My brother-in-law is visiting from Highland, Illinois this
week. Since he lives in the flatlands,
he is pretty interested in the mountains and canyons that we have around
here. My Mother-In-Law asked if I would
take him up Hell’s Canyon on a jet boat tour this weekend.
Jeez, twist my arm.
So on Saturday we headed down through Lewiston, Idaho to the
launch at Heller Bar, and ran almost 40 miles upriver past Dug Bar to Dry
Creek. In the process we navigated a
dozen Class II whitewater rapids, two Class III, and one smaller Class IV.
The Class IV was actually on the Salmon River, a tributary
to the Snake that dumps into the Snake at mile 22 of the trip. It is called “Eye of the Needle.” Here is a Youtube of someone else running it
at calmer water levels than we ran it this weekend.
Needless to say, Mrs. Goober and her mother were clawing
holes in the armrests of their seats as we navigated some of this stuff. Brother-in –law was enjoying himself
thoroughly. As is typical, because of
the technical nature of piloting a boat through the rocks, riffles, and rapids
of this section of river, I took exactly zero pictures. Mother-in law took some, but I haven’t gotten
any of them yet. I’ll post them when I
get them.
Saw some more Bighorn Sheep, which B.I.L. thought was pretty
cool. We also stopped at the Cache CreekHistoric Ranch for a picnic lunch. This
Ranch is run by the National Park Service, who employs retired folks for one
month stints to get boated or flown in to run the check station and maintain
the grounds.
No fishing, because the Steelhead runs are pretty much over,
the Chinook Salmon runs haven’t gotten far enough upriver yet to be in the
canyon (hence, the reason that I drove to Portland two weekends ago to fish
them there on the lower river), and even though the sturgeon and catfish
fishery is in full swing, my passengers were not interested in fishing so much
as they just wanted to go site seeing.
Good times were had by all.
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