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Log-Jammed

Posted on by Ray Brooks / Comments Off on Log-Jammed

Stranded on the Middle Fork, a Rafting Party “Self-Rescues”

By Ray Brooks

“There‘s not supposed to be a lake here!” I exclaimed. 

It was midday, July 24, 2006, mile twenty on our eight-day, hundred-mile Middle Fork Salmon float trip. As we rowed farther down this large new lake, we could see other rafts ahead on its western bank. Bequi Martel, our kayaker, sprinted ahead and returned with the news: the lake had been caused by a “blowout” the previous night, and there was also a huge logjam downriver one-half mile, in Pistol Creek Rapid.
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Isabella’s Escape

Posted on by Herman Wiley Ronnenberg / Leave a comment

The author, a University of Idaho lecturer in history, published a book last year titled, Pioneer Mother on the River of No Return: The Life Of Isabella Kelly Benedict Robie. In the following edited excerpts from the book’s introduction and first chapter, reprinted with permission, he describes the inception of his project and provides a glimpse of his protagonist’s flight to safety with two of her children after the death of her husband in a skirmish as the Nez Perce War began.

INTRODUCTION
My interest in Isabella’s life story began as an offshoot of my research on her close friend, Jeanette Manuel. Jeanette’s husband, John J. (Jack) Manuel, was the owner of the brewery in Warren. He was included in research I had completed for a book on the lives and businesses of all Idaho’s brewers. Finding the acorn of Isabella’s story, so to speak, involved a convoluted trail from the trunk of the oak. In October 2009, I published a brief synopsis of Isabella’s life story in Echoes of the Past, the journal published by the Historical Museum at St. Gertrude’s Monastery near Cottonwood. Shortly after, Deborah Starr of Orofino contacted me to say she was a great-granddaughter of Isabella and had a great deal of research material to share.

Isabella shared fifteen years of her life with her friend Jeanette. They were the co-belles of the ball in Florence, at a dance celebrating the new year of 1863. In June 1877, Isabella was the last woman to see Jeanette alive. Isabella, however, had a long life ahead when the Nez Perce War ended that autumn. She had five children with Samuel Benedict, and four more with her second husband, Edward Robie. Her descendants made enormous contributions to Idaho and the Northwest over the last century-and-a-half. Isabella’s story helps us remember the sacrifices and the values that enabled the first generation of Idaho pioneers to stay and build a new culture. Above all though, it is a marvelous human adventure story. Continue reading →

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On Slick Rock

Posted on by Mark Weber / 1 Comment

Twelve miles east of McCall, hidden in the folds of the Salmon River Mountains, lies one of Idaho’s most coveted long-climbing objectives—the thousand-foot-tall sweep of solid granite known as Slick Rock.

Here on a sunny summer day in 1967 three local climbers, Harry Bowron, Jim Cockey, and a man named Dorian (whose surname the others could not recall), set out to scale the imposing east face of this monolith. In a landscape where mountain peaks scrape the sky, deep valleys rend forested slopes and crystal clear streams tumble over boulders, this colossal swath of granite rises almost a fifth-mile and stretches nearly a half-mile in breadth.

In the nearly half-century that has passed since this first ascent of Slick Rock, the adventure and climbing experience remain much the same. On a morning in July 2011, the sun is shining brilliantly overhead as we hike the hillside that leads up to the wall. The rushing stream in the valley below echoes off the surrounding slopes, while the trail splits a thick carpet of wildflowers and verdant shrubbery. Two of our party of four have been here before, while the others are making their first pilgrimage to a “big” climb.

A gentle breeze sweeps through the towering pine forest, rustling branches, and I sense a few butterflies also rustling in stomachs. From this vantage, the sea of granite that looms above is intimidating if you have never been on a big route before.

The upper two-thirds of the wall are punctuated by three staggered, ascending cracks that split the pavement of solid stone for more than six hundred feet. These “triple cracks” seemed to provide a logical path to the summit for the first ascent party. In the late Sixties, the only reasonable possibility for protecting a climbing team on Slick Rock’s blank and seemingly featureless terrain was pitons hammered directly into these fissures.
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Hard Knox

Posted on by Evan Jones / 1 Comment

In search of the ghost towns of central Idaho, I have spent a lot of time over the last ten years driving down gravel forest roads, fording creeks or boggy pastures, slipping through the snow, putting my four-wheel drive vehicle to the test.

My wife and kids have grown to love these trips as much as I do, though they may tell you differently. They might joke about the time I got us stuck in Florence and had to leave the women and children with the reintroduced wolves while I got a ride back to town (for three hours) to get a big enough 4WD to pull us out.

They might complain how their backsides often hurt from riding down rocky paths all day long, or recall the time we had to change a tire on a rocky, steep incline (in the rain) on the way to Yellow Jacket, but I think they also would have to admit that these are unforgettable memories.

One year, we camped in McCall and the next day drove on back roads toward Roosevelt, in the very remote Thunder Mountain mining area. After the mining in Roosevelt slowed down, a mudslide on May 31, 1909 blocked Monumental Creek and turned the town into what it is today, Roosevelt Lake. By then, only a few year-round residents remained, and they left. I’m told from the shores of the lake you can see the logs from buildings, and on a clear day you can see outlines of the structures on the bottom.

This intrigued me ever since I found out about it some time ago, but I didn’t account for how long it would take to get there. Before we made it to the lake that day it started getting dark, and we grudgingly turned back to camp. Continue reading →

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Save Copper Basin

Posted on by Mahlon Kriebel / Leave a comment

“Bandi! Bucx!” Lloyd Warr’s call drifted through a curtain of fog tangled in the sagebrush, shrouding the morning sun. Obviously, his mules had bolted. I had met Lloyd the previous day, when he arrived at Lake Creek Camp. He said he lived in Rupert and he and his companions from Buhl belonged to the Idaho Draft Horse and Mule Association.

I had always thought mules were untrustworthy, but Lloyd explained that breeders select mares and jacks for temperament. Anyway, it was too early to rise, as my four friends and I on this trip into Copper Basin, in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, had talked well past our bedtime. The campfire, which had sealed us in from the cold night, had burned out, and none of my rough-and-tough storytellers had emerged to start the fire. “Bandi, Bucx …” receded as Lloyd made his way along the Copper Basin Loop Road.

“Bandi, Bucx … hay, oats.” Pulling on my boots, I decided to help. Ron had just begun to prepare coffee and Quint was kindling the fire. I called, “Breakfast can wait,” and gunned my off-road vehicle (ORV) towards the voice. To the west, Standhope Peak and Big Black Dome, both rearing nearly 3,500 feet above the basin floor, were pink and red in the morning glow of lifting fog. Driving up alongside Lloyd, I asked, “Can I help?”

Lloyd, about my age, seventy something, replied, “Damn mules, they’ve never bolted.”

I knew we could drive cross-country and, with luck, catch the feckless mules. “Hop on.”

Lloyd hesitated. “I’ve never been on one of these contraptions.”

“Well, this ain’t an ordinary ORV. It’s equipped with a passenger seat.” Continue reading →

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Killer GPS

Posted on by G.T. Rees / Leave a comment

I think my Global Positioning System is trying to kill me. I’ve noticed a troubling trend over the last few years in the electronic doohickey I carry around to keep from getting lost.

It seems every trip into the mountains has become a rigged game of roulette with my electronic gadget, which tries to strand me by delivering faulty information.

Take the time I went hunting in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains, and on the way back missed my truck by no more than a hundred yards. The screen showed right where my truck was, but that tiny shot didn’t match up with the terrain, and I quickly wandered off course. As a result, I spent an entire day slogging through a foot of new snow, running out of water, and puking my guts out in the shower from dehydration when I finally did get home. Before you think, What an idiot, why didn’t he just eat some snow? I did. It doesn’t provide enough water when you’re really hoofing it, hence the puking in the shower. This entire misadventure could have been avoided if I hadn’t relied on my GPS for directions.

There’s another dimension to this problem. My wife is convinced I’ll get lost in the mountains and die. Given my recent history, she might have cause for concern. I always try to soften my stories of wilderness adventure just a bit, so as to protect her nerves, but it never seems to work. She eventually gets the whole story out of me, and then it’s all that more difficult to get out for a hike or some hunting the next time. It’s almost enough to make a guy wish for simpler, more unfettered, times. Almost. Continue reading →

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Moonstruck

Posted on by Mike Medberry / Leave a comment

In April 2000, conservationist Mike Medberry and several friends were hiking at Craters of the Moon, gathering information for then-President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, who hoped to expand the approximately 54,000-acre national monument to 750,000 acres. While walking, Mike suffered a stroke that impaired his speech, among other after-effects. His mother moved from California to Boise to help with his recovery. The following excerpt from his book, On the Dark Side of the Moon (Caxton Press, Caldwell, 2012), reprinted with permission, describes Mike’s return visit to Craters a few months after the stroke.

One day in early summer, when she thought I was able and interested, Mom suggested that we take a roadtrip in Idaho. “Where should we go?” she asked.

“Ow bout Craters? I would like that.” I felt like Humpty Dumpty. I had taken a great fall and had to put together the pieces of this broken egg: confidence, communication, love, sanity, work, and memories. And all of it related to Craters of the Moon, where I had fallen and lain out on the lava for many hours. This was a harrowing memory, made more poignant by the time-sensitive ischemic stroke that had permanently damaged my brain. I say that my stroke was time-sensitive because doctors give stroke victims three hours to get the person to a hospital to treat him with a clot-busting medicine, before lack of oxygen kills the afflicted cells. It must have taken me eight hours to get to the hospital in Pocatello. We never spoke of this, but it reminded me just how precious time can be. I wanted to confront this fear and show my mother the beauty of Craters of the Moon, which I had worked to protect over the years. Continue reading →

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Snowfoot

Posted on by Alex Thatcher / Leave a comment

One summer weekend, after we had grown tired of the bike paths around Boise, it seemed time to explore other options. I had no idea where we were going, but I liked the direction, Idaho City.

There are all kinds of things to see and places to go out there, and the driver, my friend Johnna, who was then my girlfriend, knew I wanted to go someplace I’d never been. The car stopped. I look around dazedly, sleepy from the non-stop switchbacks. The someplace I had not been was Banner Ridge. Continue reading →

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Zip Lining Idaho

Posted on by Mary Syrett / Leave a comment

I stand on a platform with my back to the Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls. Suited up in a body harness, helmet, and gloves, I’m clipped to a safety cable.

The words of the guide at this moment will forever ring in my head: “Put your hands on the knobs, step to the end of the platform and, when you’re ready . . .” Easing off, I sail along the steel cable through a cluster of treetops and watch as the ground gives way beneath me. Continue reading →

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Wild Times in the Old Canyonlands

Posted on by Terry Armstrong / Leave a comment

My dad, Ray Armstrong, was a young forest guard at Pole Creek Ranger Station in the Canyonlands of southwestern Idaho during the late 1920s. He didn’t remember ever attending school, but became a successful cattle broker and in his later years served as mayor of Bliss. Like many cattlemen and cowboys of that day, Dad was a gifted storyteller. In 1976, I recorded his tales in a notebook—tales that chronicle escapades typical of forest service activities in early times.

Ray Armstrong was nineteen years old in 1927. His father, my grandfather, raised horses along Cedar Draw on a rocky strip of land near the Berger community south of Filer. Word was that Dad left home at an early age. He herded sheep and served as a camp tender, learned cowboy work, and maintained himself doing odd jobs around Buhl and Twin Falls. On a chance happening, he met “Supervisor” McQueen, who was in charge of both Pole Creek and Mahoney Ranger Districts on the Humboldt National Forest just across the Nevada/Idaho state line. Dad was familiar with the country, having worked at the Diamond A Ranch. He knew Jarbidge, Murphy Hot Springs (known then as Kittie’s Hot Hole) and the Three Creek country.

Supervisor McQueen needed young, tough men as guards for both ranger districts. Following a rigorous examination that included both written and practical activities, Dad was hired for the Pole Creek position along with young Tommy Wells at Mahoney. It was never clear how Dad learned to read, but during the test session he managed to follow the directions for assembling a demonstration crank wall telephone. He was big, tough, and could throw a perfect diamond hitch, meeting all qualifications for the Pole Creek work. Both Wells and my dad were to furnish their own pack outfits, which included fifteen horses and pack equipment.
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