A cheapo flight to Idaho Falls got me a week's worth of packrafting with Jeff, Jesse, and new friend Dan. Seven rivers in seven days in three states! Dan was on the same flight as me and seemed to have no trouble identifying me at the luggage carousel between my performance backpack carry-on and the fact that I was not a young Caucasian mother with children in tow (the only demographic that seemed to populate the entire airport!). We easily found Jeff outside the small airport and endured many hours of painfully boring Idaho driving to meet Jesse at North Fork round about midnight. A short drive further brought us to our mosquito-choked campsite where we happily crashed after a catch-up beer or two.
The next leisurely morning we continued driving down the Main Fork of the Salmon River, looking for a good place to drop our shuttle and then to find a start. We opted to run 7 miles of what is known as the Shoup Run, from Pine Creek to Panther Creek. The river looked pretty tame in its late season condition, but worth a warm-up roadside float anyway. I was excited to try my new demo self-bailing Alpacka Gnarwhal, even if it came in the familiar goose shit green color. It took a little while for the boat to grow on me but I was instantly impressed with the knee brace system they created- truly a work of art for high performance.
The biggest rapid of the whole run (Pine Creek) was about a hundred feet down from our put-in, a trial by fire for Dan who had been packrafting a total of once. As it turned out I was the only one that made it through the rapid upright, by chance I am sure. Jeff had been using the Gnarwhal for the last week and had to recalibrate to his boat. The run consisted mostly of moving pools with very occasional riffles and rapids. Pretty boring but the scenery was quite nice, particularly once we passed the steep cliffs in the vicinity of Halfway Gulch.
I also pulled out for a quick look at some roadside Sheep Eater Indian pictographs which gave me a nice vantage of the paddlers on the river. I also enjoyed the impressive catastrophic landslide deposit opposite Dutch Oven Creek. After a couple hours of cruisy paddling we reached our take out vehicle and only had the simple matter of breaking through the barrier of poison ivy lining the river!
Afterward we drove on to Hamilton to enjoy some food and beer, grabbed last minute food supplies, then claimed the last free!] campsite at Blodgett Canyon Campground, a perfectly lovely spot. We packed for our two or three day Selway River trip while enterprising chipmunks looked for careless moments they might be able to score some food.
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