Springtime plus rains equals fantastic blooms in the desert. A recent mountain biking trip to the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park yielded bounteous blooms, with the promise of many more soon to come. Here’s a sampling of the flower color bursts so common, yet also so breathtakingly unexpected, to the Utah desert lands.

Whipple’s Fishhook Cactus

Globemallow

Aster

Cliff Rose

Primrose (at the base of a yucca)

Yucca

Written by Julie Trevelyan.

Julie is a freelance writer and wilderness guide in southern Utah. She especially enjoys books, coffee, yoga, wild country, horses, and dark chocolate.

By Derek Farr

Salmon River History

The recent human history of the Main Salmon River is fraught with peril and rich in failure. Two of the first European-Americans to enter the Salmon River Canyon were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. After seeing the canyon’s daunting rapids, the pair opted for an overland route to the Pacific.

That was August 25, 1805. Since then, thousands of settlers have attempted to make the Salmon River Canyon their home. Few were successful.

By contrast, Native Americans lived in the canyon for almost 7,000 years. During that time, they left very little evidence of themselves. The most significant evidence is at the put-in of our Main Salmon trips. There, a seasonal village once occupied the river’s edge at a place we now call Corn Creek. Archeologists believe ancestors of the Shoshone Bannock tribe came to Corn Creek in the fall to hunt for big game and fish for Chinook salmon and steelhead. Other evidence of Native Americans is found on secretive rock walls where ancient artists painted abstract signs and figures. It’s believed the native people who visited the canyon did so sporadically. They knew when it was time to leave.

European-American settlers did not. They were the first people who tried to occupy the canyon year round. Most failed. But a few hearty souls managed to beat the odds and scratch out a living in the rugged country of central Idaho.

One of those was West Virginia native Frank Lantz. In 1925, the 35-year-old floated a wooden boat 70 miles from Salmon, Idaho to the middle of the Salmon River Canyon, a place we now call Lantz Bar. There he disassembled the boat and built a cabin. Lantz would occupy that site for almost 50 years, planting gardens and fruit trees for food and building trails and fighting wildfires for work. In 1935, he married a woman from Montana. She followed him to the river where they built a two-story cabin that they shared for the next 20 years, until she died in 1955.

In October 1964, Lantz was in the twilight of his life when tragedy struck. A Forest Service summer guard was heating water when he accidentally burned Lantz’s cabin down. With winter just weeks ahead, it looked like Lantz would be forced to leave the land he loved.

Then Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor Harold Anderson stepped in. He sent lumber and Forest Service employees to Corn Creek. Local fishing outfitters used their jetboats to deliver the workers and supplies to Lantz Bar free of charge. In weeks, Lantz had a new cabin.

It was a splendid act of altruism. For his exemplary efforts, Supervisor Anderson received a reprimanded that stayed in his file for the rest of his career.

Lantz died at his cabin on Oct. 12, 1971. He is buried next to his wife in Corvallis, Montana.

His cabin is still there. So are the fruit trees he planted.

They still bear fruit.

Derek started guiding rivers in 1996. He lives in Idaho where he and his wife use every opportunity to experience the natural wonders of that great state.

by Julie Trevelyan

Salmon River

Late in the 19th century, Jim Moore came to Idaho to chase the dream of gold. He ended up staying for a new dream of self-sufficiency along the generous banks of the Salmon River, where he led a simple, solitary life for over 40 years. Despite his quiet ways, he was known as a friendly man who did not shy away from others but welcomed them to see his lifestyle in one of the deepest river cuts on the continent.

In 1898, gold fever still gripped people, especially those who sought to create a new life for themselves. By his own account having fled an abusive adoptive father while still young, Moore eventually left his native Kentucky in search of a more welcoming place to call his own. Around the age of 30, he followed the siren call of gold with a placer mine claim along the banks of the Salmon River. At the time, the Forest Homestead Act declared no one who only held a mining claim could denude the forest land in a wasteful manner. So for each tree Moore chopped down, he eventually built himself a cornucopia of buildings that survive to this day. His structures were so well-made they remain sturdy over a century after first erected. The National Register of Historic Places protects these buildings today, and you can see them on a Main Salmon River rafting trip.

Moore did indeed search for gold during the 40-plus years he called the Salmon River his home. He made at least 20 full trips down the river in his water craft to sell items and keep an eye out for the always elusive gold in them thar hills. Sales of his whiskey, peach brandy, vegetables from his impressive garden, and beef to the miners and other travelers who came through the area brought in both money and socializing. The fruit trees Moore planted still bear fruit you can savor today.

Photo by Layne Parmenter

Legend has it the enterprising Moore buried gold around his homestead. If true, the location of it remains unknown but very enticing to people who discover Moore’s history during an Idaho whitewater trip. Contemporary visitors may find themselves snared by gold fever when wandering through the remains of his buildings and gardens. Let your own imagination run wild as you hike the trail from Campbell’s Ferry to Jim Moore’s Place, deep in the heart of the beautiful, remote Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness and the amazing experience of river rafting the Main Fork of the Salmon River.

Written by Julie Trevelyan.

Julie is a freelance writer and wilderness guide in southern Utah. She especially enjoys books, coffee, yoga, wild country, horses, and dark chocolate.

Confluence

Humans have always had an affinity for the confluence of great rivers. We often build our cities on confluences. My home town, Greeley, Colo., while no great city, was founded at the confluence of the Cache la Poudre and South Platte rivers in 1869. A much bigger city, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, rises from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers (the beginning of the Ohio River). Manhattan is found on a confluence of the East and Hudson rivers (even though the East River is technically a tidal flat). Kansas City and St. Louis were both built on confluences, as were Montreal and Winnipeg.

Salmon River Canyons

So what great city sits on the confluence of the Salmon and Snake, two of the West’s greatest rivers? Nothing, it’s an uninhabited slab of basalt rock.

The Snake River begins as a high mountain stream in Yellowstone National Park before it turns west and follows the ancient scar of the Yellowstone super volcano through southern Idaho. Just before it reaches Oregon, the river makes an abrupt turn north, into Hells Canyon, the deepest river canyon in the nation. Six-hundred miles from its alpine headwaters, it meets the Salmon.

The Salmon River originates in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains and flows 425 miles through some of the most remote land in the lower 48. Unlike the dozens of dams and impoundments found on the Snake River, the Salmon flows free for its entire length until it is absorbed by the Snake in Hells Canyon.

On our  Salmon River Canyons trip, we float past the confluence. As a geological feature, it’s rather insignificant. But as geographical feature, it’s extraordinary. It’s a lonely bluff of weathered rock at the intersection of two of the West’s most celebrated rivers. The surrounding land is baron. Only wispy bunch grass and scraggy mountain mahogany bushes cling to the steep rock walls. It’s no place for humans. And that’s what makes it so alluring. From our rafts, stuffed with sleeping bags, coolers of food, and other civilized luxuries, we have an opportunity to experience the confluence for a moment. Then the massive river sweeps us north and it disappears in the distance. Again, the confluence is alone. That’s the way it’s been since time beyond time, and that’s how it will remain.

Derek started guiding rivers in 1996. He lives in Idaho where he and his wife use every opportunity to experience the natural wonders of that great state.

Trip specifics

Historical Significance:

Fun facts:

Written by Julie Trevelyan.

Julie is a freelance writer and wilderness guide in southern Utah. She especially enjoys books, coffee, yoga, wild country, horses, and dark chocolate.

By Derek Farr

Photo by Zack Rogala

The Main Salmon River has two dominant seasons: one is hot and dry and the other is cold and snowy. Less than a month from winter solstice, it is now cold and snowy. The onset of winter triggers changes in the creatures that live in the great Salmon River wilderness of Idaho. And no creature has a bigger behavioral change than the black bear.

All summer long on our river trips, we keep an eye out for ursus americanus. This year we saw a sow (female) and her two cubs. The year before, two guides woke up early one morning when a small, year-old bear tripped over the bowlines to their boats.

But by late November, the main staples of a bear’s diet – tubers, shoots, shrubs, grasses, buds, nuts, mushrooms, insects and carrion – become very scarce. To survive the austere months ahead, black bears find a den and slip into a deep hibernation.

For years, scientists debated whether bears actually hibernated. Unlike many rodents that drop their body temperatures dramatically and lose almost any ability to wake from their winter stupor, bears’ body temperatures remain relatively high and they remain much more lucid. This lucidity, however, belies an extraordinary difference between bears and rodents. While rodents wake from hibernation every several days to eat, drink, defecate and move their muscles, bears don’t. Bears can go up to seven months (although 3-5 months is more common) in a state of semi-consciousness without eating, drinking, defecating or moving.

It doesn’t sound possible. After all, if you or I went months without eating or drinking, we’d certainly die. But even if we ignore that seemingly impossible feat, a bear’s lack of movement is even more unbelievable.

Photo by Derek Farr

When I was 8-years old, I broke my wrist. The doctors put my arm in a cast for six weeks. When they cut the cast off, my arm was shriveled, small and weak – atrophy had set in. It’s the same for all humans: if we don’t use our muscles, we lose them. But not black bears. In one of the most extraordinary adaptations in the natural world, bears emerge after months of hibernation as strong as they were in late November. They do this by recycling the nitrogen in their waste.

So goodnight sweet bears. You will be missed in these dark, snowy months. And when longer days return in late March or early April, we look forward to seeing you gain, at a distance of course.

Derek started guiding rivers in 1996. He lives in Idaho where he and his wife use every opportunity to experience the natural wonders of that great state.

Black Creek Rapid is one of the largest rapids on the Main Salmon River. It was created by a massive debris flow in April 2011. This is the rapid from our scouting location, looking downstream. Black Creek is on the right side of the river, just upstream of the rapid.

By Derek Farr

Sometime in early April 2011, a warm, wet frontal system came onshore in southern Oregon. From there, it spun north and east until it ran upon the snow covered mountains above the Salmon River.

What happened next was nearly apocalyptic.

Sheets of warm rain soaked the deep snowpack, melting the snow’s matrix and destabilizing its structure. Soon it liquefied, unleashing a flood of water, mud and debris that raced down the mountain. When the torrent reached Black Creek, it was a chocolate-colored monster that pummeled the very Earth. Ancient trees were ripped out of the ground without ceremony. The steep, narrow, granite walls of Black Creek Canyon rumbled.  The deluge gained more speed. It scoured the creek bed down to bedrock. The debris flow pulverized everything in its path. When the torrent finally reached the Salmon River, it blasted thousands of tons of rocks, trees and soil into the river, perhaps blocking its flow for a short time. The scene must have been supernatural.

But we’ll never know. It happened in a place so remote, nobody saw it.

It did, however, leave a lasting mark on the river; it created a new rapid.

Black Creek Rapid (class III-IV) has become the Main Salmon River’s most gut-churning white-water challenge. Twenty-one miles from the put-in, we usually run it on day two. But we always scout it. That’s because the rapid hasn’t stabilized yet; its massive debris pile is slowly being reorganized by the Salmon River. In a few years, it’s possible the rapid will no longer exist as the debris pile is carried downstream. That would be fortuitous for another rapid upstream, Salmon Falls, which was the Main Salmon’s most notorious rapid before the Black Creek debris flow inundated it, turning it into a class-II ripple.

However, it’s not likely the Black Creek Rapid is going anywhere anytime soon. Some of the boulders in the middle of the river are massive. What’s more, it’s already survived two high water seasons. By most estimates, it will be part of the Main Salmon River for a very long time. For Salmon River denizens, it’s an incredible privilege to interact with geologic forces on such a primal level.

Black Creek Rapid lives at the bottom of a stunning canyon in one of the most remote places in the lower 48. Even as winter settles over Idaho’s great wilderness, it churns. Nobody’s there to see it, but our hearts remember its turbulent waters fondly. A bit of adrenaline kicks into our bloodstream. And we wait for spring so we may see it again.

Derek started guiding rivers in 1996. He lives in Idaho where he and his wife use every opportunity to experience the natural wonders of that great state.