Well, the rest of the morning went pretty much as planned. The trolley driver, who arrived right on time at 8:10, had already been told about our mail problem -- small towns are great! He let Lois stay on with all the baggage while I got off at the post office and picked up the mail, then picked me up on the way back to the harbor. His schedule called for a short wait there, so he took us to the donut shop where we got coffee and donuts before heading for the Grayland Park and Ride. The driver of the Aberdeen bus we met there was just as friendly, calling ahead to pave the way for our transfer to an Olympia bus. We got all the way to McClary on 25 cents, and then got a 25 cent credit on our dollar fare to Olympia, pretty good bargain.
At Olympia we shifted to Greyhound ($7.50 to SEATAC) and a much different kind of driver, one mad at the world. He was friendly enough to us, but spent the whole trip cussing out other drivers, the company, and his riders. He got us to SEATAC though, about 3:15, in plenty of time to get on Horizon's 5:35 flight to Boise. That went tickety-boo, but in Boise we weren't so lucky. The 7:25 flight to Idaho Falls was full so we had a three hour wait for the last flight. It had several open seats so we were in Idaho Falls at 11:55. Sis and Paul met us at the airport and we were in bed by 12:30. A long day!
| After a little hunting we found the airport -- Lois and I had flown in there in 1981 but I couldn't remember where it was -- and before noon had all the gear unloaded in a big pile on the Salmon Air Taxi flight ramp and the shuttle team, Paul, Eleanor, and Harold, were on their way to the Cache Bar take-out. Paul had weighed everything on the bathroom scales and figured we had about 3400 pounds, close to the maximum weight which Salmon Air had told him two flights of the Brittany-Norman Islander could handle, but when the pilot showed up about 3:00 he didn't seem worried. He just took the rear three rows of seats out of the airplane and started stuffing things in. The first trip he took Ken, Kathy, and Mary, both the kayaks, and well over half the other gear. |
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The wind was gusting and our pilot had placed a rudder lock on the tail of the airplane while he was loading. I jokingly told Mary that it was her job to remind him to remove it before taxiing, never thinking that he would forget; but, as all pilots have done at one time or another, he did. As he climbed in after all passengers had been loaded and prepared to start the engines I walked out and asked him if he'd like me to remove it for him. Looking very embarrassed, he said, "Yes, please." Kord, Lois and I stood by waiting for the return of our shuttlers. They, and the airplane, showed up at about the same time as the rain. Thunder showers had been moving through the valley all afternoon but had always missed us. Not this one. We had just started loading the seats back in the plane when it hit. We quickly moved the remaining gear under the wing of the plane and ran for shelter in the hangar as the full force of the squall decended on the ramp. In seconds there was an inch of water over the tarmac, hail was bouncing off the wings of the, and our pilot got drenched as he ran to secure the doors of the airplane. In ten minutes it was gone and the sun was out again. Fortunately, most of our gear was packed in dry bags for the river so we soon had it all loaded and were on our way.
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It was about an eighty mile flight flight over the rugged and beautiful Salmon Mountain Range to our put-in at Indian Creek. No rain now, just bright sunshine and blue sky. In less than an hour we were on the ground, gently touching down on the runway after a steep dogleg approach from down river. Ken, Kathy, and Mary already had the rafts inflated and were playing in the river with the kayaks. |
| It took some doing to get everything organized and loaded in the boats this morning. Don't know how long it would have taken if it hadn't been for Ken. He seemed to have a pretty good idea of just where everything would fit. He put four of the big dry bags in the paddleboat, tied in the center between the two seats which we never used. All the other gear went on the oarboat, big cooler and kitchen box in the center, a rack of ammo boxes under the rowing seat, and the rest of the stuff tied fore and aft leaving just enough room for the oarsman to work the oars. Amazingly, it all went on, 3400 lbs of gear and people on two 14 foot rafts. | 
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We were off before 10:00; Ken on the oarboat, Kathy and Mary in the kayaks, Kord, Harold, Sis, Paul, Lois, and I in the paddle boat. That didn't last long. Ken soon assigned his dad to the oarboat and came over to give we novices a paddling lesson. The trick here is to become a team, each paddler responding to the commands of the "Captain" who is on the aft starboard paddle and whose primary task is to steer the boat and avoid the rocks. We traded off captaining this first day and only hit a few. It's hard to get your voice adjusted to the roar of the rapids and be heard when you yell, "Forward!", "Back!", "Right turn!", etc. As a paddler in the front it's hard to concentrate on the Captain's command with the river coming at you. Paul had a bit of a wild experience when he dropped the oarboat in a hole at Marble Creek Rapids. It was pinned to the drop and filled with water and no amount of rowing on his part could get it loose. We stopped, Ken ran back along the bank with a throw rope which he threw to Paul, and with several of us pulling we got him out of the hole. Other than having the cooler half full of water, no damage done. All-in-all it went pretty well though and we felt pretty good about our first day on the river.
We had lunch at Sunflower Flat (Mile 32.6), a neat place with a hot water fall and a hot spring pool on the bluff above the river in which Paul soaked for a while. Our camp for the evening was at Upper Jackass (Mile 37.3), on the right side of the river just below Jackass Rapids, an exciting piece of water. Team 3 did dinner, salmon loaf cooked in the dutch oven -- 15 charcoal briquettes underneath and ten on top did the job nicely. It was a pretty evening and I procrastinated in putting up the tent fly, just didn't seem necessary, but finally did after Mary put her's up. I was glad I did when at three in the morning the rain started. Lois and I had put our tent on a slight slope below some brush and stayed dry but Paul and Eleanor had put theirs in a depression and had a small lake in the middle of their tent.
| By morning the sun was out but the rain showers continued throughout the day. It wasn't cold though, and we got wetter from the river than we did from the rain. Kathy took a turn at the oarboat and Ken went to the kayak. We stopped for lunch at another hot springs by the Whitey Cox Camp (Mile 46.2). This one had a big pool in which we all lounged, soaking in the warm water. In the afternoon I had a crack at the oarboat with Paul riding along as coach. That's a different kind of floating. You do most of your rowing facing downstream backing away from obstacles in your path. I did fairly well, only running over a couple of rocks, one of which did make quite a bang as the floorboards made contact. | 
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| Camp for the night was at Cow Creek (Mile 49.9), a really nice camp
site surrounded by rock pinnacles and a potty with a fabulous view perched
high on the crest of a hill next to one of them. Some of the crew hiked
about a mile and a half up to Loon Creek and another hot springs for a
soak in another pool. Paul of course was with them. He's had two soakings
and two river rinsings today. Ought to be pretty clean.
Our team's day to cook today -- Ken made the blueberry hotcakes for breakfast and Lois whomped up a salad while I broiled steaks for dinner. We're sure eating well. |
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Drier and warmer this morning; no rain in the night. Ken comes back to the paddle boat in anticipation of our first Class IV rapid at Tappan Falls. We stopped at the last hot springs on the middle fork, located at Hospital Bar. This is a neat spring with the pool formed with rocks layed by boaters right on the river's edge. You can pick your temperature by moving rocks around to mix more or less river water with the hot spring water. |
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The Tappan rapids are a series of four pretty good drops: Tappan I (Mile 57.5 Class III), Tappan Falls (Mile 57.9 Class IV), Tappan II (Mile 58.2 Class III), and Tappan III (Mile 58.4 Class III-). We scouted the first two, watched some commercial outfitters take boats over Tappan Falls, and took lots of pictures of Ken, Kathy, and Mary going over. When it came to our turn Ken did the captaining and put us pretty close to the best run of the hour. |
The camp this evening was at Camas Creek (Mile 59.9) and it was one of the best we've had. Paul and Eleanor and we picked a spot close to the kitchen area under a tree with some kind of berries on it. As we were setting up our tents several grouse which had evidently been feeding in and under the tree started protesting our invasion. One actually landed on top of McCarthy's tent. Camas creek is a pretty big creek, bigger than a lot of rivers, so Ken decided that he'd like to run it. He and some of the others carried his kayak about a half mile upstream and he rode it back down. Not as good as it looked, pretty much just a rock dodging exercise. Toward evening another private group stopped by to get water from the creek and we got to talking. They were from Ketchum, Oregon, and New Zealand and had put in at Boundry Creek, the upper entry point, after having most of their gear flown in to Indian Creek. Their leader, who has floated the middle fork six times, said the upper river was very rough. He said they even had to use a come-along in one place to get one of their boats off the rocks. It's just as well that we didn't try it even though the upper section is supposed to be awfully pretty.
Sis, Paul, and Harold fixed ham and scolloped potatoes in the dutch oven for dinner. Lots of good cheese left for me on the foil after it was done. No weight loosing this trip in spite of the hard work of paddling.
Camp at Wilson Creek -- they're getting better and better. This one with a wide, sandy beach, a towering Ponderosa Pine and very nice tent sites. Wilson creek is smaller than Camas but just as pretty. Here I borrowed Ken's kayak for a while and got to doing so good that I was showing off and dunked myself. The new kayaks are sure nice, a big step above our homemade ones.
Kord and the girls on dinner tonight -- stir fry as good as any I've had. After dinner we walked down river for a ways to see if we could find a salt lick described in our guide book. Didn't see much but found the next morning that we hadn't gone quite far enough.
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We stopped at Rattlesnake
Creek and walked,all but Lois that is -- she won't mess with anything pertaining
to rattlesnakes, up to Rattlesnake Cave (Mile 74.4), a big undercut in
the granite with pictographs painted on the walls. Saw more Big Horned
Sheep today, one a big Ram with curled horns.
We had quite a few rapids today and Paul was doing great at missing all the hazards until we came to Wall Creek located between Veil Falls (Mile 80.7) and Porcupine Rapids (Mile 81.0), a rapid not even mentioned in one of our books but classed as III in the other. |
Just beyond Cliffside is Tumble Creek Camp (Mile 88.7). This one was a little tougher. We landed on rocks and had to carry all the gear up a very steep trail to the camp on a bluff fifty feet or so above the river -- hard on my old knees. It was a good camp though, big level kitchen area and lots of scenic spots to pitch our tents. More grouse in the bushes but not as aggressive as the ones at Camas Creek.
Lois, Ken and I on cooking duty today. French toast and bacon for breakfast and spaghetti for dinner. Sis had dehydrated hamburger for the spaghetti and water restored it in good shape. Pretty dang good eating I'd say. Cooler holding up in good shape -- we've still got some ice in it.
We were having so much fun that we hated to see the main Salmon river appear but there was no stopping the river. The takeout is at Cache Bar (Mile 98.7) about 3 miles downstream from the confluence of the middle fork and main, and we had several drops with bigger and bigger waves in that stretch. The last were so big that we just rode over them and didn't even take on water.
Then the fun was over. At Cache Bar they have a wide boat launch ramp and there were only a couple of groups ahead of us so we were soon on the ramp. Unload and deflate the rafts, load all the gear in the pickup again, pile the nine of us into the pickup and Cord's 4x4, and we were on our way to Salmon, forty miles away. Dinner at the Salmon River Lodge -- good food and drinks, reasonable prices -- then on to Idaho Falls. Finally got all unloaded and to bed about 9:30, pooped but feeling good.
In the afternoon Paul and I cut his monster lawn. I rode the mower while he trimmed -- first time I've been on a riding mower since I sold the ranch over twenty years ago. Great fun!
Think we've got Paul and Eleanor talked into joining us in Barkley Sound. They'll drive over and meet us there next week -- weather permitting. That should be fun.