Middle Fork of the Salmon River — 8 days in Idaho’s wilderness
July 13—20, 2022 | Olympus 35 SP + Kodak ColorPlus 200 + transcriptions from my journal
July 13, 2022 — Day 1 — Boundary Creek Camp, Pre-Launch
First to arrive at camp. Reading Cloud Atlas, enjoying a bit of quiet before the rest of crew arrives. Tent elastic mishap—glad I brought my hammock. Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. A bucketlist wilderness.
Rental gear - “ash/trash”. River is “gin-clear”. Salmon jumping up waterfalls. Boat garnish.
Huckleberry beer. Flask o‘ Jameson. Handed “summer honey” ale… triple fisting! Nice to sit—where ‘to sit’ is the activity. the intention. Sunny eve—not a cloud in the sky. A good book, beer, some trees, blue skies. Scents of earth & ponderosa. Dirt under my fingernails.
First night at camp… lots to look forward to. Tomorrow—15 miles of high concentration of rapids. Gonna be one hell of an intro. Diving in.
July 14, 2022 — Day 2 — Boundary Creek to Lake Creek — 14.9 miles
Awoke around 7. Chilly. Feels good. Coffee concentrate making everyone jittery pre-launch. Feeling pretty calm with my jasmine tea.
Half of crew hasn’t shone up yet—we’ll see if they join, we launch NLT 1:00 no matter who shows.
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Launched around 2… wow one hell of a first day! Finally at camp—9 PM. Rough start. Rocky middle. Started on K+D’s oar boat, switched to cataraft with A+G. Major flip. Swam a long while. Rode bottom of raft for quite a ride, several more rapids, before we could find a spot to upright.
This is definitely the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
Came upon Velvet Falls w/out much notice. Class IV. Majorly auto-surfed + rode for a good solid 2 minutes. Stuck. Insane. Mildly terrifying. Managed to say in boat entire time.
Exhausted, scraped, battered, not too badly. Now sitting round fire w/ book, beer, maybe a joint, warming my feet. Golden light on distance ridges. Sun will set soon.
Burger, salad, chips, beer, think I’m gonna sleep excellent tonight.
July 15, 2022 — Day 3 — Lake Creek Camp to Marble Creek Right — 17.4 miles
Rain this morning—scrambled to go grab my drying clothes + bring inside tent. No idea what time it is no way to tell. Slept a little more. Second time awoke to two little paws, curious—prairie dog? Small marmot? V. cute. Ground squirrel I think. Cowboy coffee round the fire.
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~4 miles in, stopping for lunch. 16.5 miles to [illegible] today. (total) Easier than yesterday, fewer named rapids but one is Pistol Creek, Class IV. I do not want to flip again. R2ing w G.
Trail mix has coalesced into trail chunks. No complaints from me.
Breeze right now @ our lunch spot + shade sitting against the ponderosa. Slowly getting out of the burn area into more live-ish wilderness, though looks like trunk Ponderosa burned a bit, but tough + happy and flourishing at the top.
Squirrel / chipmunk got into my trail mix less than 2 feet from my lap while I was costin thought / journaling. Ha! Sneaky lil bastard.
Onward we float. Will check back in later.
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Switched to B’s boat (B basically our TL-by-default). A blast. An easy afternoon on the river. Ripples ripples ruffles lays... Pistol River not nearly as scary as was built / hyped up to be. No carnage for our crew!
Beer. Weed. Lil bit of whitewater. Sun. Camp tonight at Marble Creek right. Beautiful sight—yellow tent just near river, tucked away. Sandy beach. Hangin round fire pan with crew after a pleasant day all around. Oh yeah + stopped to jump off cliffs.
Turkey veg soup + salad for dinner, cookies for dessert. Sore, burnt, bruised, tired, so so happy. Wine in my coffee mug. Wine glass for coffee-flavored wine and wine-flavored coffee.
Think of how much gear we carry. Think I am the one who brought the least amount of shit on this trip. But even still. I think of bears, deer, squirrels… Maybe aside from clever food caches what "gear" (luggage) do they carry?
Why do we carry so much?
Why are we so different? Is it "in" our "nature" to be so different? Have we strayed our "natural" path? If we have, is it then "unnatural" if we’ve simply followed our if-not-natural-then-what path?
July 16, 2022 — Day 4 — Marble Creek Right to Shelf Camp — 15.8 miles
Slept well. So sore. Rest of camp still asleep. Not sure what time it is. Don’t want to crawl out of yellow tent just yet. Think I see smoke by the beach + someone by table but I know others are still in tents. It’s chilly + I don’t feel like moving.
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Lunch somewhere post Jackass (fantastic name for a rapid). Sammie w/ hummus, tabbouleh, tofu, tzatziki. Jerky. Delicious. Windy here on this sandy beach.
Stopped @ a hot spring earlier, soaked only my feet. Too hot on a hot day.
On B’s boat again today with K. Saw some magpies, talked birds, kestrels. Smallest bird of prey.
4 beers in. Tailwind, downriver. Watched gaggle of geese flying. Skimming almost—upriver. Stopped to see pictographs ("Caveman Dicks") + artifacts. Mostly flatwater now, writing on river.
Partly cloudy. Enjoying the sometimes shade. No more big rapids today so taking it easy. Even easier.
Camping @ Shelf tonight. Fajitas for dinner. Also whiskey. Maybe I’ll get myself a ducky. (Drunk impulsive I-want-a-boat-thought)
Camp chairs: "The Great Sloucher"
Favorite sound in the world: wind thru trees. Is there anything more peaceful?
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Late midnight, maybe. After fire’s long out. A + I had long talk by the river. Heart to heart. No stars tonight—no cloud in the sky. A melancholy night.
The world is so vast and holds so much—so much joy, so much sadness, so much turmoil, so much exultation—a difficult thing to grasp. There is space for it all. As if infinite—even on this tiny planet.
(Semi-intoxicated) meditating today on heart like a river.
I feel so full, so filled, yet I see all the same all the spots that remain empty—if not my own. I know there is enough to go around. It just isn’t being distributed—disseminated properly. Injustice — unfairness.
Feel at times too lucky. Too blessed. What have I done to warrant such abundance?
Perhaps not productive thought.
There is worth/value in the life of every magpie, every ground squirrel, every ponderosa pine, every grove… I am no better nor no worse. We are one.
It’s all I want to be.
July 17, 2022 — Day 5 — Shelf Camp to Trail Camp — 16.9 miles
Dawn walk to Loon Creek hot spring with crew. 2.5 miles each way. A gift from the earth. To soak our bare bodies in her nourishing waters.
Passed many flowers. Fireweed. At breakfast (burritos + coffee) saw a river otter! Listening to 3 magpies chattering in the pines above. Considering the soul of a tree.
Forgot to mention last night’s game of beercan baseball. Our team lost—but that’s okay.
“Look at the size of that tree!!!!” —Flandy
Bear got into some of our food early this morning. Paw prints on the blue boat. Heard reports of a bear here at Shelf last week—hope they don’t have to put it down. Becomes a “nuisance bear”.
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Later — Back at Loon Creek with entire crew. Too hot to sit in hot spring but sitting in little pool that’s halfway hot, halfway river cold. Smoked a bit.
Teva tan looking fuckin’ great. Toenails so dirty. So freeing being out here.
Feel so at ease. Feel safe here.
There are good people.
This is good wilderness.
Stopped to befriend a few of the (pack) horses at Loon Creek Ranch. Stop at “little store” for goodies—huckleberry ice cream. Top notch. “Hit the spot.” Met an adorable dog and 3 kittens. My heart!
Impressed shopkeep with memorized card number. Had to wait for them to turn on generator to process payment.
5 bighorn sheep across the river. Actually think 7—at least 8. @ Hospital Bar. Hummus, tabbouleh, cucumber, tomato falafel wrap. Jerky. Fruit snacks. Cloudy + windy right now.
B just built a message out of pebbles. I think (I bet) it’s there for his dad. He passed away a while back. The last time B did this river, he was with his father. I bet it’s hard to be here again, see these same places.
Tappan Falls (Class IV) — no carnage in the river.
F twisted ankle. Nearly lost B’s helmet. F kinda just being an ass. Drama. So B runs us into a rock and F falls out (post-twisted ankle). Karma in action, lol. Brought on swift by B.
Camp @ Trail today. Layover tomorrow. Gettin’ cozy.
Scrape count:
Cuts on left shin (two separate occasions)
Bruises on both shins
Sunburn on tops of thighs
Bruise on left arm, can’t remember cause
Cut on left foot
Cut on right pinky toe (made worse rubbing against Tevas)
Giant ass bruise while chasing my shoe + trying to grab B’s raft
Wine tonight + Cheez-Its... with a spork. Round the fire. Fresh wood—“smell the jive.”
Think really highly of B. We’ve spent quite a bit of time together, much of it in silence, floating. Really respect him.
Stars are beautiful tonight.
K made for us in the dutch oven, peach cobbler w/ whiskey + whip cream. Oh my god we are truly eating like royalty on this trip. Top notch.
July 18, 2022 — Day 6 — Layover at Trail Camp — 0 miles
Flapjacks eggs bacon green tea. Slept in, cozy, slept great. This site is gorgeous. So glad we’re staying 2 nights.
Planted myself in the shade of a giant ponderosa to read, write, ponder. Two long naps. V lethargic. But happy. Spotted a kestrel. Disco ball night.
Active practice of faith + trust, a river trip. Faith that things will end up ok. Practice in repetition. Repeated approach of these rapids, the anticipation—fear—all the scouting and prep you can do but the rest is simble subjugation of the self to the river. Its endless power, raging rolling rapids. Getting out of each ok—swimming, maybe. Flipping, maybe. Smiling + laughing… almost always.
HOT PINK FIASCO. Juggling w bocce balls nails lookin gorgeous. Everything is pink. The Trail is the thing!
Early morning. ~22 miles to cover tomorrow. sleep well.
July 19, 2022 — Day 7 — Trail to Parrot Placer — 21.2 miles
Early start—off by 9 or 9:30. What. A Day.
B flipped—first time he’s ever flipped that boat—wrapped around a rock, "spicy line”, M + F both got recycled in the hydraulic. M had misplaced her helmet so she wasn’t wearing one, held up her arms around her head. Also somehow managed to hold onto her beer the entire time. (!) So much gear got dumped. We recovered most but lost 2 chairs, quite a bit of food… lots of beer.
Thankfully I had made the decision to try M’s ducky that morning…! I’m lucky. K flipped in her ducky too. Several more flips (duckys) throughout day. Insane.
Switched to B’s boat before the even crazier rapids of the day.
Saw a bear! Black bear cub right by the river. Got some great photos of ‘em. Also saw: bighorn sheep, grouses, what else…
Stopped @ Flying B Ranch for water. Got a pin for the board.
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Made it to camp before sundown, thankfully. ~22 miles today—somehow made good time. Incredible landscape here, this canyon. Truly gorgeous.
Last night at camp. I love these people so much.
Thinking about truth & authenticity. Compassion. The same kind which was the reason W and I split. Being true to one self. True to one’s own heart above all else.
What you believe is what you believe. Who you are is who you are. I want nothing but to support that.
A heart like a river.
Wide enough. Vast enough.
Continuous. Infinite.
Always there.
There is room.
There is trust.
Thinking also about talks last night—
Values, principles, convictions.
B’s: honor, integrity, commitment.
My response: love, trust, compassion? I think my heart is my greatest strength.
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(In reference to tomorrow): No spicy lines.
July 20, 2022 — Day 8 — Parrot Placer to Cache Bar — 13.7 miles
Last day on the river — 13 miles to go. Biggest whitewater on this river yet. 3 or 4 Class V’s, like 5 Class III’s, just as many Class II’s. Yee-haw!
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Later, 9:30 p.m.-ish in Missoula
Another incredible day—epic rapids. Couple of flips (mostly duckys). No major carnage except A+G, dipshit decided to run center instead of center right at Cramer. Flipped.
Drove through wildfire (Moose Fire) ~12,000 acres. Hotshot crew trucks. Helicopters overhead making water drops.
No more in, only out. Timing seems pretty fortuitous.
Surreal. Fascinating. Ash.
Dinner in Darby, Montana. Exhausted—may try to write/expound more tomorrow.
*Burger + fries, no beer.
