Rafting the River of No Return Wilderness - The Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Thomas Walsh
RAFTING THE RIVER OF NO RETURN WILDERNESS
The Middle Fork of the Salmon River
By: Thomas Walsh
Copyright 2011 Thomas Walsh,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0287-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is based on a true story. The names of people and businesses have been changed to protect their privacy.
This book is dedicated to my wife and children. They are the light of my life.
Chapter 1
The Idea
In the spring of 1994, I had never heard of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. We lived in Barrington, Illinois at the time. A desirable, some would say “tony”, northwest suburb of Chicago. We purchased a home there because the schools were very well regarded, but the traffic was terrible. It would take half an hour to drive a mile across town in rush hour. The downtown area was charming despite the traffic. My favorite spots were the movie house and the sandwich shop next door which served up huge sandwiches piled high with deli meats. Being recent transplants in a job related move we did not know many people, which made settling in a challenge. While people were friendly, they were often caught up in their own lives and careers, and not terribly interested in acquiring new friends. In this atmosphere, I was always open to an opportunity to escape.
1994 wasn’t a particularly good year or bad year for us. For me it was another one of those grinding years where it kept sinking in that I was now in middle age and maybe, just maybe, I would not achieve the goals I had set for myself. I was a senior executive with a well-known consumer products company. I had two great kids, Tommy a junior in high school, and Sheila soon to graduate from middle school. Lee, my wife, the light of my life, the anchor in my sometimes stormy world was the glue that bound us together as a family. She was and still is the consummate cheerleader and care giver.
The personal challenge I faced that spring was to take Sheila on a high-adventure trip for her middle school graduation. I had taken Tommy on several high-adventure trips as a Boy Scout, but the opportunity had never presented itself to do the same with Sheila through Indian Princesses or Girl Scouts. This is an area where girls continue to not have the same opportunities as boys. The opportunities to be exposed to the physical and mental challenges in the great outdoors that can provide the character building that all kids need to successfully navigate in the world today. Sheila had heard the stories and seen the pictures from her brother’s high-adventure trips, and not surprisingly she wanted the same opportunities for herself. The real challenge, I would quickly learn, was that Sheila wanted to include several girlfriends and their fathers on the trip.
Being a businessman I had an organized, analytical approach to challenges. I gathered information on trips I had done with Tommy, and scoured the library and travel magazines for other ideas. Lee of course jumped in with enough enthusiasm to rally a difficult situation into a shining success. A 50 mile canoe voyage in Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada looked like the probable winner in the trip selection process. It would be a challenging but enjoyable trip in a beautiful, protected wilderness where you can paddle and camp for days without seeing other people. How could you go wrong? Well…
Organizing her girlfriends to go on the trip with us was no problem for Sheila. She was always a leader of her group of friends in planning and making things happen. But the fathers we needed to accompany their daughters were quite a different story. Original exclamations of “Count us in!” and “Sounds like a great trip!” one by one turned into a variety of excuses for not being able to go. The litmus test of course was the day the other fathers needed to pay their non-refundable deposit. The planning we began in March ground to a halt in May when our group was back to where it began with Sheila and me as the only participants.
For a variety of reasons I could not let Sheila down. Not the least of which was that she had provided the itch for an adventure, which I definitely wanted to scratch.
The previous summer Tommy and I had taken a white-water kayaking class together in northern Wisconsin. You have not lived until you try an Eskimo roll in a kayak in a freezing cold river. Now hooked on kayaking, Tommy had taken a subscription to Outside Magazine, an entertaining but fanciful magazine for those of us who don’t have a prayer of a chance of competing in an Iron Man Triathlon or climbing the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. I began thumbing through the travel section in the back of the magazine after gawking at the hard bodies and ultra-extreme enthusiasts in the articles.
After repeated visits to the magazine travel section it began to dawn on me that maybe we could do a river trip in the western U.S. The summer before, it now seems like a seminal one, I had also taken Tommy and Sheila canoeing on the Wisconsin River in western Wisconsin, camping on sand bars at night. They had loved it. Maybe Sheila would love a river trip out west as well!
I sprang the idea on Lee first, then Sheila. The reaction was great and greater. There was one hang up though. Sheila did not want to be the only kid to go on the trip. Solution – although she wanted this to be her trip, Sheila suggested that Tommy go too. That was settled, now what about Mom?
While Lee was wildly enthusiastic about the trip for me and the kids, she was very apprehensive about it for herself. More importantly, Lee wanted the trip to be a father/daughter experience (she kind of ignored the fact that Tommy was going too).
It was settled. Sheila, Tommy and I would raft a river in the western U.S. The itch was to be scratched!
Chapter 2
Preparation
Once it was settled I called several river rafting companies I had found in the travel section of Outside Magazine to get trip planning information for rivers in the western U.S. The number of companies offering river trips is limited on each river. The major rivers in the western U.S. often flow through public lands such as national forests, national parks, designated wilderness areas or government owned lands. To protect the river areas and surrounding lands the number of river rafting companies is limited to selected companies that win the right to obtain permits for river trips.
It is a really unique experience to speak with people at a river rafting company. The people who answer the phones in the off season are often the top guides the companies keep on through the winter and spring to do equipment repairs and answer inquiries from potential clients. Keeping in mind that these people are top-notch river guides and not customer service phone specialists, you have to gear down to the lowest level in your Type A repertoire (no regular coffee for a day or more is recommended) to begin to relate and converse effectively with one of the most laid back and intriguing sub cultures in our society. I will discuss this sub culture more in a later chapter.
When the information from the river raft companies arrived we jumped into comparing and researching the river trip options available. I knew that given it was already May it would likely be difficult to make reservations for a trip in June, July or August. The process was easy at first. Trips that did not have space available matching our desired dates were the first to go. This included the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, which due to its popularity has to be booked a year in advance. Next to go were the trips on seasonal rivers. These are rivers that only have enough water for rafting in the spring during the snow melt such as the Selway, Bruneau and Moyie Rivers. That was just as well since some of these seasonal rivers are so violent and dangerous in season that many of their rapids are Class V or higher. This means even skilled white-water enthusiasts are putting themselves at risk of injury