Middle Fork of the Salmon - River of No Return

It's been almost a year since one of my best-ever family and friends river trips. Why did I tarry so long to tell the tale?

Looking upstream from one of our camps on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. 

Truth. I am a slow and deliberate writer and easily distracted. Also, I've been busy, occupied with extensive travels and interests. If I don't die first, I have a few dozen posts in the works.

More to the point, I couldn't figure out how to describe this trip without dissolving into maternal pride and boasting. Warning: there will be maternal pride and boasting. 

I'll just get to it, finally, ...No more lame excuses.

About this time in 2018, PK and I along with six dear friends were feverishly prepping for a week-long adventure down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, AKA River of No Return, in Idaho's Frank Church Wilderness.

We launched on July 12, 2018, with the masses.
 It was a tense scene with commercial and private groups vying for position to descend the steep log slide to the river.


Ferron Mayfield, in his elfin persona, blew bubbles as tempers roiled at the put-in. He soon joined the work crews.

Having our son Chris join the trip at the VERY LAST MINUTE — like a half hour before we put on the river — was a momentous surprise. Without him, PK and I might still be stuck on rocks. And in my opinion, Chris' river and wilderness expertise and humble, gentle spirit enriched the experience for all. 

As a camp activity, Chris studied the Indonesian language and the cannibal activity and other oddities in Papua New Guinea. A few days following our trip he launched into a kayaking expedition on a wild Papua river. Along the way, he and his companions were "held" for four days by still primitive human beings. He has yet to tell the whole story.

THE MFS RIVER 

The Middle Fork of the Salmon is rated the best wilderness whitewater river trip in the West. If not in the entire USA. Maybe the world. The Universe?  It deserves superlatives.

It's a permit-only experience. Would-be floaters apply for limited permits in January and in February learn whether they won the lottery. PK and I have NEVER gotten a permit, but have been involved in several trips because we own a raft, camping gear, and possess rowing expertise. That would be Paul. With me in back-up position. Plus we are kinda fun people. And nice.

Twenty or so boats are ready to roll on down the river at the Boundary Creek put-in. Most are commercial outfitters. We will add our four private rafts and a kayak to the mix. 


The river's crystalline water, natural hot springs, dramatic gorges, sandy beach camps, and pristine cutthroat trout habitat combine to create a slam-bam-for-the-whole-damn-fam wilderness experience. The river is part of the 2.3 million-acre Frank Church Wilderness area.

Except for the Boundary Creek put-in and a few historic ranches downstream, the river corridor is without electronic connectivity or roads. Hallelujah! 

The river descends 3000 feet in elevation through 100 miles of Class III-IV rapids and stunning scenery. It starts small - like a creek - through the alpine forest then gathers speed and power from tributaries before ripping through a rugged high desert to merge with the Main Salmon River. 

On Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon, July 2018. Chris Korbulic, Mary Korbulic, Paul Korbulic, Gail Frank, Jenna Stanke, Jerry Marmon (behind Jenna). Front, Sue Orris, John Jessup, Ferron Mayfield, Curry the Worried Dog.

Chris Korbulic, photo credit

THE RIVER EXPERIENCE

Our group gathers to position one of our rafts for its launch down the steep log-slide to the river. Most of the weight is in the back.

Did I say steep? The camera angle distorts it,

but not by much. That's Ferron on the oars,
helping another group launch.

These boaters were with another private group.
The river level was on the edge of being too
shallow for rafts. Rocks are sticking out all
over the place, and dodging them with a fully
loaded boat requires skill and luck.

Paul is an experienced whitewater rafter; this was his eighth time rowing the MFS, but luck was not with him. Like others in our group, we got stuck a few times. I took this photo from the front of our raft as Chris plunged over the slippery uneven river bottom to pull us free.


Jenna and Jerry Marmon, on their first trip down the MFS, encountered exposed rock as we did. Chris is waiting on river right, but intervention was not required.


Downriver, John Jessup rows and Gail Frank assists. Their roles reversed from time to time. 


Ferron Mayfield and Sue Orris along with worried Curry enjoy rapid after rapid mile after mile.

Our first camp was idyllic. They all were. Campsites are reserved at the put-in with trip leaders negotiating for favorites sites. Reserved camping eases the pressure of getting down the river to score an extra special spot. 

In a later camp, Ferron Mayfield, a whitewater rafter for decades, relaxes with Curry, the worried dog. Curry is concerned about Ferron, I think. 

Our hot spring camp the first night. Ahhhh! It's the Sheepeater Hotspring and is about a five-minute walk from camp. Paul Korbulic, John Jessup and Chris Korbulic.

Back at camp, Gail Frank, a fantastic cook who planned the menu for the entire trip, grills planked salmon over charcoal. Every single night was gourmet. We took turns cooking, and everyone pitched in on cleanup. As usual. 

Had we launched a few days later, we may have

been forced to put in here, avoiding the by-

then impassable shallow rocky section we'd just scraped through. This launch area requires
flying in on bush planes. Expensive and scary!

             Every camp was ideal, but I favored this one.

Paul enjoyed the fishing, catching about a dozen cutthroats 
on dry flies during the trip.

Gail worked hard and caught a nice fish. Catch and release, of course. 

Cooking partners Jenna and Gail exult over a
sumptuous Dutch oven lasagne.

Sue Orris basks in Sunflower hot spring overlooking the river. However, the four or five pools above the river are scorching. We all ended up in the "shower" at river level. Sunflower is the most popular of numerous hot springs along the river.

Chris Korbulic  (AKA Charles Atlas) is in heaven with Sunflower hot springs massaging his shoulders. Ahhhh. We all had our turns. 

That's me in my unfashionable outfit reacting to HOT.

      Ferron and Paul enjoying a philosophical moment.

Casual relaxed interludes such as this rank high in defining private wilderness river trips. 

Mornings are usually early with lots of coffee and a hearty breakfast. Packing and reloading rafts become the routine.

There she goes again! Beans, rice, and chicken

with all the Mexican condiments to accompany.

Gail is amazing. Want to hire her for a trip? Sorry, 

she's busy building for Habitat for Humanity.

Perhaps you can tell that river trips, for me, are not as much about whitewater thrills as they are about the wilderness itself. After the put-in cluster, we saw few people but lots of wilderness wonders - and hours of in-the-water relaxing. 

Jenna and Jerry prep their raft for another day on the river. 

Accustomed to sleeping on rocks and rough surfaces, Chris snoozes on a log. Sleeping like a log came to mind.


Another hot spring, this one named Loon Creek for the snow-melt creek that runs alongside it. Where's Chris?
He's in the frigid snow-melt creek, more interested in cold therapy than hot. Curry is a fool for anybody who might toss water into his mouth. Life is strange. I kinda get it about the dog. But icy water with a natural hot spring nearby? No.


Later we stopped at one of the historic ranches, that now has a nifty convenience store with ice, beer, sunscreen, tee shirts, and toothbrushes. One of the horses along the trail appeared to be dining on tasty bird tidbits.


Chris relieved Paul at the oars when river action was quiet. 

A mule train carries supplies through our lunch stop en route to a historic ranch/lodge, a throwback to the days of yore. Wilderness transports visitors to a different time. The absence of Internet connectivity alone makes some fidget and yearn, and others move toward grateful acceptance of a semblance of what life might have been like 100 years ago.

Jenna relaxes after another day of thrilling rapids. We have only one more day on the river, which by this time has warmed for comfortable swimming. 

Sue and Ferron enjoy yet another tender moment.

Our final camp. Nobody is quite ready for the trip to end. 

Close to where the Middle Fork of the Salmon
merges with the Main Salmon, Paul checks his
watch. It is beer time? No. Because the gnarliest 
rapid of the trip is coming right up on the Main 
Salmon about a mile before takeout.

John Jessup flirts with a big flip hole while Gail
contemplates her last will and testament.

Jenna makes it look ho-hum. In a few minutes, we'll be scrambling to take out just as we struggled to put in.


It's sad how the mood changes when you're in a big rush and other boaters are awaiting their turns. Then we're in our vehicles transitioning back home, to jobs, and for us lucky ones, on to further travels.  

The river experience recedes, but the glow lingers as we. prepare for the next chapter of the summer of 2018.

No one is traveling to a more exotic (or dangerous) place than Chris, and maybe no one appreciated this trip as much as he did. Although we all loved our time together.

Upon his return from Papua New Guinea, Chris posted this photo of Paul and me on Instagram and warmed our loving grateful hearts.

Posts about other river trips, including one about when I gave them up. 

Seven Days in Canada - Road Trip Notes 2015

July 9, 2015 

North Dakota between Minot and the Canadian border was rolling, green and blustery. Oil and grain operations exist side by side, and, and with typical North Dakota fury, strong winds whipped up "potholes", as small bodies of water are called here. Shale oil and gas extraction continue into Saskatchewan. A Canadian guy working the border told me, with pride, that "North Dakota uses fracking and we don't!" Not quite the case, it turns out. Fracking is as common and controversial in Canada as it is in the USA.

A fracking site. (Screen grab.)

When we entered Canada from North Dakota the morning of June 11 we were among few tourists heading into Saskatchewan. The stern customs officer confiscated a dozen eggs due to a virulent bird-flu outbreak in Minnesota, from whence we'd come, and questioned us in detail about whether we were carrying firearms. We are not among the 30 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, who say they own a gun, and we passed into the country without hassle.

Conversely, when we returned to the USA via a small border crossing in Grand Forks, B.C., the customs people were keen on all things pharmaceutical. We speculated that some Canadians, living with strict gun control, might be itching for an AK-47 or two. And that US citizens with dozens of over-priced prescriptions prefer to buy them where they cost half of what Big Pharma gets away with in the USA. Oh yeah, Canada has price controls for prescription drugs. What a concept!

Saskatchewan and Alberta, along the Trans Canada Highway, are mostly flat and featureless. Our strategy was to get to the great national parks, Banff and Jasper, ASAP and with as little pain as possible. The distance between the border at Portal, ND, and Canmore, Alberta, our starting point for park exploration, was 670 miles. Google maps said we should figure on driving for 10 hours and 25 minutes.

Google maps doesn't know that we rarely drive more than five hours at a crack. Why should we? We're retired! We took two days.

Also, full disclosure, on this trip we slept in our Four-Wheel pop-up camper 10 nights, in motels 8 nights, and with friends or family, 11 nights. On long driving days we usually motel it, especially if the weather is threatening as it was our first two days in Canada. By the time we reached Swift Current, SA, a late- afternoon downpour was underway as we bolted with our small travel bags into a hotel.

You don't need a Four-Wheel Camper to enjoy Canada. We never once on this 30-day trip used it for its intended off-road purposes. Perhaps on a longer trip we would have. But it was cool to hang out with the tents in campgrounds because our truck with its pop-up camper often requires less space than a car hauling a family with two tents. Plus we're accustomed to the tent-camping lifestyle having practiced it for several decades. We feel at home with tent pitchers and campfire makers and people who brush their teeth in the woods and are not opposed to hiding behind a bush for "number one."

Compared to a tent, our deluxe-on-the-inside tiny camper is the Taj Mahal and we are rich. Compared with behemoth RVs, which we are occasionally forced to park amidst, we are paupers to be pitied. If they don't run their generators at night, we won't crank up our sound system. Or hide behind a bush.

PK is dishing up a dinner I prepped mostly at home and froze, reheated in a super-good nonstick pan. The Four-wheel Camper has a two-burner stove, ample refrigerator with freezer, queen-sized bed, furnace, radio and iPod plug-in, and plenty of storage. However, there's no room to dance.

On this two-day drive, and on other "let's just get there" days on this month-long road trip, we were entertained and often enthralled by three books on CD: The Round House by Louise Erdrich, 5 stars; The Tiger, a True Story of Vengeance and Survival, 5-stars; Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult, 3.5 stars.

Good books make the miles fly, and we both enjoy being whisked into worlds created by spoken words. Nothing wrong with  Lone Wolf, by the way. Like every Picoult book I've read,  the end of each chapter makes you have to start the next, and so on, the very definition of "page turner." It's just that the other two books were deeper and more thought provoking, and with Erdrich especially, beautifully crafted. Although John Vaillant,  author of The Tiger, a True Story of Vengeance and Survival, provided a riveting narrative about a little-known part of eastern Russia where tigers and people still co-exist, sometimes with bad results on both sides. The book provides fascinating history about this little-known part of Russia, but takes place in modern times. Highly recommended.

Back to the road. Along with listening to recorded books, PK and I amused ourselves by creating a list of things we learned or saw on this trip, May 24 to June 23, 2015, especially regarding Canada.

The best time to visit Banff and Jasper and British Columbia may be when we were there, early to mid-June, before summer vacation begins. Crowds were sparse, for the most part, at popular attractions. (A couple exceptions will be described in a coming post.)
Many campgrounds in Banff and Jasper were closed, but we had no problem getting sites. However, at our last Canadian campsite Thursday, June 18, the camp host informed us that starting the next day - when school let out - every site was reserved until school resumed the second week in September.

Forget the cell phone, unless you have someone you really need to keep in touch with.  We tried getting one of our phones online via two cell service providers. The first failed completely and refunded our money. After four days and several frustrating hours with the second provider, the phone got service. Why bother with a cell phone? We didn't need to make calls. I used it in a campground once to create a wifi hotspot. However, son Chris Korbulic was on a massive first descent on an island off Papua, New Guinea, and we were desperate, as parents tend to be, to hear what the hell was going on. We did get a few calming updates via the phone— he lived another day!—but wifi is widely available and we could have managed. But mostly, I'm afraid we're addicted to a pleasant voice telling us that in a quarter mile we should turn left onto highway such and such, and that, a right turn onto a specific road is coming up, and we've reached our destination when we've reached it.

August 2016 update: During our recent road trip to Vancouver Island, we paid Verizon $2 a day for service. Great deal. Verizon also provides this service for Mexico.

We learned that it is actually possible to navigate with printed maps! 

Many campgrounds in B.C. and in Banff/Jasper have dishwashing sinks outside the restrooms, often with hot water. Such a great idea.

Rental RVs are a huge trend. It seemed that every third of fourth RV was a Canadream, or a CruiseCanada, and occasionally, CruiseAmerica. Smart way to travel, it seems.

There we are on the right next to a couple of nearly identical rental RVs. 

Grizzly bears are abundant in Banff and Jasper and warnings are common. However. They are not the fear-inducing alarm-bell ringing warnings we saw and heard in the USA's Glacier National Park when we visited in August 2010. True, a couple people had been killed by grizzlies near Yellowstone in 2010. But still. PK and I bought bear spray in Glacier ($34 each!) and turned around after about a half hour of hiking through an area we were pretty sure was rich in roaring bears just like the one in photos. Hungry for the neck. Going for the gut. Agonizing death.

Bear -scare photo in Glacier National Park, USA. Note: In
Yellowstone Park, where we spent a couple days early in the trip,
you can RENT bear spray canisters.

The spirit of the Canadian national park's grizzly bear warnings are more along the lines of protecting the bears from stupid people. In other words, Look, folks. If you provoke or surprise the bears, or tempt them with careless camping, you put them in danger because a bear that attacks people is doomed. Those are not the words used, of course, but that's what they mean. Also, in Banff (and maybe Jasper) it is illegal to hike/backpack in bear country with fewer than four people. Don't be stupid is the underlying message.

The few "rest areas" we used along the Trans Canada Highway in Alberta were filthy urine-soaked stinking messes. No flush toilets. Wet floors. No sinks. One just east of Calgary, I could not bring myself to use. Other areas we visited in Canada offered restrooms in the true sense of the word.

Just west of Calgary, Alberta, and not far from our destination the second night out of North Dakota,  we got a hint of magnificent things to come. We stayed that night in Canmore, a lovely tourist town just outside of Banff, and the next morning, we launched into the best of the Canadian Rockies. Blog with more photos, fewer words, coming soon.

One thing can be said for sure about these two Canadian national parks; the postcard shots are everywhere and the scenery stretches over days on the road. On hiking trails, it could go on for months. Maybe a lifetime.