A lower Salmon River float trip is something like traveling along a narrow Pacific Ocean with rapids, then camping on a series of little Waikiki beaches.

I wear my Chaco sandals when we’re in the neighborhoods of Snow Hole Rapid and China Bar Rapid, for purposes of getting out and walking up the trail to take a peek during the scout. The rest of the time, it’s barefoot.

Deep white sand does present some difficulties. Like, when do you quit making designs in a particular patch of sand, wipe it clean and start over? Nature’s etch-and-sketch.

You can’t use tent stakes in sand, but that’s easy enough to remedy by placing smooth rocks in the corners of your tent.

Then there’s the occasional beach devoid of a big enough rock or tree to tie your raft to. No worries. We have Excalibur for just those beaches, a sword-looking chunk of aluminum designed for burying in the sand to create a tie-off.
Then there’s the clear water of the Salmon. Check out this snapshot of Phil I got from up on a trail around Billy Creek while Phil was casting for smallmouth. That was a good afternoon, let me assure you.

The Salmon is running at a real accommodating flow right now. Big wave trains here and there and the technical moves aren’t too tight. Fun all around.

We’ve got boats out again on the Snake River, launching this morning. The Snake flow has dropped to summer levels between 9,000 and 12,000 cfs.

The Grande Ronde has been going on a diet and dropped below 1,000 last I heard, so get down there while you can.

I’m headed for my laundry room to clean up after this last Salmon trip. Need to shake the sand out of my duffel bag…or not. I don’t mind it, to be honest. Matter of fact I should be bringing more of it back with me to start building my very own Salmon River sand dune out next to the hot tub deck.

I took a week off from the river to attend Fishtrap, a writer’s conference held at Wallowa Lake each summer. Actually, that’s not true. I was out at Billy Meadows in the north country of Wallowa County where Fishtrap holds their Outpost writing workshop – a boondocks approach where writers get by living in tents without pansy conveniences like electric power or plugs to hook your laptops into. A lot like river rafting. I felt right at home except for no river.

That canyon photo up there is the vista from Buckhorn, looking down on the Imnaha Canyon which feeds into the Snake. It's extra-large as far as views go.

Gary Snyder, the beat poet legend, was the keynote speaker at Fishtrap this year and let me tell you, he’s worth listening to.

I got down to TamKaLiks on Saturday – the Nez Perce celebration held outside of Wallowa each summer. This gathering is connected with the Homeland Project, which acquired 320 acres as a permanent place where people who have called this place home for thousands of years can come home.

If you’re not familiar with the Nez Perce history of Wallowa County, I’d steer you toward Alvin Josephy’s book ‘The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest.’ There are many books about the Nez Perce War, but this one, I think, is one of the best.

Also read ‘Yellow Wolf: His Own Story’ for history like it should be told.

Taz Conner was a Nez Perce man who kickstarted TamKaLiks (a Nez Perce word that means ‘From Where You Can See The Mountains’)….the celebration has been going for 20 years now and when Taz helped start it, he observed that this should be done for the next generation.

I interviewed some of that generation on Saturday – talking with young dancers from 6 to 19 years old. A photographer friend has been collecting photos from TamKaLiks and we hope to collaborate on a story. I’ll link it up here once that happens.

Ian Sampson is one of the dancers I talked with. There’s a photo of him in action up above. He’s rafted Hells Canyon once before and I’d like to get him down there some more. Paul, Penny and Morgan have always been very supportive of getting kids on the river and we’ve been working on organizing a trip to get native kids on a float trip through Hells Canyon. Ian has experience as a counselor and I think will be a great help if we can pull this off.

I’m headed up to the boathouse right now for finishing touches on a Salmon River trip. I’m looking forward to sinking my toes in that sand.

Paul, Morgan, Baird, Young Baird and Craig Nichols are on the Snake River as we speak, floating Hells.

Be good. Put your sunscreen on. Drink lemonade and enjoy summer.

First trip of the season on the lower Salmon last week. The water has been high enough until now that The Slide rapid down in the lower stretch had been cranked up beyond safe levels.

It settled down and we ran it somewhere in the 17,000 cfs range. Pretty spicy, but plenty safe. At low water this rapid virtually disappears, but up above 18,000 she’s a cranky one.
I had the Ketscher family from Joseph on my raft and we stopped to visit the ranch at Billy Creek, where Charity Ketscher lived when she was a girl. It’s a unique spot with a long history, going back to Nez Perce occupants and passers-by who traveled that stretch of river.

Billy Creek is named for a Nez Perce man known as Salmon River Billy who stayed there. And the non-treaty Nez Perce crossed the Salmon River at this spot during the Nez Perce War of 1877.

The ranch isn’t occupied this year, so weeds have taken over where Charity recalls a large garden. The big log barn is sheltering little critters and there’s been at least one bear coming by to take advantage of those cherries.

Nice to be along to hear someone’s memories of a place. I wrote about this visit in the Wallowa County Chieftain this week, so click here to be magically transported to that page if you’d like to read more.

We’ve got a group down in Hells Canyon, day trippers on the Grand Ronde and another Salmon River expedition to launch next week, so the rafts are getting a workout right now. And they’re happy about it. We all are. The suntans are getting well established – matter of fact, I just restocked on aloe the other day . . . it’s finally full-blown summer and the living’s good.

I’m landlocked this week, working out at a writer’s workshop held in the north country of Wallowa County. Fishtrap is a local writing organization that has their annual summer conference going on up at Wallowa Lake, but this Billy Meadows workshop is known as The Outpost, and we’re roughing it, camping in tents and getting by without electricity. It’s somewhat like rafting, I guess, in the sense that I washed dishes. Great group of folks concentrating on getting to know a place better.

See you on the river.

The Grande Ronde River got downright rambunctious last month when the water spiked up. The flow went from 5,000 to over 20,000 cubic feet per second in 24 hours, and that brought some changes.

Paul, Jeff Michael, Mike Zobott and I just went down the GR from Minam to Boggan’s Oasis and passed areas where blowouts have shoved a considerable amount of earth and stone out into the channel.

This here picture may not seem all that extraordinary, because I don’t have the accompanying ‘before’ picture where all that rock didn’t used to be there.

The water is starting to settle into a summer mood. We put on at Minam, directly below the confluence with the Minam River…and the Wallowa was still pretty colored up. Pretty chalky. Couldn’t see bottom, nor your oar blade.

You join the Grande Ronde downstream nine or ten miles, and the Ronde was running nice and green, much clearer. Ditto the Wenaha River where it comes in at the town of Troy.

You can read a book through Wenaha River water right now, it’s so clear…assuming the pages of your book are waterproof and there’s lead in the binding so it weighs enough to stay on the bottom, but then the current would probably turn the pages before you were ready and it wouldn’t be that comfortable to stand in the stream and look down – so maybe don’t try reading a book through Wenaha River water, but it’s really, really clear right now is what that ‘read a book through it’ scenario was supposed to get across before it got away from me there.

Observe: a crayon drawing I did of the Wenaha joining the Grande Ronde. Note the disparate shades of hue amongst the two streams.


Yeah, I just used ‘disparate,’ ‘hue,’ and ‘amongst’ all in one sentence up there. I made the coffee really strong this morning.

That expedition on the Grande Ronde was with Adventure Treks, an outfit that gets yoots acquainted with the wilds. 16 teenagers make for memorable floats. Highlights included a cinnamon eating contest, which included puffs of spice getting poofed out of nostrils like a dragon. I had never seen that before.

I also witnessed half of a one-armed pushup. It ended abruptly, but Dallas was OK, dusted himself off and then tried again and managed to do three of them.

We’re headed for the lower Salmon River today. Morgan, Jeff and myself. The Salmon has been dropping steadily and calming down, so it’ll be good to get down on those sandy beaches.

I’ll give you a report when we get back Friday. Until then, do a few one-armed pushups to get in shape for your rafting adventures this summer. They look difficult, but it’s only the second half that’s really tricky. Gravity is on your side for the first part.