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Blog Archives
Solitude
Two years ago, I once again took up watching the old TV series Little House on the Prairie. When I first saw it as a child in black-and-white, the program spawned fantasies of living in the wilderness.
But I lived in Los Angeles, and remained there for almost thirty years, until my wife and I moved to Garden Valley in 2012. No sooner did I realize we would relocate to the mountains of Idaho than I started watching that old show again, as if it would prepare me mentally for the change of habitat and the cultural shock I was about to experience.
Nowadays, I often find myself going alone into the wilderness, and have learned to cherish this solitude, although I realize it can be dangerous at times. Some places are accessible only by ATV or motorcycle, unless you have a horse, and on those occasions even my dog can’t come along. I now do some of the same things the children on the show did, such as going fishing alone at a creek with a lunch sack and sometimes with the dog. I had never fished in my life and, to my surprise, I caught two trout the first time I tried. Continue reading
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High Anxiety
As the phone conversation ended, a wave of anxiety washed over me. Did I really want to climb two of Idaho’s tallest mountains with a group of strangers?
I had once made it to the top of Mount Borah, but that was almost a decade ago. Since then, my body had suffered more wear and tear, and I was sure my tolerance had lessened for exposure to weather at high elevations.
The offer to accompany an informal hiking group, most of whose members called the Magic Valley home, was my own fault. Earlier in the year, I had talked to Norman Wright, a Filer resident, about a potential trip. He organizes several outings annually that include ascending at least one of the state’s highest mountains. My initial desire to bag another Idaho peak waned as the spring unfolded into summer, but even so, I phoned him again, part of me hoping I had missed the opportunity.
Norman said my timing was perfect. “We’re headed to climb Mount Church and Mount Donaldson next Saturday. We’ll have the rare chance to summit two twelve-thousand-footers in one day.”
I cautioned him that I didn’t want to attempt anything beyond my ability, but after he heard about my Borah trek, his enthusiasm held steady. “There are a couple of tough spots, but you’ll be fine.”
That evening I opened the definitive book on the state’s high elevations, Exploring Idaho’s Mountains: A Guide for Climbers, Scramblers, and Hikers, by Tom Lopez. Reading that the author rated the climb we would make as one level more difficult than Borah, I groaned. Ten years ago, Chicken Out Ridge on Borah had seemed to be at the edge of my abilities—could I take on something more than that now? The doubts began adding up, and my heart throbbed faster, reminding me of my not-quite-prime physical condition. Not wanting to waste a quickened pulse (or perhaps to mask it), I hopped on the treadmill. Could I get into any kind of decent shape in ten days?
Every night, I doggedly did time on the machine. I wasn’t sure if my cardiovascular condition improved much, but was comforted to find that the exertion on my heart and lungs didn’t cause them to fail. Other parts of my body clearly were not happy. My arthritic hip joints, one of which was replaced a year after the Borah summit, whined for less abuse and more acetaminophen. My back felt out of alignment, requiring a crack by my chiropractor.
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Welcome to the Sticks
Kidd Youren was on a horse with his dad the day after his birth, and claims he’s been an outfitter ever since. Garden Valley’s peaks, peaceful fields, the South Fork of the Payette River and nearby natural hot springs provided an ample playground in his youth. His grandpa did some casual guiding and ran some cows, his great uncle outfitted, and his dad turned it into a full-on business. When Kidd was asked at age eight what he wanted to do for a living, he talked with his dad, who said the answer was easy. Choose something you like and find a way to get paid for it.
“I want to do what you do,” he said.
But that didn’t include giving an interview on the location of a “docu-soap” TV series, the first reality-based show to be filmed in Idaho backcountry. Kidd stars as one of three featured Idaho outfitting families in the series, including the Yourens, Bullocks, and Korells. My visit to the set outside Garden Valley had been arranged by truTV, which broadcasts the show.
“I‘ve been through plenty,” the dark-haired and sun-tanned Kidd said with a grin. As a youth, he team-roped and rode broncs and bulls between hunting seasons. When he was a high school senior competing at the Silver State International, the last bull he rode smacked him in the side of the face, shattering an eye socket, his nose, knocking out teeth, and displacing sinuses. Still conscious, he made it out of the arena and back to his host’s house before realizing he had a serious concussion and “sort of passed out.”
He has lived in Nevada and Canada, but ultimately returned to Idaho. His friends went to college or got their own places, but Kidd used his savings to put a down payment on an Idaho hunting area. He passed the state test with a near-perfect score and became the youngest licensed outfitter in the state. Continue reading
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Standing on the Snake
On the river, we dip our paddles into the reservoir’s slack water and head upstream into a stiff breeze. We make good progress on our standup paddleboards (SUPs) and soon leave powerboats and fishermen behind. The canyon walls narrow and become steeper as the calm water gives way to the river current once again. On our left, a hundred-foot-tall waterfall pours over the canyon’s rim. Ahead of us lies a bizarre landscape of sculpted and bleached white rock. Because it’s late summer and a dry year, the once mighty Snake River has been lowered by irrigation, reduced to a serpentine channel carved into the bedrock of the canyon. Still paddling upstream, we navigate the channel, which is barely ten feet across in places. Springs feed small cascades that spill over the rock walls and into the river. Finally, the river becomes so constricted that we pull the SUPs onto dry bedrock and consider our options.
As a photographer with an appreciation for adventure and nature, I spend much of my time exploring Idaho’s outdoor and recreational opportunities. Last year, as summer was quickly drawing to a close, I wanted to take advantage of one more weekend of warm weather. Figuring a river adventure would be a fitting close to the season, I made a couple of calls, to my son Elijah and daughter Jessica. They were eager for an adventure and we agreed to explore the Snake River on SUPs. Our plan was to paddle thirty to forty miles of the Snake in south-central Idaho while visiting some of the more iconic attractions along its course. Continue reading
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Tied and True
Just so you’ll know who’s writing this, I caught my first trout on a fly in the summer of 1945. I still have the fly (gray pillow feathers tied to a long-shanked #8 bait hook with pink sewing thread). So I’m not a fly-fishing newbie.
I’m not a purist, either. On a windy and up-to-that-point fishless trip a few years back, I completely surprised my buddy by abandoning flies in favor of a grasshopper on a #10 Eagle Claw. Caught a nice brown right away, too.
Most of my fishing is done on smaller streams, but I’ve fished the South Fork of the Snake River a few times with a limited amount of success. However, the size of the river and the scarcity of access to wading fishermen such as I restricts most of the fishing there to float-boaters.
After reading Snake River Flies (WestWind Press, 2014) by Boots Allen, I’m eager to do a lot more fishing there. I want to take another shot or two—or many—at the river, this time using flies that were created, tested, and popularized by expert fly-fishers and fly-tyers from the area. One of these is the author, a third generation Snake River fly-fisherman. Others are folks like Bob Carmichael, Marcella Oswald, and Bob Bean, none of whom I’d heard of before I read the book. My loss. Continue reading
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No More Metes and Bounds
Whenever I drive south from Kuna on Swan Falls Road toward the Snake River, I pass a little sign indicating a turnoff to a place called Initial Point. It’s a butte just one mile to the east on a good dirt road, but for me there always seemed to be some excuse not to run over and check it out. At last, I decided to do what I had often told myself I should do, and took that turn.
A road leads up the butte, but the steep grade is studded with sharp lava rocks, and rather than chewing up my vehicle’s tires, I opted for an easy climb to the summit. I followed the road on foot about halfway across the east side of the butte, impressed with the expanse of open country between myself and the distant mountains of the Boise Front. A rugged shortcut uphill beckoned. After a brief climb, the butte rounded onto a large flat area used for parking and, I’m sure, partying. At the southwest corner of this area, a lava outcropping rose to a point topped by a concrete platform with guardrails of pipe.
This butte may be only a hundred and twenty-five feet above the desert floor, but the flatness of the surrounding countryside makes for stunning vistas. Whether the Boise Front to the north, the Owyhee Mountains to the south, Oregon’s Mahogany Mountains to the west or the endless desert to the east, the land defines the concept of big sky. My whole life, I have explored its canyons and other features, and the grandeur of its open space. Continue reading
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Those Were the Days
Those were the days, my friend; we thought they’d never end.” I liked that song.
I‘ve been there.
In 1954 the Weiser River was running clear when the spring chinooks turned into it from the Snake, a rare thing. Much of the drainage of the Weiser had been devastated by abusive logging and grazing, and when the hard rains came or the snow melted quickly in the spring the red mud flowed into the river and I never saw the Weiser high and clear. Streams in the wilderness may be up and flowing through the willows and yet be so clear you can count the pebbles on the bottom. But they know not the cow and bulldozer.
We got the word from Fred Einsphar on May 30. He had a ranch along the river from about halfway between the town and Galloway Dam, and he was a sportsman. Herb Carlson, Clare Conley, and I were there early the next morning. There were no other anglers.
Herb and Clare had spinning tackle. I had my nine-foot, five-and-a-quarter-ounce Winston and a three-and fifth-eighths-inch Hardy Perfect reel filled with backing, monofilament, and a shooting head—my steelhead tackle. I intended to use nothing else. I believed that salmon would hit a fly as well in Idaho as in the tidewater pools of the Eel and this was the chance to test my theory. Continue reading
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Sorting Spawners
On weekends, I hit the hills with my family to play and at the same time I scout for places to shoot video. On weekdays, I return to those places with my camera equipment to work.
Following this routine of scout, then shoot, I’m lying on wet boulders in Swan Valley’s Palisades Creek on a sunny June day. While hiking with my kids the previous Sunday, I saw fish jumping a four-foot waterfall. Now it’s Monday afternoon and I’ve returned in waders. It’s sweaty hot on the rocks. It’s painfully hard to hold still. I’m belly-growl hungry for the granola bar in my pack on the bank. I’m questioning my strategy when the first trout finally breaks the current in front of my lens.
“It is really amazing what fish can do when they’re trying to go spawn,” says Brett High, Idaho Department of Fish and Game regional fisheries biologist, as he sits by the rushing river on an overturned bucket. “We’ve seen fish hold their positions almost vertically for several seconds.” Continue reading
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