Hells Canyon Float Trip - July 2010

While this was not an official "Manrichment" activity for our ward, it was nonetheless very manly and is consequently featured here on the blog. While there were many other people on this trip, and many adventures had by them, I will primarily be dealing with my adventures on the trip because those are the ones I know most about. Plus, I've barely found the time to put together a post on my adventures and haven't the time to go into all the others. But without further ado, here begins the account of Hells Canyon Float Trip, July 2010.

We put in at the ramp near a large dam (the name escapes me) and the Hells Canyon Creek visitor's center. I was on a raft with all of the young'uns and I dare say that as a result we had a few more adventures than most. About 30 minutes after starting down the river, we rounded a bend and saw a mother brown bear with her two cubs standing on a cliff about 20' above the river. We floated past, whooping and hollering, and she moseyed off into the bushes with cubs in tow. As far as wildlife goes, during the rest of the trip we also so a mountain goat resting on some rocks, about 5-6 bighorn sheep, a lot of deer and some antelope, a skunk (too close for comfort), and a rattlesnake or two.

For a minute, it looked like this sheep was going to hitch a ride down river.

We hit the biggest rapid of the trip, known as "Granite" on the first day. It was pretty gnarly and totally dumped one of our rafts, sending all five rafters into the drink. Our brave vessel made it all through intact, despite our two teenage point men forgetting that you have to keep paddling through the rapids. (They would always quit paddling right when maintaining our speed was most critical and we gave them no end of guff for their negligence.) Below I've posted a video that was taken by our EQP's younger brother who works on the river. We're grateful to him for capturing this great moment of the trip on video for us. My boat was the second red boat to go through...the one where we all came out cheering, rather than swimming.

"The Red Raft of Victory" (not to be confused with "The Red Raft of Getting Owned") - Click to enlarge

We set up camp on this beach and a lot of guys went fishing for trout, bass, and catfish along the shoreline. They had some good success, and some even had fish for dinner. For the rest of us, there was steak, BBQ chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad, red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, and apple pie. Holy cow! The food was amazing! I've never been so well fed on a wilderness adventure.

I was on a survivalist kick so I decided to spend the afternoon trying out some of the shelter building skills I had been watching on Man vs. Wild. I hiked up a path above the beach and followed a fork over to this nice rocky overhang that I felt would give me good shelter from any rain that may come during the night (I had been unable to fit a tent into my dry bag with all of my other stuff). The area looked like it had been quite heavily trafficked and was flat and broad enough that people had probably camped there. So I set about finding some deadwood to use to start my lean-to. Unfortunately, all of the dead wood around was full of these horrible burrs and stickers that came off by the hundreds with even the slightest shake. I spent about 45 minutes picking them out of my shoes after I was done. I then tracked down some great (and plentiful) broad-leafed plants to use for my rainproofing. In the end, I had a pretty decent shelter and was quite proud of myself, though I had learned several important lessons that would surely have improved any subsequent shelters.

"What a fine looking lean-to, old chap." "Why thank you kindly!"

No subsequent shelters were to be made. The next morning, a new group of adventurers beached at our camp and started hiking about to see the sights. While breakfast was cooking I decided to head up and pack my gear to be ready for when we set off. As I was loading my dry bag, a tour guide with about 15 people in tow started heading my way. Naively I thought, "Maybe he's coming to check out my shelter and tell me how impressive it is." Wrong! He proceeded instead to dress me down in front of his followers for building a lean-to on top of ancient Native American cave paintings. Say what?! Honestly, I didn't even notice them until I was going to sleep and shined my flashlight on the wall, and I still didn't really know what I was looking at. Well, he let me have it: "Didn't the cave paintings tip you off that this is not somewhere you should be camping?!" "So you just decide it would be a good idea to build a lean-to on a Native American archeological site?" "Destroying a bunch of native vegetation is not something I can condone either." I could only say "I didn't know" and "I'm sorry" so many times, but it really seemed like this guy had decided to make an example out of me. I finally was able to get the rest of my stuff together and scamper out of there with my tail between my legs while he proceeded to rip apart my shelter. I got down to the beach and a couple of people came over to me and I told them the fate and offense of my lean-to. Everyone got pretty riled up and couldn't wait to give "Nature Boy," as he came to be called by our group, a piece of their mind. Well, Nature Boy came back down to the beach a while later and proceeded to tell our group leader about my myriad offenses against the gods of the canyon and threatened fines and legal action if he didn't bring our group in line. Then he shoved off and I snapped his picture, because he became something of a running joke for the rest of our trip. "Don't step on that rock, it contains an ancient animal spirit" or "Don't touch those plants, that's the an endangered indigenous stupidweed" and such were popular conversation starters among the campers for the next two days.

Do you see anything that looks like ancient Native American cave paintings? I sure didn't.

"Nature Boy"

The rest of the day was more fun. We hit some more rapids, practiced our "circle of trust" through some of the smaller swells, and took a pit stop at this old cabin with a raging awesome creek near the beach. This creek was a great time for us young'uns. The water was FREEZING cold coming out of the mountains and it was really raging for how small it was. We tried to hike up the river against the pounding of the water, and it was a beast. We'd get knocked down, bashed against the rocks, and pushed downstream as we tried to get a grip on the slippy rocks. We had so much fun playing in that river that we politely requested (some said we "whined") that our next camp site have a creek nearby if possible. It did, but it wasn't nearly as awesome as the one from earlier in the day, though with our labors, we left it more awesome than we found it.

"The Circle of Trust," a.k.a. "The Circle of who's-going-to-be-the-first-to-start-pushing-everyone-else-in"

During the second day of floating we found some great cliffs for jumping. In the spirit of oneupsmanship, the first jumps were about 15' high, then 25', then about 35'+ for the final jump. That was the highest I had ever jumped but I decided that I wouldn't get scared until after I had jumped and was in mid-air. It worked to get me off the cliff, but it about scared me silly on the way down. It was a great rush!

As our last evening in the canyon drew to a close and the sturgeon fishermen returned empty handed, I bedded down under the stars on my $5 and 1/4" pad from Wal-Mart for a night of restful sleep. Since we had seen bears around and since I was sleeping on the outskirts of the camp, I was sleeping with my folding shovel in hand. I had been laying uncomfortably on the ground for about thirty minutes or so when I heard a rustling in the grass on the other side of the dirt road about 15' away. I opened my eyes, gripped my shovel, and watched. After a few seconds, a small black-and-white creature emerged from the grass and started scurrying toward me...a skunk! I was petrified! "This is almost worse than a bear" I thought, believing that with a weapon and some courage I could possibly scare off a bear if it got too close. But a skunk! If I so much as moved I was sure it would startle and blast me good. I lay as still as a rock praying for it to go past an far, far away. It went past me, over in the direction of where I had spit out my toothpaste, and then down to the river. After about an hour and no signs nor sounds of it returning, I finally tried to get back to sleep.

I had been so uncomfortable during the night that I rose early and decided to go on a hike up a rather impressive looking, but not overly high, mountain nearby. I struck out before anyone in camp was awake, save one, who I told what I was doing so he could report me missing to the others should I fail to return. It was a somewhat miserable hike, through endless dry weeds that covered the mountainside. Every step I took would send dozens of grasshoppers leaping and flying through the air, effectively masking any other noises I might have otherwise tried to listen for (like the rattle of a snake). The mountain was incredibly steep, especially on the back side where it dropped vertically down to the valley and small stream below. I made it to the top before the sun hit the peak, and then made it back down to the bottom before the sun hit the valley floor.

When I returned from my solo hike I discovered that I had missed some commotion in the camp. A rattlesnake had slithered into our camp and met its end thanks to some paddles and a shovel. A few people asked me if, in keeping with my Man vs. Wild survivalist theme, I was going to eat the rattlesnake. I decided that now would be as good a time as any to try my snake eating skills out, so we grabbed a camera, I got into character, and we made it memorable. To my surprise, everything pretty much worked just like on the TV show: the skin came off right in one piece, and the guts also; the green grass I used to tie the snake to my green wood spit didn't burn and the snake cooked up right nice.

We put in for the final stretch and decided to pull out all of the stops. The young'uns raft decided that we would try to flip our boat by all piling either into the front or to the back. It didn't work, but it did make things interesting that last day.

"Let's flip this raft! Everybody in the back!..."

"...now, everybody in the front!"

We finished up at Pittsburg, loaded everything onto the trucks and had sandwiches for lunch before making the 4 hour drive back to Boise. What a great trip! Thanks again to all of those who organized it and did everything to make it possible.