Mountains & Rivers

“Forlorn Hope”

July 4, 2009

By Norm Klobetanz

 Happy 4^th of July everyone. Lately I’ve been thinking about this story, again, so I thought why not tell it on our day for celebrating our independence.

   On the early morning of June 17, 1877, 106 cavalry men and 11 citizen volunteers descended into White Bird Canyon. (Sources vary on the exact number of participants.)  Their mission was to quell an Indian uprising.  This was the real thing, not some romantic, glorified hero story found in novels and movies.  

The citizen volunteers where pioneers, settlers, who primarily made their living ranching and farming.  They were by necessity rugged and capable as their lifestyle dictated, perhaps more than our modern sensibilities give them credit, but they weren’t professional gunmen either as we too often imagine them as integral with the mythos of the West.  The enlisted men were a diverse mix of Americans and immigrants with mostly limited training as soldiers.  Some of the officers had extensive experience from the Civil War and previous Indian fights, but still there weren’t many John Waynes or Clint Eastwoods—they, of course, are only found in the movies.

1877 was a mere 122 years ago, basically just two life times.  Those of us who live here now would probably be surprised at the number of people who lived in this part of the country then.  Reading the historical accounts it seems that miners, ranchers, and farmers where quite common on the prairie, along the Salmon River, and at mountain gold diggings.  The towns, however, were small or nonexistent.  The story of these people and the Nez Perce Indians is complex and fascinating and a relative stone’s throw back in history.

The Nez Perce Indians were a culturally unified group of wide ranging tribes or bands.  They roamed and lived on the lower Salmon; lower Snake; Clearwater Rivers; and the side drainages, mountains, and prairies associated with them.  Gold miners and settlers continued to press inroads and eventually some Nez Perce signed away a significant portion of the reservation.  It was like neighbors living ten houses down the street sold your home to a shopping mall developer and you couldn’t do anything about it.  Indeed the army came and threatened you to move out or else.  But, hey, down the street, they did have some backyards for you to move to. 

I think if you take an honest look at history, people are very much a product of their times.  It is probably not realistic to think that the forward surge and dominance of a technologically advanced society could have been stopped, just as it probably cannot be stopped today.  Injustice is a corner stone of history.  It just should have been done with more honor and fairness.  Today we do a little better job with these things.  Heck, at that time slavery was only recently outlawed, and it would still be another thirty-some years before women would win the right vote--one step at a time, as they say.  As products of our time, most of us would agree that these were good things, while not necessarily so in 1877.

The non-treaty Nez Perce were being moved against their will from their ancestral lands onto the greatly reduced reservation, when three young “hot heads” went up the Salmon River above White bird Creek and murdered some settlers in revenge for past wrongs, murders, and, well the lose of their homeland.  The Nez Perce were famous for never having killed a white man and for saving the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but the evil genie was loose.  The chiefs could not contain all the braves and in the next days Indian marauders killed more settlers including women and children in the White Bird area.  The army sent their closest troops from Fort Lapwai to stop or hopefully contain the hostiles until more troops could arrive. 

The non-treaty Indians with all their belongings, children, wives, and grand parents were camped on White Bird Creek on the morning of June 17, 1877.  The lookouts roused the camp early and warriors mounted their horses and in small groups, not in organized military fashion, rode out to meet the advancing troops on the hills not far above their camp.

It is interesting to consider that just the previous summer, General George Armstrong Custer led an ill advised cavalry charge against a Sioux and Cheyenne encampment that proved to be much larger than he thought.  The American public was not ready for another debacle like that.  The “Indian situation” was a hot potato. In this situation approximately 70 warriors rode out against a little more than a hundred adversaries.  The Indians tried to parlay by waving a white flag.  One of the civilians would have none of it and fired on the peace party.  The battle was on.

Nothing went right for the cavalry or the volunteers and everything went right for the Indians.  A bugler was shot and killed and another had lost his bugle on the ride into the Canyon making it impossible to issue commands to the troops.   Horses and men were tired and not steady under fire, the volunteers fell back.  Out flanked and getting shot up, the soldiers began a retreat that became a panicked rout in some cases.  A running battle ensued up out of the canyon and across the prairie almost all the way to Grangeville.  The Indians fought effectively, showed good horsemanship under fire, and were good marksman.  They demonstrated here and throughout the battles to come that summer that they were formidable foes and fought bravely and well earning the highest respect as fighters from the soldiers that pursued them.  Thirty-four soldiers were killed that day during the White Bird Battle.  Four were reported wounded, two soldiers and two civilians.  There were no reported Indian deaths; they claim only three were wounded.

Like injustice war is another corner stone of history.  The Nez Perce War that summer and early fall proceeded to be a running battle over 1,500 miles through Idaho, the newly minted Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and much of Montana.  There are many books about the Nez Perce and the war.  I encourage you to explore them because this story contains nuance; pathos; and, yes, heroism on both sides.  It’s the story of the real West.

I read a fair number of books on the subject in the 1980’s, but last summer my interest in the Nez Perce story was rekindled—especially for the battle at White Bird.  I was asked to bid a video production job for a group of U.S. Army officers who were going to raft with an outfitter and tour the battlefield.  They wanted the rafting and tour documented onto a DVD.

I assumed this was some sort of club or association, a group like an alumni reunion just out to play on the river and take in a local point of interest.  So I bid the job at “Riggins” prices and they almost passed on the video because they thought it too cheap and I wasn’t legit.  You see, they were from the real world and had paid $2,000 and more to have their weddings videoed.

I also was wrong in my assumption.  This group was actually the active officers of 1-37 Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.  They had not long ago completed an active tour of duty and, I think, were scheduled to go on another.  The Army was paying for this—you know, like a corporate retreat for professional skills development and team building—a seminar, if you will.

Well, I almost lost the job.  No one can accuse me of gouging the government and over charging for services and equipment.  The rafting outfitter assured them that I would do a good job.  (And I can say that later they did tell me the DVD was ell done, and they were happy with it.)  After landing the job I thought more about it and of course realized this was not just a reunion but a training and study course, and that I should try to document in detail their tour of the battlefield.  I mean, this was how they were going to justify, prove if you will, that their trip to Riggins was legit.  I should point out that during the tour the officers spent some time discussing the tactics on how the civilian volunteers were used and how they performed during the battle.  The context here was for them to consider strategies for if they were deployed with foreign citizen fighters or soldiers—as in Iraq or Afghanistan I’m assuming!  (Good luck and thanks, boys.  Here’s to a happy fourth for you.)

I made my wife, JK, go with me on the battlefield tour.  She videoed the presentation, comments, and questions up close while I shot scenery, battlefield pans, group shots, and hiking from one historical marker to another.  The Hike is a solid mile and a half, and the trail is steep in places though it actually is mellow terrain for the Salmon River Canyon.  In 1965 the White Bird Battlefield became part of the Nez Perce Historic Park that is made up of 38 sites.  Our tour guide was a National Park Ranger from Spalding, Idaho, where the main office and museum for the historical park is located.  The historical Nez Perce photo at the end of this article is courtesy of the Park.  They granted me use of some photos for my DVD the Selway Journal, A Boaters Guide to the Selway River.

Editing the video of the tour was very involved because of using two cameras and piecing together the audio to make sense and to capture the story and discussion of the battle.  The project was definitely under bid.  In any case, even though the tour was on a July morning, it was still very hot.  The battlefield isn’t in Hells Canyon, but it is right next door.  This can be one of the hottest places along the Salmon River.  I grew up in Pennsylvania and I like to do my hiking in the “woods” as we say.  Well, the same typically holds true for me here, but the winter and spring snow has most of our trails blocked.  The Rapid River Trail has become everyone’s favorite low altitude and therefore often snow free tail.  But it dawned on me last winter, with snow far down the canyon sides, a father and son asked me while I was guiding them in my drift boat if I knew of a local place they could hike.  Why of course, I told them they should hike the White Bird Battlefield.

It is a self guided tour and starts just up the road for the town of White Bird.  There are

“interpretive waysides” along the trail.   These sign boards include colorful drawings, renditions portraying scenes from the battle, and there are write-ups explaining how the battle progressed.  It is easy for the hiker to imagine that June day in 1877.  It is actually pretty cool stuff.  Interestingly if you explore the history in detail you will run into differing accounts and discrepancies (as is true with most history).  Part of the fun is to try and figure out what scenario is the most accurate.

After we vidoed the tour last summer I reread a couple books about the Nez Perce.  One I took from my shelf was Forlorn Hope, the Battle of White Bird Canyon and the Beginning of the Nez Perce war, by John D. McDermott (Caxton Press, Caldwell, Idaho).  In Chapter 12, “The reason Why,” the author quotes Lt. Gen. Philip Sheriden from a 1878 comment regarding the U.S. Army having a vast territory to cover in the West:  “No other nation…would have attempted reduction of those wild tribes…the whole force deployed and scattered over this enormous region…never numbered more than 14,000…The consequence was that every engagement was a forlorn hope...”

Later in the chapter the author, McDermott, wrote, “The Battle of White Bird Canyon had several results.”  One was that, “It gave the victors a forlorn hope, as it turned out, and it continued a struggle for freedom that, however noble, brought suffering and death to those who participated in it.”

Mountains and Rivers:  Pelicans and Other Birds

June 26, 2009

By Norm Klobetanz

JK, my wife, shot some pelicans the other day.  She was up river chasing rafters.  The river is still high enough that Lake Creek Rapids was the best place to get the money shots.  Usually, unless the rafters are spaced wrongly, we can shot them in Ruby Rapid first.  They are a little far away and it can be hard to get good face shots.  Then we drop down ¼ mile to Lake Creek Rapid.  We can go out on the bridge and get good action shots and face shots up close.  If we’ve learned one thing, face shots are important for sales.  However, if people are cold or the guide or clients don’t want to risk going for the gusto, they go around the big stuff and we don’t get good action shots.

In any case JK shot some pelicans. So far we’ve heard of only one other person seeing them and people thought he had been mistaken, but Jeannette has the pictures to prove it.  They’re white pelicans (brown pelicans seem to be salt water birds only) and they can be seen on lakes and rivers in a variety of western states, but I’ve never seen them here on the Salmon River in Idaho.  White pelicans are big with a wingspan up to nine and a half feet.  They scoop up fish with their big bills while swimming.  The Salmon River, when they were here, was fairly muddy from run off.  Hard to imagine them getting fish, but maybe they got into smolts.  Salmon and steelhead smolts migrate down river riding the spring flush trying to get out to the ocean.  I have seen them schooled and breaking the surface before.  But it doesn’t seem likely since I’ve never seen Pelicans before—they were probably just passing through.  

Years ago I saw pelicans on the Bighorn River in Montana.  For several years in late March or April when guiding was slow here, some of us would make the long drive to Fort Smith and fish the Bighorn.  The Bighorn was a world-class trout fishery and we would stay with friends who guided and managed a fly shop there.  The fishing was great, but it could also be crowded even on weekdays.  And this was before the movie A River Runs Through It came out.  I was surprised to see Pelicans there.  I grew up in Pennsylvania, and it wasn’t until going to the Bighorn that I learned they inhabited a variety of fresh water places in the west.

The pelicans made me pull my bird book form the shelf, A Field Guide to Western Birds, by Roger Tory Peterson.  I noticed inside the cover I had written my name and the date “1983”.  I bought it the second year I guided in Idaho.  In the book is a checklist to mark off the species as they are identified.  I have not kept it updated.  I quickly added a few like turkey, no less, (I’ve shot 10 or so and not with a camera), and sand hill cranes which are really cool birds that I sometimes saw when driving into the Middle Fork of the Salmon for river trips.  In the huge remote meadows of Bear Valley one or two would hop and dance out there—large, long-legged and necked--otherworldly in form and sound.  I was surprised I hadn’t checked California quail, we also call them valley quail.  I often see them in my yard as they are common here in Riggins.  They are great to watch scurry around and interact while often clucking or whiporwilling at each other.  I’ve seen cats and hawks hunt them; the quail scream an alarm.  They flush into the thick and jaggery blackberry bushes lining the other side of the irrigation ditch and hide out, twittering and tisking loudly.  It reminds me of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch from Disney’s cartoons of the Uncle Remus tales, except the quail seem more serious.

I also had not checked mountain quail in the book; they are rare and protected.  I have seen them in five or so different places not very far from Riggins and I see posters around placed by the Fish and Game asking to report sightings of them.  I always assume that other people have seen them and already reported them.  Mountain quail have a long almost straight narrow black head plume like a slightly curved sword and their throat patch is brown instead of black like a valley quail.  The valley quail has a curved head plume falling forward.  The sides of the valley quail have a scaled pattern while the mountain quail is barred, chukar like, with white and brown.  The mountain quail are native to here; I’m not sure about the valley quail.

Chukar and huns like quail are also local game birds.  They were introduced.  The huns (or Hungarian partridge or gray partridge) can be found mostly on the broad grassy slopes and benches.  Like all game birds their population cycles apparently for a variety of reasons with weather conditions at hatching and rearing being sited most often.  The literature claims that predation and hunting does not have a big effect on overall populations.  To me it seems there are very few huns right now.  Our in-town quail populations seem down too compared to five years ago when they were everywhere.

Chukars here in the Salmon River canyon are ubiquitous and our most sought game bird.  They sometimes form very large coveys.  They were introduced here in the 1930’s and have done well.  They like warm grass slopes with lots of rock outcrops, so the Salmon River is prime for them (Hells Canyon too).  They are known for doing well in very dry country.  They are distinctive looking with their black bandit’s mask like Zorro that sweeps around  to the front under its neck.  They have dark and white sidebars and orange or red legs and beak.  The very rugged and steep terrain they live in and their ability to swoop down it at Mach speed makes them infamous among hunters.  It is quite common to hear their calls, a chuc-chuck-cuck chuuckkaaar chuuckkaaar, especially greeting the dawn like a barnyard chicken.  Chukar populations are down somewhat from what they can be here.

Up in the pine forests we also have blue, spruce, and the more common rough grouse.  These birds (especially spruce grouse) sometimes act so tame they reportedly can be knocked out of a tree with a club and some of us have wondered why they haven’t died out due to predation.  After being hunted a little they can become much tougher to get.  Pennsylvania rough grouse are always a very challenging bird to hunt, flushing unexpectedly and quickly putting bush or tree between them and the hunter not to be seen again.  Our grouse like to fly into a near by tree and will often sit until you find them.  Chukar and rough grouse make excellent table fare.

I have guided summer rafters and anglers in drift boats in the fall, winter, and spring for many years in central Idaho.  Over time I’ve seen a tremendous number of birds.  One of may favorites, heard more often than seen, is the little brown canyon wren with its police whistle voice—teee teee tee tee tee-yew tee-yew tee-yew-- pearcing high and clear and whistling then dropping down the scale, cascading octave by octave then sometimes rising up again at the end—tew tew tew.  It likes to live in the rocks eating insects. 

It’s always great to see the swallows back each spring.  They’ve returned from Capistrano or where ever!  They live in colonies and swirl in groups over the river catching flying insects.  Their flying ability is marvelous—so nimble, quick, and acrobatic.  I noticed that I had three species checked in my bird book—cliff, bank, and tree swallows.  The cliff swallows build upside-down mud nests shaped like a small jug or gourd along riverside bluffs under rock overhangs or under bridges, in a colony like a bunch of condominiums.  The openings point out the side and down—don’t have to leave the nest to potty.  There is quite the flurry of activity when feeding the young, as parents come and go in a tizzy of seeming chaos, and we have wondered if a tired or confused bird ever enters the boudoir of the wrong spouse.  Hey, when floating along one’s mind can wonder—often in inane directions.  Once when small mouth bass fishing we floated into a cove with deep slow bass water that was over arched with a rock bluff covered with swallow nests.  The birds came boiling out so we kept easing down the river, but we were followed by an excited and apparently angry whirl of swallows.  It was a little like being in the eye of a tornado.  I pulled my video camera and documented it.

Water ouzels or dippers are also among my favorites.  When standing on streamside rocks they bounce or dip up and down in a nervous like dance. I’ve seen them splash around, even in frigid conditions, wading and popping under water to swim or, according to Peterson in his field guide, walk on the bottom to get insects, aquatic invertebrates, and small fish.  They have landed on my fishing rods propped in my drift boat and erratically flown close by us seemingly surprised at us sitting out on the water in their way.  They blink and their eyes flash silver.  They have a transparent membrane they can cover their eyes with while underwater.  They are a small gray round plump bird found on fast flowing mountain streams and rivers.  Their nests are huts made with moss stripped from riverside rocks. The nests have small openings on the side and are perched on small cliffside ledges four to ten feet above the rushing water below.  I have several different good video clips of these birds from the Selway River though I’ve seen them virtually everywhere on waterways in central Idaho.

Then there are the eagles including the osprey, a fish hawk.  I see osprey on the Salmon but I have not seen their distinctive nests here around Riggins.  The Selway River has many osprey and nests and is a highlight for rafters.  Of course the Selway period is a huge highlight for rafters.  Osprey nests are quite large, made out of sticks and sit atop trees, often tall dead pine or cedar snags.  They feed exclusively on fish from what I can tell, which on the Selway means beautiful wild west-slope cutthroat trout.  Once while floating on the Salmon, I saw a golden eagle dive bomb a flying osprey.  The osprey dropped the fish it was carrying in its talons (its great how they aerodynamically carry fish with the head pointing forward).  The golden eagle shot by the osprey and caught the falling fish in its talons before hitting the water.  The golden flew off with a sad osprey following behind. 

I’ve seen golden eagles virtually everywhere that I’ve traveled and floated out west.  They are common here and wonderful to watch soaring slowly on thermals, crossing the canyon high up at warp speed, and gliding along the mountainsides following the terrain with wingtips just of the ground barely missing rock bluffs and mountain mahogany bushes, obviously hunting for prey.  Logically the prey on those canyon sides would most often be chukars.  While drift boating I’ve witnessed a fair number attacks by golden eagles on chukars.  Sometimes they score and sometimes they don’t.  When the eagles double-team them success goes up.  The first eagle dives in and flushes the covey in a screaming explosion of birds, but that eagle often does not connect.  The second eagle watches from above and dials in where one of the flushed chukars lands to hide.  As Kurt Vonnegut said, “So it goes.”

I usually only see bald eagles here in the late fall, winter, and early spring.  They apparently prefer to nest more north of here.  Here they like to sit in large riverside ponderosa pines, and sometimes on the main river road above Riggins where the road is cut into the steep canyon, a 100 feet above the river, you can drive up virtually beside a bald eagle sitting in a snag between you and the river.   It often will give you a good view and picture-op--up close and personal before launching and gliding away.  One morning we sat in my drift boat pulling plugs for steelhead and watched a bald eagle high in a tree ripping a part and feeding on what seemed to be a rock pigeon (or feral pigeon), which are common along the river.  There was a very slight breeze and feathers wafted down and one of my anglers put out his hand and let a downy gray feather land on it.  There always seems to be a pecking order.  Another guide witnessed a bald eagle attack a golden eagle, and I guess the bald kicked the golden’s butt bad.  So it goes.

An older fellow dropped into our photo shop the other day with expensive looking binoculars hanging from around his neck.  He announced that he and his wife were birders and tomorrow they here going into the mountains towards the Devils to see what they could find.  But today looking over the bank, they had seen birds flitting along the river’s edge through the trees and bushes, and he wanted to know where there was a good place to access the river bank and walk along it. I explained how there really wasn’t a trail right along the bank, that is was steep and rocky and river levels varied.  Of course a person could hump up over the ridge to access the trail on the other side of Time Zone Bridge and Rapid, but that is a major task.  And they didn’t want to drive through the construction up river.  I recommended places to access the river and beaches; however, theere weren’t places to easily walk along the bank for any distances.  He thanked me and left.  I read about a survey once that categorized people into the outdoor activities they participated in.  It was an economic analysis determining how much each group or category contributed or spent.  Fishing always seems to rank high in these things, but bird watching was the number one group in this particular survey.  In all my years of being around hikers, hunters, boaters, anglers, swimmers, backpackers, ATVers, snow mobilers, skiers, and the like, I only ran into one or two folks who considered themselves a bird watcher first.  Heck, we all are bird watchers and it makes me think it really is all about how a person words the survey.  You know--the survey says, “Please check the following, all that apply.”

It is spring now and time to keep an eye out for the colorful little guys. More of them seem to travel through along the river and the mountains in the spring and early summer.  Birds such as the mountain blue bird (our state bird), Lazuli bunting (also bright blue but with cinnamon underneath), evening grosbeak, American gold finch, Bullock’s oriole, and (everyone’s favorite) the western tanager can be seen with their bright colors in our area.  The males anyway, females as usual when it comes to birds are more somber or washed out in terms of color and I struggle to identify them.

There are many more birds marked on my book’s checklist than mentioned here.  As I thumbed through it, I checked off a few more including the white pelican because of my Montana sightings.  But I’ve never seen them here on Idaho’s Salmon River--just pictures of them.

Addendum—June 29, 2009:  Low and behold I just saw pelicans.  I was driving just past the rodeo grounds and a single white pelican was flying up from the Salmon River over the water beside the Old Mill site.  I had a great view—a large white bird with black primary feathers and a big long yellow bill, slightly spoon shaped.  By the time I remembered I had a camera with me and pulled over and jumped out, the bird had circled over me and was flying away over the center of town.  Even though it was already too far I started taking pictures.  (Ya gotta like the digital for not wasting film.)  It flew straight to the far side of town against the canyon wall and started circling, climbing higher.  This hillside had been the first in the direct sun that morning and it was generating the most heat.  The bird knew where to find rising air.  It flew higher and higher circling above the horizon into the cloudless blue sky.  Suddenly I saw six more pelicans flying in single file just above Riggins coming from the north.  They too went to the same place and started circling tight to the canyon wall climbing on thermals coming off the steep hillside.  They too eventually rose into the blue sky at time forming a single file.  The last I saw them they broke from single file to again circle higher disappearing to the south up the Little Salmon River drainage.   

Mountains & Rivers:  Salmon Season

June 23, 2009

By Norm Klobetanz

It’s a cliché, but again the other day a local fisherman and I commiserated over the complexities of Idaho’s fish and game regulations.  We updated the old complaint by saying that a GPS was needed (instead of a map), but we still fell back on the old idea that one also needed to be a lawyer to interpret Idaho Fish and Game Regulations.  Salmon season was changing and new regs. were going into effect.

Admittedly the salmon season is a tough one to regulate. The season’s openings, closings, locations, and catch limits need to be flexible because of the unpredictable contingencies of the salmon run into Idaho. Heck, I’m surprised they kept such a liberal season considering the runs have not come up near what they have predicted.  They have to carefully count the wild and hatchery fish caught so as to comply with the numbers of fish allowed to Idaho sport anglers.  The Nez Perce Indians get a share, and the hatcheries need to get enough to fill their incubators with another generation of fertilized fish eggs.  The Fish and Game hire people to set up stations to measure and count the salmon caught and kept.  Also a certain percentage of wild fish are caught.  If the “take” limit on wild fish is reached the season must close.  Even though anglers release wild fish because they are a federally listed threatened species, the Feds claim that a certain percentage will die and thus the “take” concept.  The Feds allow sport anglers to in effect accidentally kill some wild fish (You can’t keep any no matter what!  All must be released.), but when that certain parentage of wild fish caught and released is reached, the fishing is shut down.  The fish are counted via a window in the fish ladder in the last dam on the Snake River before the fish enter Idaho to determine the numbers of hatchery and wild fish “take” available to Idaho anglers.

I have to admit, and I do so hesitantly because controversy is not what I am after, but I have witnessed steelhead and salmon anglers miss-handle wild fish.  Many are handled too harshly.  I think it is more ignorance than malice or disdain, but it is not that hard to net or not net wild fish and carefully handle and release them.  All that is needed is a little coaching.  It just dawned on me! I should make a proposal to the Fish and Game that they contract me to produce a video for their web site that demonstrates how to carefully catch and release salmon and steelhead.  It can’t hurt to make the pitch.

The salmon and steelhead runs into Idaho are a wonderful story and a controversial one since the dam building occurred on the Columbia, Snake, and North Fork of the Clearwater Rivers.  Our local salmon hatchery is five miles south from Riggins. It is located on Rapid River (a tributary of the Little Salmon) and is funded by the Idaho Power company as mitigation for building Hells Canyon Dam.  (A customer once asked a river guide while traveling to the launch site below the dam what the water was like after they took the electricity out of it.  No fooling.)  Idaho Power promised to build fish ladders for the fish to get over the dam, but the ladders never worked properly.  The dam ended all migration of fish up the Snake River at that point.  So we got the Rapid River Hatchery as recompense. 

Most of the fish caught locally around Riggins on the main river and on the Little Salmon are from that hatchery.  I have some good video of them capturing, spawning, and clipping fins at the trap and hatchery.  Hatchery fish have their adipose fins clipped in the hatchery when they are small fry (pun intended, actually they may be called a parr at this stage).  In any case they are clipped before they are released at about one year old to try and make the trip to the ocean.  On this journey they become what are called smolts and transform into a salt water ocean fish.  Typically a year to three years later, survivors return as much larger adults to migrate back to where they were hatched.  A clipped adipose signals a hatchery fish and can be legally kept.

The Salmon River in Idaho supports several runs of wild Pacific salmon.  There are a few fall Chinook that spawn in the main stem of the lower Salmon and a very few sockeye salmon or red salmon (all Pacific salmon have at least two names) that migrate to Redfish Lake near Stanley, Idaho.  Then we have the spring/summer Chinook (Chinook are also called kings) that this article is about.  Spring Chinook climb the Salmon River to spawn in side streams and head waters. 

These adult fish (plus jacks—immature fish under 24 inches) enter the Columbia River from the ocean in the spring (some in the summer) and migrate through five dams and reservoirs, turn up the Snake River and navigate three more dams with fish ladders, then enter Idaho.  Salmon River fish continue up the Snake from Lewiston, Idaho.  Forty miles up river, these fish then turn up the Salmon and begin climbing into the backcountry mountains to where they were hatched several years before and now where they spawn in August or September.  Some fish travel more than 900 miles from the ocean and climb over 6,000 feet in elevation.  They quit feeding upon entering fresh water and loose a full third of their body weight.  The rigors of migrating, spawning, and developing mature eggs and milt ravage the bodies and the fish die, hopefully after successfully depositing and fertilizing eggs in a gravel redd or nest dug by the female. The nest is most likely near the very spot she was hatched four years previously.  Apparently the sense of smell (and taste and memory?) leads these fish with tiny brains back to these cool mountain streams. 

It is estimated that less than 1% of Idaho smolts survive to spawn as adults.  It is usually the out migration when they are small perhaps six inches long when most die.  Adults handle the return migration much better.  Many scientists claim that the eight dams they must migrate out through is the largest reason for the decline in salmon.  I have been told by old timers that when the last few dams went in during the 1960’s it was like the proverbial straw that broke the back, the wild runs plummeted and hatcheries hustled to stop the bleeding.  Many feel, and I am certainly one, that hatchery fish are nice, but they can’t replace the wild fish.  Wild fish have more genetic diversity.  The hatchery fish are in-bread and are not as resistant to disease.  Wild fish are much more diverse in migrating habits and can more easily overcome a calamity like a Mt. Saint Helens or nasty disease. They are more robust and get “fine tuned” in an evolutionary sense to make that specific long migration to that specific remote wilderness stream to do its thing and die.  Its rotting carcass then puts nutrients from the Pacific Ocean into the bio system fertilizing the whole mountain community.

I have been asked more than once by fishing clients while guiding them, what my view was on the dam controversy.  Many fish advocates want to take out the three lower Snake River dams to save Idaho anadramous fish runs.  My answer typically is that I don’t think we as a society have the will to take the dams out except perhaps way down the road when they are worn out and not needed as much.  I propose we keep improving and implementing other things to save the runs.  I include with this buying out commercial fishing rights, habitat improvement, appropriate predator controls, water flushes, dam structural and other similar improvements.  According to recent polls most people in the Northwest are against taking the three dams out.  Many think it would be too expensive and too hard on the economy, etc.  Fish advocates have been working on the long term economic angle touting the financial benefits of a robust anadromous fish run, etc.  Salmon and steelhead used to run through downtown Boise; can you imagine if that were the case now.  (They truck extra hatchery steelhead there now for a weird put and take fishery.) Intact wild country and good salmon and steelhead runs, in my opinion, would be a very valuable commodity a hundred years from now.  In any case that is my bias.  I live here because of the mountains and rivers and the animals and fish therein.   

If regulated right, sport fishing for these fish is sustainable and will not destroy or harm the run.  After today all fishing for salmon this season will close from just below Hammer Creek on the main-stem Salmon up river to the mouth of Short Creek.  Also the Little Salmon will close. However, from the mouth of Short Creek up to the upper boat ramp at Vinegar Creek will open until the end of fishing (an hour after sunset) on June 28^th.  Fishing on the entire Little Salmon is closing at the end of the day today.  What the catch limit on the stretch from Short Creek to Vinegar Creek will be, I am not sure.  I haven’t figured it out yet—I’ve got the regs. up on the computer.

Sorry, but I am going to do it—please skip what follows if you want; I am going to give this season’s catch and possession regulations for salmon for our area.  If you want please skip a head and take my word that these regs. are tedious and—well, see again the first paragraph of this article.  For much of the season the “daily limit was 4 salmon (no more than 2 may be greater than or equal to 24 inches total length) per day. Anglers must cease fishing for salmon for the day when they retain 4 salmon or 2 salmon greater than 24 inches total length, whichever comes first.  After opening day the possession limit is 12 salmon (no more than 6 may be greater or equal to 24 inches in total length).”  I’m skipping part of the season limit description—no, please don’t thank me.  However, it continues with, “Salmon greater than or equal to 24 inches total length must be recorded on your salmon permit.  Salmon less than 24 inches total length count in the bag limit and possession limit but need not be recorded on the permit”  Last Friday, June 19^th the daily limit changed to, “…Six (6) salmon per day, none (0) of which can be greater than or equal to 24 inches, etc. (i.e. no adults can be kept).”  However, this only applies to the mainstem of the Salmon from Time Zone Bridge to Shorts Creek and the mouth of the Little Salmon about 200 yards up stream.  The rest of the previously described fishing area (see previous paragraph) has these new daily limits, “…six (6) salmon, but only one (1) can be greater than 24 inches.”  And now as I said earlier, after today, the only local water open will be from Short Creek to Vinegar.  I don’t see the daily limit posted for that.  Other season regulations are also in effect in other parts of the state and can quickly change too.

I want you to keep in mind that there are many other regulations to follow such as tackle restrictions that for example include using only barbless hooks (remember you must release wild fish), and this newby “special’ restriction:  “Fishing from any watercraft is prohibited within 30 yards of the west shoreline of the Salmon River from the Riggins City Park boat ramp upstream to a posted boundary approximately 200 yards from the mouth of the Little Salmon.”  I really do need to get a GPS!

Well, I was planning some more stuff here, but I can’t imagine that I have any readers left for this article.  Instead I’ll quickly end it.  How many salmon did I catch this year you might wonder?  None.  I did not even buy a permit nor guide a trip.  The water was too high.  The few good public bank spots are (were) elbow to elbow—combat fishing—I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Power boats can get to a few spots and they quickly dominate them.  Me, I have a drift boat.  There is very little water good for a drift boat to hold in at this season’s flows—the currents are strong and eddy lines and boils are powerful.   Maybe next year the river levels will be lower when the fish are here because not only are they fun to catch, these salmon are also really good tasting fish—honest!

Mountains and Rivers:  Bear at Low Saddle

June 18, 2008

By Norm Klobetanz

Jeannette, my wife, and I jumped in the old rig and went up to Cold Springs and Low Saddle a couple days ago.  My mission was to collect video looking into Hell’s Canyon.  Jeannette had her still camera and was looking to expand her portfolio of the area.  I have been running around these local mountains since 1982, but I have to admit I’ve never taken the Forest Service road that loops past Cold Springs, Low saddle, and Saw Pit Saddle.  I asked a friend who knows our backcountry well about getting video from high up looking into Hells Canyon and he recommended it.

If you read my previous post or as many people know anyway, Hells Canyon is considered the deepest canyon in North America.  It has very limited access for people who want to “drive out and see it.”  From Riggins, here on the Salmon River, you have a three hour drive around to Hells Canyon Dam, or a an hour and half drive up over Pittsburg Saddle to Pittsburg Landing.  (Always wondering about this name and spelling, I recently, while looking through a book about the Civil War, saw that there was a Pittsburg Landing in one of the southern states, which one I don’t remember.  Many people came west after the Civil War and that is perhaps a connection.)  Just below the dam in Oregon and our Pittsburg Landing is the put-in and take-out for most raft trips through the heart of Hells Canyon and is what we had just done over the three-day Memorial Day weekend.  If rafters go beyond this, they typically take out at Heller Bar, Washington. Technically you can drive down to Kirkwood Bar in Hells Canyon but the tow truck bill can be horrendous.  Maybe my friend with the tow truck service would like me to talk it up, but if you want to go, you can look it up yourself on maps.

In any case the other options from the Idaho side is to drive to a few places in the mountains and see part of the canyon and most likely not see all the way to the river at the bottom.  Heaven’s Gate and the look out tower just north of the peaks of the Seven Devils give a great view of our area.  It is the highest and most comprehensive view around to “just drive to.”  Just south of Riggins the road up there is a long narrow 17 miles of twist and switch back.  It is one of the last roads in the spring to clear from snowdrifts. The look out sits right on the divide of Hells Canyon and the Salmon River canyon. I have video from there already and I was looking for different views that hopefully showed some of the river at the bottom.  Getting to these places requires driving gravel and dirt Forest Service Roads and I recommend high clearance vehicles with four wheel drive.

The other day we went up Race Creek just north of Riggins and took the Bean Creek road to Iron Phone Junction and then several miles later the turn off to Cold Springs and eventually up over the top and the divide into Hell’s Canyon and the Snake River drainage.  A good map is recommended, as some signs are unclear or nonexistent.  At the top we were in sub-alpine meadows and pine and fir forests; everything was green and lush, but the explosion of wild flowers at this altitude was a week or two away.  However, where snow banks had recently melted, groups of yellow glacier lilies grew.  They are also known as dogtoothed violets.   The views looking south at the snow cloaked Seven Devils were great, while across in Oregon the long fairly level Hells Canyon rim and walls of basalt formed the western horizon.  Green grass and narrow strips of pines flowed down canyon sides towards the unseen Snake River far below.  After stopping to shoot and photograph several times we drove on and the road dropped lower into tall pines dominated by Douglas-fir and ponderosa.  At one switch back we got a nice view to shoot from but still no view of the river in the bottom.  Eventually we came to the turn to Low Saddle, a one mile dead-end road that dropped through the forest towards a swale on the big ridge we were on.  We took it but quickly came to a large ponderosa snag that had fallen blocking the road.  We grabbed our photo equipment, climbed over the ponderosa, and started hiking down the road.

We were in what is referred to as parkland with open stands of Douglas-fir and ponderosa of differing ages with shrubs like ocean spray, and long green lush grasses and herbs.  On the berm beside the road grew yellow heart-leafed arnica and little white prairie stars (woodland-star).  A fire went through two summers before but most of the trees survived. Black stumps and scarred trees were still common.  As my wife walked in front of me I tried to be cute and said we needed to keep an eye out for bears, mountain lions, and wolves.  It wasn’t much more than 60 seconds later I stopped us with a “whoa.”  We quickly scrambled with our equipment to try and photograph a black bear quartering slightly away through the open park below the road working towards thicker shrubs and trees. The bear apparently hadn’t seen us or heard us.  I was unable to get any good shots. Setting up and leveling my tripod always takes time and it has to be re-leveled every time it is moved.  A tripod is necessary when zoomed in on wildlife. The bear was hard to keep track of as it foraged into thicker cover and we lost sight of it. I moved up and down the road trying to make it out again.  Finally I decided to go for it and went back up the road trying to get in front of the bear. 

The North American Black Bear can be found throughout much of North America.  Adults can range from about 100 pounds to 800 pounds.  It seems richness of habitat is the primary reason for this wide range in size.  In Idaho our bears live in tough mountainous terrain and a 300 pounder is big.  Our bears are hunted often with dogs as are our mountain lions.  My personal theory is that we have fewer cougar and bear attacks on people compared to some places because they are hunted here.

Canada has more black bear attacks than the U.S.  This and looking at other trends back east it seems to me that as people move into bear country or as bears move back to old haunts among newer homes, incidents of attacks go up.   It only makes sense.  A quick Internet search showed a recent incident where a woman in western North Carolina got slapped by a mother black bear in the woman’s drive way.  The woman was trying to protect her dogs who where threatening the bear’s cubs.  None involved were seriously hurt.  Black bears are wild animals and they are strong, fast, and can climb trees.  And, yes, sometimes they kill people.  Historically, according to Wikipedia, a total of 54 deaths in North America can be attributed to black bear attacks.

In the Clearwater area north of us, the Idaho Fish and Game is issuing multiple bear hunting permits trying to cut their numbers back.  The elk heard there is struggling and black bears are known to eat elk calves.  My guide buddies on the Selway River relate the story how while in camp their group witnessed on a far hillside a black bear cut an elk fawn out and push it down a steep hillside not unlike a cutting horse and steer. The bear eventually cornered the fawn and killed it; the forlorn mother had followed behind and then wondered off when she realized the bear was beginning to eat her dead calf.  On Selway River trips when clients asked what large animals they could expect to see, I honestly told them, “Bears.”

I hustled up the road with video camera on the tripod.  The road curled up and around to where I hoped I could get some good video of the bear my wife and I had just spotted.  The burned black stumps and trees kept fooling me and I couldn’t see the bear.  I turned to go back down the road and heard a hiss.  My wife was down at the edge of the road plastered behind a large pine 100 feet away.  She was waving me to come while her eyes were fixed into the woods.  As I worked towards her I saw the bear; it was looking at her and slowly moving towards her.  I set up the tripod and started videoing.  The bear saw me and kept turning his head to Jeannette then back to me.  It again moved towards her and Jeannette gave another nervous hiss.  I started talking to the bear telling him that hey, we were people and he shouldn’t get too close. The bear turned and cautiously came towards me looking with its bad eyesight and sniffing with its good sense of smell.  No air movement.  It came to within perhaps 40 feet of me.  By now I was waving my hat and talking loudly telling it to stay away.  The bear did not seem to know what we were.  I picked up the tripod and quick stepped down to Jeannette.  The bear followed slowly in the woods and stopped perhaps 50 feet away.  It suddenly gave what seemed like an impatient slap on the ground with its right front paw and sat down like a dog would with a sit command and stared at us.  In unison we quick stepped down the road and when just out of sight did what you are not supposed to do—run.  Well, we half ran and half quick stepped down the road trying not to trip as we constantly were looking back.  Apparently it wasn’t following us. 

I guided sport fisherman in Alaska on the Good News River out on the edge of the Bering Sea for three seasons and I had some close encounters with coastal brown bears.  These bears can be huge and are closer than first cousins to Grizzly Bears.  I admit that a few times I was scared, real scared, but I handled it okay.  Black bears in Idaho don’t intimidate me that much.  For one they genuinely seem to be afraid of people and run like heck when they realize what you are—again referring back to my theory about hunting them, etc.  On the Good News River the natives (Yupik Eskimos) hunted brown bears.  They traveled via outboard jet sleds while hunting and because of this, I theorized, usually the sound of motors sent the bears running for cover.  Yelling and waving a hat didn’t.

I have to admit being afraid during black bear encounters in Idaho a time or two.  One was last summer; a mother and cubs became habituated to river camps on the upper Middle Fork of the Salmon and started raiding them regularly.  In my tent I felt safe one night as people were yelling and banging things to get them out of camp.  We had our food safely hung up and coolers strapped shut.  Suddenly I herd a snuffle just outside my tent and then an overwhelmingly rotten nasty smell suffused the entire inside of my tent.  I mean rank!  But the bear moved on.  Another time years ago I was horn hunting with the same good friend who recommended the Cold Spring road.  After getting back to camp one night he told me how he had treed a bear by barking like a dog.  The next day bushwhacking along looking for elk horns, I spied a brown-phased black bear coming along through the trees in my direction.  He kept coming closer and closer; getting scared I tried barking like a dog, but fear squeezed my throat and the barks came out more like mouse squeaks.  The bear kept coming as I croaked and squeaked to no avail.  He got so close I could see little gnats flying around his wet myopic eyes before he finally turned away and ambled off.

My wife and I followed the road down to Low Saddle, which was more open and grassy with fewer trees.  There surprisingly was a concrete Forest Service outhouse.  I saw no signs of camping and the grass was very tall and undisturbed around the outhouse.  We walked out to a rocky out crop and the drop-off into Hells Canyon.  The river was barely visible for a short stretch below where it bent around a cliff face known as Suicide Point.  Around the rock out cropping where we stood grew a hand full of curlleaf mountain-mahogany trees.  They were about ten feet high, gnarled and twisted—typical mountain-mahogony.  It has a very dense and dark hard wood, though not related to tropical mahoganies.  Dead it makes good coals for camp cooking, but the wood is nasty to handle and hard to break or saw--use gloves!

Somewhere in the back of my mind I sort of know there is not supposed to be mountain-mahogony in Hells Canyon, but there it was, albeit high up.  On our recent raft rip through Hells Canyon I wanted to look for it, but didn’t remember to pay close attention.   I don’t remember seeing any.  On the computer I just went through my wife’s pictures from the raft trip.  In not one picture did I make out any mahogany in Hells Canyon.  I went to a folder with Salmon River pictures and I quickly and easily found shots with mahogany on the hillsides.  Mountain mahogany is quite common on rocky hillsides and rocky points on the Salmon River system from the Middle Fork through to the Lower Salmon.  My dim memory claims that something about the acidity of the soil in Hells Canyon is not conducive to mahogany.  I found a good tree identification book in the Riggns library, Wild Trees of Idaho, by Fredric D. Johnson, University of Idaho Press.  He claims that its range extends “northward along the Snake River to about the Grand Ronde River junction.”  This would include Hells Canyon, but maybe he meant higher up and not at river level.  He also says the, “…wood is used for novelties, fuel, and recently for flutes.  Folklore has it that rustlers and bandits used mountain-mahogony wood for campfires, since it burns with so little smoke.  Many stands of mountain-mahogony were cut during the early mining days, since the wood made excellent charcoal.”

After getting our shots my wife wanted to wait longer before walking back up to the car; you know, to give the bear more time to clear out.  She asked what I would have done if the bear truly came at us.  I said I had the bark like a dog trick and a heavy tripod to swing in defense.  Suddenly she gasped—there was the bear again walking through the grass 60 feet away.  It turned towards us—I yelled and waved my hat.  It sniffed and squinted at us and kept coming.  I started barking like a dog, loud and quite dog like, I thought.  Later my wife said I should try to sound more like a hound dog. In any case the bear came closer rose up on hind legs and stared at us and then came down to all fours with another testy slap on the ground with its right paw.  We took off—it was a quick step, not really a run, honest.  The bear was black, had a white patch that made a “V” at the top of his chest.  I think he was on the smaller side, not a cub, but maybe a youngster who had never seen people before.  I didn’t notice any gnats swirling around its eyes and I could see them clearly. The last we saw him he was just standing in the road where we had just been.

Getting back to the loop road we decided to back track not seeing any vehicle tracks leading forward.  More trees could be down.  Upon driving back up to the sub-alpine meadows we ran into one of my wife’s high school girl friends, her husband, father, and three Forest Service employees. Jeannette’s friend’s family owns a ranch on the Salmon side and they were figuring out what fences needed mended on their cow grazing leases. Her friend said we could get views of the Snake River at the bottom of the canyon from Saw Pit Saddle, but that we would not have been able to go all the way through on the loop because of a rock slide that hadn’t been cleared yet.  Jeannette and I made a pact to return in a couple weeks when the sub-alpine zone is a wash in wild flowers and we will see about Saw Pit Saddle.

Addendum:  June 23, 2009--Jeannette and I drove to Saw Pit Saddle this morning for more shots into Hells Canyon.  I think I got some good scenery video with colorful wildflowers in the foreground.  We saw whitetails, mule deer including a buck in velvet, and two cow elk.  Recently I showed a friend the bear video I shot at Low Saddle.  Looking down the “tunnel” of the view finder is hard sometimes to see the details clearly.  My friend and I agree that the bear was showing aggressive behavior and was telling us that this was his area and we should get out.  It opened and closed its mouth a lot and one time pinned its ears back.  At one time it walked in a funny way with toes in, sort of strutting or swaggering, and the foot slap with brief run to the side might have been close to a false charge.  He was trying to intimidate us.  We probably were foolish to stand our ground.  I have bear spray from when I worked in Alaska, never thought I’d need it here!      

Mountains and Rivers: In Exotic Terrane

June 14, 2009

by Norm Klobetanz

Some morning soon, I’m telling myself, I should drive to Cold Springs.  As a follow up to shooting video on our Hell’s Canyon raft trip over Memorial Day weekend, I want to get “overview” video clips from high-up looking into the canyon and the Snake River.  Cold Springs is on the back side of the narrow mountainous ridge behind Riggins that separates the Salmon River and the Snake River and offers views into Hell’s Canyon.  In the future I am planning to produce a video guide of Hell’s Canyon for boaters and I am collecting video for the project.

The canyons are still relatively green and the snow drifts on the roads should be melted out of the norths by now; so driving to an overlook to video before it gets too hazy or smokey as summer days tend to be, or before I get too busy photographing rafters, or before the grasses and shrubs get brown, makes sense.  The two deepest river gorges in North America coming together here in the rugged mountain country of west central Idaho makes for a unique topographical mix of mountains, rivers, and canyons.  Idaho is blessed with a wonderful variety of topography, climates and habitats.  It is well known for its many outdoor wonders and activities. But no features are more impressive than the mountain and river country surrounding Riggins. 

The Salmon River after flowing west through the rugged granite mountains of central  Idaho suddenly at Riggins turns away to the north cutting through softer basalt rocks making a long fish hook run north and then west to then loose its identity to the Snake River in lower Hells Canyon.  Much of this eighty mile fish-hook run is through terraced topography of columnar basalt that rises into palisades, buttes, bluffs, and steep grass covered slopes that include clusters and strips of hackberry, mountain mahogany, and ponderosa pine on riverside benches and shoulders or in stream carved draws. Tight along well watered side streams are deciduous Rocky Mountain maple, cottonwoods, birches, alders, and the like.  Bushes or shrubs like serviceberry and syringa are evident on slopes that are not too southerly and don’t get too much of the summer sun.  But mostly grasses with some prickly pear cactus, goat heads, and sand burrs grow on the hot low elevation exposures.  The lower elevations in our canyons are in essence below tree line.  It is too dry and hot for trees on much of the lower slopes.  Riggins is only 1800 feet in elevation.  The boat launch site just below Hell’s Canyon Dam is 1480 feet.

Hells Canyon on the Oregon Idaho border is considered the deepest river gorge in North America, and the Salmon River gorge as it flows through central Idaho to Riggins is considered the second deepest.  The Seven Devils Mountains, surmounting the dividing country between Riggins and Hells Canyon, peaks out on He Devil at 9,383 feet.  This is almost a mile and a half vertical drop to Riggins.  On a map it is but perhaps 10 miles as the crow flies.  It is about 7 miles form the highest peak to the Snake River in Hells Canyon and a whopping drop of 8,043 feet.  Yes, this is very steep mountainous country and it progresses from below tree line up through the different habitat and plant zones including tall coniferous forests of ponderosa, Douglas-fir, and tamarack, until going into the subalpine zone of lodgepole, spruce and fir, and finally but barely into the edge of the alpine zone at timberline among the highest Seven Devils Peaks--all in this short distance.

When I first came to the area in 1982 I started hearing and reading things about the geology that sort of explained this unique geography.  Many of the words and ideas seemed strange and were new to me.  Words like oceanic and island arc terrane, accreted terrane, Idaho Batholith, and exotic terrane where only a small part of the explanations given by geologists that confounded this confused but curious river guide.  I pieced it together enough so I was able to explain, at least to myself, what I was seeing when I floated the Main and Lower Salmon Rivers or the Snake in Hells Canyon.  I since put it to rest, but now years later as I collect more footage for future video guides that will feature the Salmon and Snake Rivers I have reprised my interest.  At the Riggins library I just took out Exploring Idaho Geology by Terry Maley and Islands & Rapids by, A Geology of Hells Canyon by Tracy Vallier to thumb through and refresh my memory if not my vocabulary.  Vallier and the Forest Service have also produced a video called Exotic Terrane.  I stopped out at the Hell’s Canyon Rec. office the other day and they didn’t have the video in stock at the time.  I am chagrined to admit I have never seen it.  It gives a geologist’s explanation of how our area formed.  Exotic Terrane can be difined as a bunch of rocks that where formed far from where they are currently found. 

In any case, here goes my interpretation of this area’s geology as I understand it and in no way should it be considered an expert or perhaps in some cases even an accurate explanation:

It is important to remember there is a vast expanse of time involved, and this explanation is a simplification of a very complex geology.  A very long time ago the west coast of what we now call the North American continent was literally a few miles east of Riggins running basically north and south as the Pacific Ocean does now.  That’s right the Pacific Ocean literally lapped on the western shore near what is now Island Bar.   Around Lucile, down river 10 miles, can be found a lot of exposed limestone.  Limestone if pressed under great pressure can form marble.  The limestone rock bluff rafters float past just below the mouth of Cow Creek looks like it was getting close to becoming marble.  Limestone is formed by the vast accumulation of calcium such as what can be formed from the skeletons of reef creatures from ancient ocean coastal waters.  Limestone is porous and the spring of water coming out of the mountain just behind the Lucile boat ramp has dissolved a cavern perhaps 30 feet by 80 feet and is known as one of the Lucille Caves.  A little rock climbing and a rope is needed to get into it.  When my kids were young I got some pretty cool video footage of an excursion there.  Just enough sun light came in through several portals and no artificial light was needed.

Today the Pacific tectonic plate collides with the North American plate near the current western coast line.  Many millions of years ago a similar thing was going on here as the Pacific plate gradually subducted, or as the oceanic crust moved east it was forced under the continental plate.  The friction and dewatering of the oceanic plate as it dove under the edge of the continental plate caused massive amounts of molten magma to be formed.  This magma rose lifting the rocks and ground above to form the mountains of central Idaho.  This rising bulging magma cooled and formed Granite rocks.  This complex upheaval of granite and preexisting rocks formed such a rugged mountainous area that it resisted any extensive development by man.  It now comprises what is considered the largest contiguous wilderness in the lower 48 states.  This collection of granite extrusions in central Idaho is known as the Idaho Batholith.  One of the most western exposures of the Batholith is cut by the Salmon River 14 miles up river from Riggins and is known as The Crevice and is spanned by the Manning Bridge.

The Crevice is cut so narrow and steep walled because the granite is harder than nearby rocks. The rocks just up river and down river of the Crevice eroded back into a softer canyon structure while the harder Crevice rocks eroded much less allowing only a narrow cut by the river.  From there the Salmon River continues west until Riggins and encounters rocks that are called the Seven Devils group.  If this was ancient ocean, where did these mountains and rocks come from?  According geologists as the pacific ocean floor moved east subducting under our continent just east if Riggins, it dragged with it island arc groups like the Pacific islands of today formed by volcanoes.  When this thicker island arc group hit the continental plate it did not subduct, but the slow inexorable collision caused the rocks to be tortured and squished up.  The oceanic crust broke and a new subduction zone and new coast line formed in what is now central Oregon.  This process more or less happened again over time and thus we have the current plate contact area along what is now our west coast.  The rocks around Riggins including the Seven Devils are a tortured mix of continental rocks, oceanic plate, and island volcanic rocks smushed together.  It might be noted that high up in the Devils can be found limestone and fossils of shallow Pacific Ocean life that most likely once existed far out in the Pacific Ocean as part of a shallow reef of a warm island paradise.

After all this, huge shield volcanoes opened in what is now west central Washington and a succession of massive flows of lava flowed over much of Washington, northern Oregon and into parts of western Idaho.  This molten material had a different chemical make up than the rocks of central Idaho and when cooled did not form granite but instead formed relatively softer basalt.  These massive molten flows filled the valleys and created great level expanses except where mountain peaks poked up like islands in a sea.  Over time the rivers down cut through the basalt exposing fascinating and variable formations of columnar basalt.  However, the relatively level ground left between the drainages formed the prairies and plains to our north including the Camas, Palouse, Doumecq (due-mack), and Joseph.

The smushed up rocks of the island arcs that created the Seven Devils and other mountainous terrain to the west of Riggins apparently were harder than the basalt rocks and other metamorphosed coastal rocks to the north of Riggins; so the Salmon River carved off through the softer rocks to the north on its 80 mile fish-hook journey through primarily basalt to join the Snake River.  Thus we have the Lower Gorge of the Salmon.  River travelers on the Lower Salmon see what is described as four distinct inner canyons separated and over-topped by basalt formations.  These inner canyons, Green, Cougar, Snow Hole, and Blue, though not granite like the Crevice described earlier, are made of ancient, hard metamorphic rock that are part of the “basement” of the Seven Devil’s group.  These rocks were part of the undulating terrain that was covered by the huge molten basalt flows.  As the river cut down through the solidified basalt it also encountered knobs of the harder older rock.  The basalt eroded back into a more reclining posture while the older rock resisted easy laid-back erosion and much like the Crevice formed smooth and steep sided canyon walls.  Examples of this older hard rock include the rocks on which the north end of the Time Zone Bridge rests. Another nearby example is the large bluff at rivers edge, carved and scalloped with many nooks, just downstream from the bridge, across the river, and just above Tight Squeeze rapid.

They say the Snake River carved through Hells Canyon as part of ancient mega-floods including the Lake Bonneville flood that drained a gigantic lake into the relatively small Great Salt Lake we see in Utah today.  Ancient Lake Idaho in southern Idaho broke out and flooded before this.  I picture the island arc groups pushing up against the continent and the floods finding a seam or wrinkle between the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon and the Seven Devils in Idaho and voila!  We have Hells Canyon right beside and for almost eighty miles more or less parallel with the Salmon River carved gorge.

Riggins sits on a narrow high narrow bench right above where the river makes the big sweeping turn to go north around the Seven Devils.  While flipping through the Vallier book cited above, I came across his explanations for the big high benches like what is found at Pittsburg Landing in Hells Canyon or perhaps a bench like the one Riggins is on.  He claims such benches are the result of floods; some were mega-floods from ancient lake discharges, some were from high snow pack run-off, and some were from huge canyon landslides temporarily daming the rivers and then flooding— food for thought in such “exotic terrane.”

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