roadless beauty of the Salmon. We floated down only a couple of miles to a nice big sandy beach and were in camp before noon. The River Wing went up for shade against the hot sun. Though it had warmed up since we started, the river was chilly. It still felt good to jump in for a quick cool down. The water had gotten muddy, as a result of the rain we had a couple of days ago. The toilet got set up on the upstream end of the beach. Then it was announced that a rattlesnake was also calling that spot home and folks should be careful when heeding the call. That made some uncomfortable, so the toilet was moved to the other end of the beach, where the upstream snake’s cousin probably lives, but oh well. A lazy afternoon of chasing the River Wing shade, reading, napping, snacking and luncheon sandwiches (courtesy of Liz overestimating the amount of sandwich material). Showers were taken, using sun warmed river water. Still mourning the recent death of one of my heroes, George Carlin, I forced the group to listen to a couple of his comedy albums. Musical accompaniment included the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack, some Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, Tori Amos. We did eventually get hungry again. Some delicious juicy brats, baked beans, plus finishing off the leftover Au Gratin potatoes and breakfast casserole. We also made a stab at finishing off the remaining frosty beverages, and it was a merry evening.
The last morning no one was in a hurry; we only had eight miles to go. On the water we had a fun float. We surprised a magnificent buck deer drinking at the river’s edge. Wright Way Rapid had some big waves in it, but Demon’s Drop and Pine Bar were pretty washed out. We were at the take out before noon. For me, it’s always a bit sad to come to the end of a trip. There are so many individual things I like about a river trip: the camaraderie…on and off the water, ever changing beautiful scenery, the thrill of the rapids, the melting away of everyday concerns, the spiritual recharging that comes from being outdoors. That, and so much more combined together is a soul satisfying gumbo of an experience. It’s sad to leave it. But the good memories remain, giving me the energy and drive to get ready for the next trip. So, I’ll slog through the cleaning up from this trip and the planning and packing for the next one. Those parts aren’t much fun, but the boating makes it all worth it! Hope to see you on the water! Clyde |
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