Middle Fork Salmon River Packraft – A Place for Everything

Rapids to the Left, Rapids to the Right

Check out Part 1 Here.

As the first day kicked off and I slid out of First Bend rapids, I was just so excited and amped up! The weather was great and the MF Salmon River water was stunning. My teammates in the rafts were already bouncing and sliding on rocks and that I was scraping too. I just didn’t care. I was really on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, and I was in Heaven. Class III Murph’s hole escapes me, so it must not have been too eventful. Sulphur Slide (class III) was memorable and a lot trickier as there were so many exposed rocks.

At Sulphur Slide, the rafters paid some respect by doing a scout. Since there were so many exposed rocks and there were one or two that could flip a boat, we took the time. I was pretty nervous entering but it turned out to be a very easy paddle for me in the little packraft. From my days in rafts and even canoes, I was leaning hard on my backpaddling to slow down and make moves in the rapids at this point. We met with another party at the top of the rapid, and as we were finishing up, one of our rescue kayakers made a good save. Behind us two teenage boys hung their IK on a rock and our guy was able to get them a throw rope and quickly pull them off. They were quite grateful!

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

I was wandering along visiting with Zsolt for the next mile or two and enjoying myself a lot. I knew we would be heading into Velvet Falls (class IV) soon, but as one of the last guys I had time to scout or pick a line or whatever. Imagine my surprise when I came around a bend and looked up to see our crew on the other side of a horizon line and Mike waving me to the left! I paddled left. He signaled left. I paddled left. He gave me the “straight at me” cue that every trailer tower knows and so I paddled straight. As it turned out, I paddled straight over Velvet Falls.

As soon as I hit the pool below safe and sound I knew I had finished Velvet. The river left tongue shooting to the right is a dead giveaway and Mike had lined me up perfectly. If I’d have been a foot to the right, a swim was inevitable. If I’d had been more than that to the right I may or may not have made it through the hole, but as it was I hit it perfectly and with aggression and it worked out! Our most experienced rafter took similar hand signals from another person and ended up swimming. He was annoyed about the faulty signals but also had a good humor about the swim!

My First MF Salmon River Swim

Sometime after Velvet I took my first swim. I was meandering through a rock garden in some class II water, sometimes scraping over rocks and trying like hell to dodge them. Well, I didn’t dodge them all and as my packraft climbed up a little rock in the middle, my instinct was to lean away from it. Note to everyone: never lean away from a rock as your boat impacts it. Anyway, I was happy to know that my egress drills on Little Payette Lake paid off! My exit was directly onto my head and then proceeded to bounce my ass off what felt like a few dozen breadbox to recliner sized rocks as Zsolt paddled to rescue me!

I was able to hang onto my boat and paddle as Zsolt finally was able to give me enough purchase on his cataraft to get my feet under me. I flopped back into my boat and was off to the rock obstacle course once again, frantically trying to get my poop in a group before I repeated the swimming performance. That was a humbling moment as it all took place in some unnamed spot in the river when I wasn’t paying enough heed to the obstacles in front of me. It felt like failure, but being able to just quickly reenter the boat and keep paddling also felt like a minor success. By the way, shore lunch never tasted so good…chicken salad and Doritos were the humble center of a chef’s masterpiece, in my opinion.

Elkhorn Bar Camp on MF Salmon River

We pulled into camp at Elkhorn Bar around mile 9 on river right and it was a welcome and beautiful camp spot. This one was a little tighter than some of our other camps and a rocky scramble from the river straight up to the camp level. Us newbies started learning the ropes here, but the most important part of this camp was the party. After partying just a little bit, I went to bed around 11:00, about in the middle of the pack, but the party kept going into the wee hours. Even at 3:00 am, firelight glowed on my tent wall when I woke up.

When I did wake up, Dave already had coffee on (I was his teammie as coffee makers…no, not baristas) and he was the last guy to bed. I’m not even sure he did get to bed, honestly. The feature of the morning was the large stump in the firebox. The firebox owner was not amused. The whole team had a little come-to-Jesus moment over that and everyone fessed up and learned some lessons. We were able to manage that situation, but we never did have a repeat of that mistake again!! As we pushed off that morning it was clear that more than a few serious hangovers were floating out there on the river with me.

Powerhouse (III/IV)

I honestly don’t remember Powerhouse (Classs III/IV) and I have no idea why. It must just have not been the event that Sulphur and Velvet were to me. Similarly, the Chutes (class III). I think at this point, the whole damned MF Salmon river is a rapid and it is hard to really tell what is big and what isn’t. I remember a lot of paddling, a lot of rock dodging, and my first really decent attempts at eddying in midstream. There were doubts about just how much scraping over rocks my little packraft would take before I broke out the repair kit!

All of the day two rapids were kind of a blur to me. There are several class III rapids and even more class II as you run toward Pistol Creek (III/IV). It seemed that hangovers were fading and the team was having a good time. Through this whole stretch there were so many rocks and so many delays as the big boats struggled to keep moving. We knew Pistol was coming and that the extra low-flow conditions we were in presented us a tough choice. River right may not even take our boats downstream. River left presented a tongue, a floor-ripper tooth rock, and a pool-drop hole. The team opted for river right.

MF Salmon River: Pistol Creek Rapid (III/IV)…Part One

We scouted Pistol Creek on river right. Or so we thought. We paddled off to take the proper line through the rapid, but for some reason the damned thing just didn’t materialize. I’d watched so many Middle Fork Salmon YouTube videos that I knew we still hadn’t experienced Pistol. Then I came around a bend to the sight of the team out on the gravel bar between the left and right routes. As I pulled up, one of our teammates mis-read the situation and drifted by river-left.

The ground crew yelled something incoherent to me, but the wayward catarafter was able to beach in the river left rocks above the drop into Pistol. What ensued was a lesson in swift water rescue. Kayakers were deployed on both sides of the stranded craft and ropes were thrown. Ultimately, the team was able to swing the boat and its captain back to the middle gravel bar and get it offloaded and into the river right channel for a run through Pistol.

Pistol Creek Rapid (III/IV)…Part Two

The rafters pushed through Pistol river right one by one, bouncing and jouncing down through the shallow water. Me being one of the last ones through, I waited and watched as teammates made their way down the shallow rocky channel and over a small drop in the middle to enter Pistol below it’s river left drop. As we loaded up the recovered cataraft for its run, we were all beginning to feel better and ready to move on.

Unfortunately, Pistol had a little more to say on the matter as the little cataraft went over the small drop sideways and tipped the boat onto its captain. Now that’s a bunch of weight coming over on a person and it pushed him into the shallow river bed. As he floated free, it was clear he was going to swim the rest of the rapid but was struggling having breathed in some water. One our kayakers ran across the rocky bar (I was waiting for a snapped ankle which thankfully did not happen) and made a long leap for our swimmer and was able to catch him and swim the remainder of the rapid together with him to make sure no more water was breathed in.

Reunited and it Feels so Good

A couple of miles after Pistol we floated into our night 2 camp. Our swimmer was completely tired and wiped out from the ordeal and our team RN kept a solid watch on the situation. I don’t know much about it, but once you’ve breathed in some water apparently the next few hours tell a story about whether you can continue the trip. Lucky for us we were camped only a short walk from the Indian Creek guard station and landing strip. This is where we would reunite with two more of our team, one of which had a trailer mishap at Boundary Creek that required a quick truck ride back to medical facilities for stitches.

Finally, we were all back together at Airplane camp and ready to call it a day. We had the pleasure of getting to see both bald and golden eagles flying back and forth by camp and carrying on across the river from camp. As I ate my last freeze-dried meal contently lounging in the warm sun, I crunched down on a grain of sand. Spitting that out, I soon crunched down on another…and another…and another. Had I gotten sand in my food? Crap! Well as it turns out, these meals have a dessicant packet in them and when I retrieved my dessicant package from the trash I found that it had been slit open and contaminated all my food during cooking.

Bedtime or More Mattress fun – Salmon River Sleep?

So now I’m hungry, having thrown my dinner away as inedible, and I realize I still haven’t confronted the leak in my air mattress. No way was I going a third night without managing this problem. Taking the bull by the horns, I trooped my inflated mattress down to the river to start looking for leaks. I’ve done this kind of thing before and it so often doesn’t work. Imagine my elation when I almost immediately found a steady bubble stream coming from the shoulder area in the center of my mattress! Holy crap, I had this sucker figured out!

A good thing about being a packrafter: you always keep a repair kit with you! It only took me a few minutes and some Aqua-Seal UV™ to efficiently and permanently fix the leak in my bed. You need this stuff…it is a miracle. My attitude took a 180-degree turn at that moment in the trip. No longer worried about my mattress every day, I was ready and starting to get my groove on. Maybe I neglected to mention my mood for the first few days….

A Place For Everything on the MF Salmon River

Let me clue you in to the greatest of all pro river tips. It all began 15 or so years ago when my friend Jeff and I were in an airport in Vancouver BC. Jeff needed something from his day pack and I noticed he was going through quite a ritual to get to it. I teased him about being so anal about placing everything in his pack, to which he replied “a place for everything and everything in its place”. I laughed and poked fun and he just rolled his eyes at me.

My first two days on this trip were filled with what I like to call “shit anxiety”. I couldn’t find my toothbrush, flashlight, alleve, GoPro, underwear….you name it. I had four small dry bags inside two larger dry bags that fit inside the tubes of my packraft. I also had another large dry bag that went on one of the big boats every day. Every night was a ritual of scattering all of my shit out inside of my tent to try to figure out clothing, toiletries, batteries, and everything else. It was mayhem and it made me constantly stressed. By the end of the trip I was focused on creating a place for everything and putting everything in its place…every day. Jeff was right and I emailed him as soon as I got back to civilization!!

Pro Tip : A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

So as the morning of our third day on the river dawned I was beginning to get my shit together (literally) and I had an air mattress that did not leak. I was beginning to understand what gear would work under which conditions and I was learning to manage my stuff. When we get to the end of this story, I will summarize all of my lessons learned but to this point they were:

1. A place for everything and everything in its place
2. Always know where your headlamp is
3. Understand which gear is critical and make sure you either have a spare, some sort of fall-back or workaround, or a way to repair it.
4. A little battery operated air pump is heaven when inflating your air mattress compared to blowing it up after a long day on the river.

The adventure will continue in Part 3!