A Middle Fork Powerhouse

Rivers define Idaho., shaping the state’s landscape, economy, and social life. Spend a week on an Idaho river, outfitters say, and people begin to act differently. They’re less stressed, more joyful, more open to decisions that might have seemed impossible back home. Big decisions like changing jobs, repairing or ending a relationship, moving to a new state, getting a dog. On my first whitewater trip, I just wanted to live through the experience. I honestly thought I was going to die.

It was early June of 1987. My buddy Jim Acee and I had never been on a Class IV river in a large inflatable raft before, but who could resist seven days on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, deep in the largest contiguous forested wilderness in the Lower 48? When our mutual friend Steve Stuebner invited us to join him and a few others on what magazines had called “the best river trip in the world,” how could we refuse? 

The trip had nothing to do with Outdoor Idaho, so there were no TV cameras along. Looking back, that week shaped the series in ways no carefully planned production meeting or edict from management ever could. We launched our 100-mile adventure as passengers during high water, under a mix of wind, rain, hail, and snow. Years later, when Jim and I reminisced about the trip, we compared notes and were surprised at how closely our fears had matched. My thought every morning was that I would probably perish. The cold waves crashing over the raft weren’t getting any smaller, and the water wasn’t getting any warmer. We were poorly prepared for cold-weather boating. We wore tennis shoes instead of neoprene booties, cotton underclothes instead of wool or fleece, and flimsy raincoats instead of splash jackets or wetsuits. 

Jim later confessed that he thought he was going to die, too, and fulfill his mother’s worst nightmare. She had a recurring dream that he would drown, so she rarely let him near water. As a result, he said he never learned to swim well. Not ideal on a river trip.

On the afternoon of the third day, the sun finally came out. The temperature shot up. Canyon wrens singing, steaks on the grill, and happy hour in full force. Just maybe we would survive long enough to enjoy the trip. Even with blue skies overhead, the thought of larger rapids downstream clouded our mood. The rapid we feared most was Rubber, the heaviest water on the river, on the last day of our trip. Steve said years later, “An outfitter had told us we were going to flip in Rubber, so I put you and Jim and one more in the bow of the raft. I needed weight up front.”

I’m sure there are still fingernail marks in the wooden seat of Steve’s boat. When we hit the huge waves of Rubber Rapid, every instinct in my body screamed “You do not want to swim here!”

”It looked good to run right up the gut,” remembered Steve, “and we busted through with no issues.”

What surprised me most, I admitted later, was how quickly I slipped into the same fatalistic mindset I’d adopted years earlier in Guatemala, when I ran out of money and still had to figure out how to get back to Idaho. “The Lord will provide,” I had told myself then. Oddly enough, it helped. Jim Acee was not impressed with my philosophy. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he laughed. “That’s how people die.”

Apparently, what doesn’t kill you just postpones the inevitable. Not long after that June trip, Jim bought a raft. I bought one too, with friend Greg Harley. We named our boat the Rei-ley, a combination of Reichert and Harley. The adrenaline of that first whitewater experience propelled Jim and me into other river adventures: the Colorado through the Grand Canyon; the Rogue, Owyhee, and John Day in Oregon; the Green and San Juan in Utah; and the Yampa headwaters in Colorado.

Those trips opened new possibilities for storytelling as Outdoor Idaho began exploring the Selway, Salmon, and Snake rivers, as well as the desert rivers of southern Idaho. When rafting was involved, we usually turned to Jim. He wasn’t a professional Idaho outfitter, so we couldn’t pay him for his services. I never complained. That just meant more dollars for videotape, gas, and the occasional cheapest Bates motel. That’s how we rolled. 

For nearly four decades, we relied on Jim’s training. He had honed his skills as an instructor with the National Outdoor Leadership School, a nonprofit outdoor-education program focused on safety and environmental ethics. He got so good at his “job” that we started calling him A.R. Acee. “Anal retentive,” we’d joke. “Always ready,” he’d retort.

Not long after my first Middle Fork trip, viewers began seeing hour-long Outdoor Idaho programs such as “The Whitewater State,” “River of No Return,” and “Salmon River Lodges and Legacies,” along with half-hour shows like “A Middle Fork Journey.” I didn’t realize how many shows involved rafting until author and back-country pilot friend Richard Holm commented that every time he turned on Outdoor Idaho, we were floating down yet another river. I believe his words were that we had gone overboard.

That’s when it dawned on me that most of those programs were really about the value of public lands. In my mind, public lands, exceptional rivers, and whitewater rafting had become inseparable. I understand the risk of publicly praising something you love because it can be overrun, but the Forest Service strictly limits launches, assigns campsites, inspects fire pans and portable toilets, all to keep the river pristine. I wanted to show our Outdoor Idaho audience why Idaho is such a wonderful place worthy of affection, protection, and respect.

Some of my happiest river trips have been on the Middle Fork. One hundred seems to be the magic number on the Middle Fork: 100 floatable miles, 100 rapids, and on a good trip, 100 catch-and-release Westslope cutthroat trout, Idaho’s state fish. When I look back, I think of these river trips fondly, even when the joke’s on me. One hot summer day, we set up chairs in the shade, far above the beach, leaving our boats baking in the sun. Good boating technique is to let some air out of the boat tubes when boats are directly in the sun, but that afternoon, making gin and tonics was our priority.

As we chilled in the shade, a shocking BOOM! disrupted the festivities. We all looked to the sky, expecting a plane breaking the sound barrier. Then a second BOOM! Glancing at the boats, we could see the front outer shell of the Rei-ley raft collapsing on the sandy beach. Everyone jumped up and ran to the river, but not to the Rei-ley. They raced to their own boats to release air.

Anal-retentive, always-ready Jim knew what to do. He pulled out a sewing awl and thread from his repair kit. The outer wrap of the Rei-ley had exploded, allowing the inner tube to expand without bursting. A simple but time-consuming stitching job commenced, with friend Robert Minch taking the lead. He also cinched 20 rafting straps of different colors around the tubes. The raft looked like something a mad scientist created. For the remainder of the trip, our group referred to the poor Rei-ley as the Franken-Minch.

Outdoor Idaho trips were always different from outfitted trips. Whenever anyone without much river experience joined one of our trips, Jim laid down the many rules. Three were his commandments:

1. 1. Thou shalt bring thine own tent and know how to put the thing up. This is not Hollywood. Everybody works.
2. Thou shalt remember that rafting is like the Barnum and Bailey circus: put up the tent, take down the tent, load the raft, unload the raft. Repeat all six days.
3. Above all, thou shalt stay in the boat. In a difficult rapid, hold on, get low, and don’t fall out.

I didn’t fully appreciate the bonds the Middle Fork could forge until my second trip, when I officiated at the wedding of Greg Harley and Jan Sutter. I’d come to know Greg when he was living in Idaho City. When a mutual friend drew one of the Middle Fork’s much-coveted permits, the Rei-Ley became one of several rafts ferrying a wedding party 88 miles downstream, to Impassable Canyon and to a place once inhabited by a hermit. That final stretch of the 100-mile river is called “impassable” for good reason. Towering, near-vertical granite walls hem in the river, funneling it through Class IV rapids that leave little room for error.

The canyon’s most famous resident was Earl Parrott, now known as the Hermit of Impassable Canyon. Before the Depression, Parrott had built a small shack of a cabin high on the rim of Impassable Canyon, where he lived nearly a thousand feet above the river. He kept a garden, hunted game, did some prospecting, and lived largely on his own terms. Parrott constructed a series of homemade log ladders to allow him to travel from his cabin to the river below to prospect for gold. In his book Idaho Loners, author Cort Conley called Parrott “the archetypal hermit, the genuine thing . . . with a garden that looked like an exhibit at a state fair.”

An impassable canyon and a solitary hermit might not seem obvious symbols of wedded bliss. The wedding party’s destination was up Nugget Creek to a hidden grotto a quarter mile from the Middle Fork, where a waterfall spills from the nearby cliffs. On a hot day, it’s a green, cool, and quiet refuge, a perfect place for a wedding. “I’d never been on the Middle Fork of the Salmon before,” explained Jan Sutter, the bride. “I figured it was about time I remedied that oversight.”

The wedding marked my debut as a mail-order minister, thanks to Greg, who arranged my ordination for a mere twenty-five dollars. The most distressing part of becoming a minister came later, when I delivered the signed marriage certificate to the clerk’s office in Idaho City. For some reason this elicited hysterical laughter from some of the county clerks. Later requests for my services followed, including a courthouse wedding in Idaho City where the father of the bride carried a shotgun, supposedly in jest.

 

We’ve certainly aired the river fight enough times in Outdoor Idaho promotions and in numerous shows:  Ann Joslin and Susie Shannon battling a river that wanted to roll their raft like a pop can. The current had pinned the 15-foot boat against a boulder in the Middle Fork’s Haystack Rapid, jamming one side high onto the rock, with the other side still trapped in the powerful current. The boat didn’t tip as much as stand nearly vertical, with the women holding on for dear life. Then they climbed up by bracing their feet on the sinking tube, putting their weight exactly where the river least wants it, the one thing that keeps a pinned boat from flipping.

Outdoor Idaho viewers who were watched the video for the first time had no idea what would happen next. Would the boat topple backward and crush the women beneath it, letting the river swallow boat and bodies and carry them downriver? Or would the women outwit the raging river, forcing the raft to begrudgingly slide off the rock and back into the water? For a suspended moment, either option seemed possible. Then, casually, the boat eased down the face of the granite boulder and rejoined the river, to the applause of fellow rafters preparing to pull the women to shore. They had outsmarted another Middle Fork rapid and were rightfully proud of their accomplishment.

The TV audience did not see or hear me on shore yelling to the videographer on the bluff “Keep rolling! Keep rolling!” while others in our group were rushing downstream to rescue the women. Television viewers might not have heard me, but the two women heard me, and soon I heard from them. They were not impressed with my priorities and didn’t take kindly to being reminded of the oft-used phrase when filming river trips: Bad Rafting Makes Great Television. I told the women they had just made great television.

Jim Acee understood, because the same thing happened to him in our 2007 autumn program “A Middle Fork Journey.” Jim had managed to get himself stuck in Class IV Tappan Falls, maybe 50 feet from shore. He had been “running sweep,” and by the time he arrived at the famous rapid, we already had the camera positioned to capture footage. Jim couldn’t have been pleased seeing us so close to him, as we gathered wide shots and close-ups for almost a minute until he rather elegantly freed himself from the hydraulic whirlpool holding his boat.

“I was outsmarted by the rapid,” confessed Jim back at camp. “I am a pretty good technical water rafter, and it's nice to be kept honest occasionally and screw up. That gives everyone else a chance to cheer because they like it when you screw up. Besides, especially with Outdoor Idaho, bad rafting makes great television, and that increases my chances of making it into the show, instead of winding up on the cutting room floor.”

 

The adage among river runners is that what happens on the river stays on the river. A corollary could be: Until five years later, when it becomes legend. Every outfitter has stories that have become legendary. Our little group had a few stories of people failing to tie their tent down at Hospital Bar, where it’s always windy, allowing a micro-burst to send the tent traveling two hundred yards in the air and ending up lost to the fast-moving river. Or forgetting to properly tie your raft up at night and having to chase it six miles downriver the next morning before coffee and breakfast, where it was waiting patiently in a cove. Or forgetting to latch the dry box, hitting a big rapid, and turning the toilet paper into a wet mess. And the woman who discovered a rattle snake in the make-shift bathroom we set up each late-afternoon refused to use the toilet for the rest of the multi-day trip.

We filmed our “A Middle Fork Journey” program during a low-water September trip when permits are easier to get. Hikers Kay Johnson and Norm Nelson decided to meet us at the Camas Creek campsite on the Middle Fork. For them it was an eight-mile descent over two days of fishing. For the rest of us, the rafting distance to Camas Creek camp was twenty-five miles, a two-day float.

“Norm Nelson and I couldn’t make the launch date,” said Kay Johnson, “so we decided to hike down Camas Creek trail and intercept them. On the first day we stepped aside to let a string of pack horses squeeze past us. You never know what starts a rockslide in that steep country, but half a mile further down the trail we found rocks covering the horses’ tracks. The slide had managed to miss the packtrain and miss us, too. The timing couldn’t have been better.  Our luck held all the way to the Middle Fork beach. We hit Camas Creek campsite just as Bruce’s rafting group came into view. Couldn’t plan that if you tried.”

That afternoon, everyone sat for interviews with each of the eight rafters on the trip. Our show A Middle Fork Journey needed to be about more than rafting. Along the way we stopped at pictograph sites of the Tukudeka, a Shoshone band of Sheep Eater people who once lived in the canyon. People had been traveling, hunting, fishing, and making a life along the Middle Fork for thousands of years before any of us arrived with rafts and television cameras. The red figures painted on the canyon walls were a useful reminder of that. We weren’t just floating through wilderness. We were floating through history.

 

Every river guide has a favorite Middle Fork rapid: Hell’s Half Mile, Haystack, House of Rocks. My personal favorite is Powerhouse, one of the longest rapids on the river. Rafters love and fear it. Part of the half-mile rapid is rated Class IV.  Water conditions, even rock placement, can change with flow, but always expect big drops, technical lines, a dangerous rock cliff, and a large center rock at the end you must avoid. Row with intention. Forget the chit-chat. You need laser focus. Certain moves need to occur at just the right moment. Powerhouse is exhilarating. There’s a route that will keep your passengers and your raft free of harm. You just have to find it and do it in quick time.

Maybe what I like about Powerhouse Rapid is that it’s not a one-and-done rapid. It’s half a mile of rocks and pour-overs, holes that can ensnare a raft, and walls to ferry away from. It’s everything you expect from a classic Middle Fork rapid. Miss the large wrap-rock in river center, and the Middle Fork opens into a large pool, the perfect place to gather any swimmers and to feel exhilarated and relieved. You turn around to see what you’ve just survived. Then you point the raft downstream. There are four more days of river ahead.

Few people have rafted the Middle Fork more than retired outfitter Jerry Hughes. “There is probably no other river in Utah, Oregon, and Idaho that combines as many neat characteristics as the Middle Fork,” he marveled, when we asked him to explain the attraction. “It’s a wilderness area, so there are no motorized uses on the water. Ninety-five percent of the time the water is crystal clear. It’s a blue-ribbon trout fishery and a challenging boating trip loaded with backcountry history and natural hot springs. It’s an unbelievable combination of great characteristics and things to enjoy. I think about it every day. I dream about it, too. I just adore it.”

I understand exactly what Jerry means. The Middle Fork has been good to me for more than thirty years. Wild rivers change, of course, but for a long time there was a comforting sense of predictability about one of the original eight rivers designated under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. The Forest Service published a pamphlet called the MIDDLE FORK of the SALMON a wild and scenic river. I still have the 1985 and 2000 editions. Both describe every rapid, including Velvet Falls, the first Class IV rapid encountered about five miles downstream from the put-in. Fifteen years apart, the two editions offer exactly the same advice for running Velvet: look for a very large boulder on the left bank and a small creek entering from the right. “Stay to the left, right next to the boulder. This lane should take you into a narrow chute which will carry you through.”

Follow that advice today and you could be in serious trouble. Wildfires and heavy rains in 2022 and 2023 sent tons of mud, boulders, and trees into the river, transforming Velvet into a continuous staircase. Its debris fan continues to shift with high water. What had been a tricky but familiar rapid became something more technical and less predictable at certain flows.

“I feel blessed to have run the Middle Fork many times before it burned,” said Steve Stuebner. “That's one of the stark changes on the Middle Fork, especially in that first 25 miles. It was a stunningly beautiful canyon back in the day before it burned.” Many outfitters bypass that first 25 miles and fly their clients to Indian Creek airstrip. Further down the river from there, not much has changed. Much of it is rock. “The Middle Fork is still one of the best river trips in the world because of what it offers you,” said Steve, “Trout fishing, hot springs, swimming, side hikes, pictographs, and the people. It’s the people on your trip who make it fun.” 

 

Rivers don’t pay attention to human lifetimes. The Middle Fork has been rearranging itself with each spring flush and summer storm that force mud, rocks, and trees into the river. At its worst, it’s still the river that sets the standard. Other rivers may be bigger, wilder, warmer, or more dangerous, but the Middle Fork is the one we measure other rivers against.