Old Man River
Draft 5.4
March 9, 2026
FINIS (so close)
Rivers define Idaho. They have shaped the state’s landscape, its economy, and even its 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: changing jobs, repairing or ending a relationship, moving to a new state, getting a dog. For me, I just wanted to live through the experience. I honestly thought I was going to die.
It was early June of 1984, and 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. But looking back now, 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 by how closely our fears had matched. For the first three days, my first thought every morning was that I would probably die. The cold waves crashing over the raft tubes weren’t getting any smaller, and the water wasn’t getting any warmer. And 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, which meant she rarely let him near water. As a result, he never learned to swim well. Not ideal when you’re on a river trip.
On the afternoon of the third day, the sun finally came out. The temperature shot up. Canyon wrens were singing. Steaks were on the grill, and happy hour was in full force. Just maybe we would survive long enough to start enjoying the trip. But even with blue skies overhead, the fear of larger rapids downstream hung over us.
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. 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 home. “The Lord will provide,” I had told myself then. Oddly enough, it helped.
Jim 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 my 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, Snake, and the desert rivers of southern Idaho. Whenever rafting was involved, Jim was usually the one we turned to. He wasn’t a professional Idaho outfitter, which meant we couldn’t pay him for his services. Of course, I never complained. That just meant more dollars for video tapes, gas, and the occasional cheap 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—NOLS—a nonprofit outdoor-education program focused on leadership, 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.
It wasn’t long after my first Middle Fork trip that television viewers began seeing full-length Outdoor Idaho programs such as “The Whitewater State,” “River of No Return,” “Salmon River Lodges and Legacies,” and “A Middle Fork Journey,” along with dozens of others where rafting played a major role. I didn’t realize how many shows involved rafting until my writer and pilot friend Richard Holm complained that every time he turned on Outdoor Idaho, we were floating down yet another river. I believe his exact 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, the ideas were inseparable: public lands, exceptional rivers, and whitewater rafting.
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I thought I knew what fear felt like, until Staircase Rapid on the South Fork of the Payette River decided to teach me a lesson. We had lined up on river right, exactly where we were supposed to be. What we didn’t have was forward speed. One of the river lessons I obviously not yet learned was that a raft needs to be moving faster than the water when it hits a rapid. As the raft dropped into the chute, the current grabbed the bow and the first standing wave rolled over the tubes like a collapsing wall. Greg Harley and I disappeared instantly. Seated behind us were two women and a young child. The women knew to hang on. Years later, Jenny Laper recalled the moment vividly:
“Seeing my seven-year-old daughter fly past me straight into the whitewater descending Staircase remains one of the most terrifying moments of my life.”
Her daughter Eden remembered it differently: “Etched most vividly in my memory is being rescued by two gallant older boys who pulled me from the river and carried me to safety.”
Moments like that teach a rafter two things quickly: respect the river and learn its language. One part of that language is the International Scale of River Difficulty, which ranks rapids from gentle Class I flows to “un-runnable” Class VI drops like Shoshone Falls. It’s shorthand that tells boaters what lies ahead, and what might happen if they get it wrong. As any river guide will tell you, the number one rule is simple: respect the river. Conditions can change quickly, especially after rainstorms or wildfires. Water that seemed manageable yesterday can behave very differently today.
My sweet spot has always been Class III rapids, challenging enough to demand skill but forgiving enough to remain fun. Think of them as high-school rapids: some homework required, but the grading is on a curve. Idaho’s rivers contain hundreds of them.
Class IV is college. These rapids added spice to many Outdoor Idaho trips. They often sparked animated breakfast discussions about scouting lines, approach angles, rock dodges, and how to pirouette off certain boulders to avoid deep holes capable of flipping a fully loaded raft. Examples include Ladle Rapid on the Selway River, Granite Rapid in Hells Canyon, Big Mallard on the main Salmon, and the very Staircase Rapid that had ejected me into the Payette.
Regarding Class V rapids, the most obvious Idaho example lies along the North Fork of the Payette River. Anyone driving Highway 55 toward McCall has probably wondered how it’s even possible to survive that river’s fury.
Throw your adjectives at it: steep, fast, high-risk, a raging torrent of water that charges over giant granite boulders, creating huge holes and pour-overs with names like Jacob’s Ladder, widely considered one of the most dangerous rapids in the world. Cars routinely pull over off Highway 55 so people can watch the carnage.
In fact, this is the site of a three-day extreme whitewater event each June, featuring top international kayakers vying to be crowned King and Queen of the North Fork. Injury is not just part of the experience. It’s the business model.
Even today I’m a little embarrassed that we talked world-class Idaho kayaker Rob Lesser into running that stretch for our 1998 show “The Whitewater State,” not once but twice.
On the second run, we told him we’d be focusing on his face, so he needed to smile when he dropped into Landslide and Juicer.
Running the North Fork once is considered graduate-level work. Running it twice—with a smile—deserves a Ph.D. in physics.
I once heard about someone completely flunking out of river school by missing the “Big Falls Portage Here” sign above Class VI Big Falls on the upper South Fork of the Payette. Even from Highway 17, high above the canyon, Big Falls looks death-defying. No one should run it. Apparently, a boatload of co-ed rafters did—unintentionally—and lived to tell the story. That was the end of their rafting for the day. Instead they chose a steep granite scramble out of the canyon to reach the highway.
I’ve hiked down to Big Falls myself, years ago, with a fishing pole and my dog, and then climbed back out to the road. If Big Falls is death-defying, the hike out of that canyon is its not-too-distant cousin. Rivers have a way of teaching the same lesson over and over. I can only imagine the drive back to Boise: disbelief, silence, blame—and a newfound respect for portage signs.
I quickly learned that Idaho contains more river miles than any other state in the lower 48. Depending on who’s doing the counting, the total hovers around 100,000 miles of rivers and streams, with roughly 31,000 miles classified as major whitewater, and nearly 900 miles protected under Wild and Scenic River status.
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The Main and Middle Fork of the Salmon River offer no shortage of Class IV and even a few Class V rapids, made nastier by recent rockslides and wildfires that sent boulders and whole trees tumbling downstream to wedge themselves into already-difficult rapids. The point was driven home when one rafter finished a Salmon trip and promptly sold his raft and all his gear. Sometimes a single mistake in whitewater is enough to convince a person that pickleball is the better long-term activity.
For the Outdoor Idaho crew, however, the Salmon River and its storied tributary the Middle Fork were places we visited often, fishing for stories as much as for scenery. Producer John Crancer and videographer Jay Krajic uncovered a story that immediately hooked them: an outfitter who had figured out how to spend a week on the Salmon River without ever sleeping in a tent.
Outfitter Wayne Johnson, owner of Salmon River Rafting Company, had struck a deal with the owners of several beautiful lodges tucked along the river corridor. Wayne rowed his clients from lodge to lodge, where full-course meals and comfortable beds awaited them. It was whitewater rafting with room service.
“Wayne was very gracious with us being there,” said videographer Jay Krajic. “A lot of the people on the float were return-guests, and they knew we would be on the trip.
“I was able to shoot anything I wanted or felt I needed. It slowed things down a lot, but interviews take time. And it could be a real trudge to shoot from the shore because of rocks and poison ivy.”
Wayne would occasionally join the station’s fundraising festivals to help “pitch” an Outdoor Idaho program like the 2011 “Salmon River Lodges and Legacies.” With Wayne live in the studio, his donated river trips sold out in minutes. His generosity even knocked “Celtic Woman” off its perch for the most money raised.
Afterward, I’d take Wayne to the nearby Riverside Hotel along the Boise River, to toast a job well done with his favorite Scotch. He didn’t need a raft to keep us entertained. Wayne had plenty of stories that he wisely chose not to tell on statewide television.
Over time the lodges changed hands, purchased by people uninterested in hosting strangers. Wayne saw the handwriting on the wall and sold his business.
In retirement, he has turned to writing. His book Indomitable Women of the Salmon River Canyon chronicles the lives of tough, resourceful women, many from the 1960s and 1970s, who carved out lives along the River of No Return. Wayne knew some of these women personally and meticulously researched the others.
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Another Old Man of the River was Bill Bernt. He could rival Wayne in stories, simply because no one had guided on the Salmon River longer than Bill. We met him at an annual Outfitters and Guides gathering. His daughter Stephanie approached us and suggested her dad had a story to tell. Bill was suspicious at first but eventually relented. The story would involve grown children Stephanie and son John, as well as Bill, who was wrestling with the decision about turning his river guide business over to them. It struck us as a perfect fit for our 2016 program “The Outfitters.”
Being a cheapskate, I asked Bill if he’d cut us a deal. I’d use my own raft to capture video of him guiding clients through the major rapids. The agreement: he’d only charge us for food. I then asked Peter Morrill, one of the creators of Outdoor Idaho, if he wanted to volunteer on a trip down the River of No Return. His job was to document the journey with a television camera. I promised Peter great food. I also promised—perhaps unwisely—to keep him dry through all the Class IV rapids.
The Dutch-oven food was great, the out-of-state clients were entertaining, the river flow was perfect. But some of the interviews with Bill, Stephanie, and John never made it into the show. I figured some discussions between family members deserved to unfold on their own schedule, and not on statewide television.
After the trip, Bill paid me a compliment for my rafting skills. He was being generous, considering that success was pretty much guaranteed. He was leading through difficult Class IV rapids, and I wasn’t too far behind him, with a drenched Peter Morrill.
Watching Bill’s daughter Stephanie maneuver a loaded raft through difficult water was a reminder that experience, calm judgment, and quiet confidence often matter more than muscle or bravado. It was one more lesson the river was happy to teach.
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A favorite stop-off along the Salmon River, for both Bill Bernt and Wayne Johnson, was historic Campbell’s Ferry. In the 1900s, many gold miners bound for the Thunder Mountain gold fields crossed the Salmon River here on their way through what is now a north-to-south route across the Frank Church wilderness. Ferry-master William Campbell was only too happy to help them, for a price: fifty cents per person and a dollar per head of stock. The miners grumbled, as miners always do, but not loudly enough to turn back around and miss Idaho’s final big strike.
Over time the crossing became known for more than its history. The real draw, for some of us, was owners Doug and Phyllis Tims. They had transformed Campbell’s Ferry into a genuine oasis: green lawns, fruit trees, and a small museum that welcomed river travelers as friends. Campbell’s Ferry has become one of the last remaining ranch sites open to the public. Doug, a former outfitter and true Old Man of the River, believed that river knowledge, like good whiskey, was meant to be shared.
When Doug and Phyllis finally decided it was time to give up the ranch to new Idaho owners, we took the occasion to spend the day with them. In the interview they talked about the frustrating 17-years and 4-months process of creating a plan with the U.S. Forest Service. Doug even knew the exact number of days, 6,327, he wrestled with the federal agency. The covenants were quite specific, all designed to preserve the historic flavor of the special place and protect it from development.
The segment Peter shot and Pat Metzler edited remains one of my favorites. It was rich with history, quietly generous, a little bittersweet, and deeply human. It fit perfectly into “The Next Chapter,” one of the last Outdoor Idaho programs I produced, and the one I still think about when my thoughts return to the Salmon River, the undammed heart of Idaho.
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One hundred seems to be the magic number on the Middle Fork: 100 floatable miles, roughly 100 rapids, and—on a good trip—100 cutthroat trout. The Forest Service strictly limits launches, assigns campsites, inspects fire pans, and groovers, or portable toilets, to keep the river pristine.
Some of my happiest trips have been on the Middle Fork. I can’t say I ever personally used an outfitter, which means I always put up my own tent. I certainly wasn’t going to ask A.R. Acee to help.
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 of my Rei-ley raft collapsing on the sandy beach. Both front tubes had exploded. Everyone jumped up and jetted to the beach, but not to the Rei-ley, rather to their own boats, to release air. Self-interest ruled in that moment.
Anal-retentive, always-ready Jim saved the day. He pulled out his sewing awl and stitching 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, cinching twenty rafting straps of different colors around the tubes finished the repair. For the remainder of the trip, the group referred to the poor raft as the FrankenMinch.
All’s well that ends well. A visit to the AIRE Rafts store in Boise put the Rei-ley back together again. Still, every time the AIRE owners see the Rei-ley on TV, they’re embarrassed. “First-generation boat,” they remind me. “We make them more streamlined now.” First loves, I tell them.
Outdoor Idaho trips were always different from other trips. When anyone joined an Outdoor Idaho river trip. Jim laid down the rules: “Lodging is on the ground—or in the cheapest Bates-like motel this side of the Mississippi. There’s plenty of fire food, especially bacon. And in the morning you’ll probably hear someone yelling, ‘Come and get it! Only half a pot of coffee left and three strips of bacon!’ And don’t think Hollywood. There’s a lot of fun, but there’s also suffering. And plan to put up your own tent.”
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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.
The Rei-ley and other private boats ferried the wedding party nearly 90 miles downstream to the beginning of Impassable Canyon, where towering granite walls funneled the water through high-consequence 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 cabin high on the rim of Impassable Canyon, where he lived above the river, kept a garden, hunted game, did some prospecting, and lived largely on his own terms. He constructed a series of homemade log ladders that he strategically placed to allow him to descend nearly a thousand feet below his cabin to a small shack he had built along the river’s edge.
He was “the archetypal hermit, the genuine thing,” wrote Cort Conley in Idaho Loners, with “a garden that looked like an exhibit at a state fair.”
Conley quoted from diaries of people who had met Parrott in the 1930s: “Says he used to go two years without seeing anyone, but now hunters disturb him every few months... Used to go seventy miles for supplies, and now goes ten miles to CCC camp and bums a ride to town... Don’t like radio. Would rather hear the coyotes howl.”
An impassable canyon and a solitary hermit might not seem obvious symbols of wedded bliss. But the wedding party’s destination lay up Nugget Creek, at a hidden grotto a quarter mile from the Middle Fork, where a waterfall spills from the cliffs above. On a hot day, it’s a perfect refuge from the summer heat: green, cool, quiet. It’s also a wonderful place for a wedding.
The wedding party left a bottle of champagne behind a log for a group rafting a week later. When friend Joe Crowly discovered it, he took a swig and blew carbonation from his nose and mouth. Some of us saw it as the penalty for missing the ceremony.
The wedding marked my debut as a mail-order minister—thanks to Greg Harley, 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. Just thinking of me as a minister caused hysterical laughter among some of the 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.
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We’ve certainly aired it enough times, in Outdoor Idaho promotions and in numerous shows: two women fighting against a river that wanted to roll their raft like a pop can. The current had pinned the 15-foot boat against a boulder in 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.
That’s when Ann Joslin and Susie Shannon did the one thing that saved them. They climbed upward, bracing their feet on the sinking tube. They were doing the one thing that keeps a pinned boat from flipping: putting their weight exactly where the river least wants it.
Outdoor Idaho viewers who were watching the video for the first time had no idea what would happen next. Perhaps even the raft itself was trying to decide. 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, both options seemed possible. And then the river made a choice. Almost casually, the boat eased down the face of the granite boulder and rejoined the river, to the applause of fellow rafters preparing to pull them to shore. The women had outsmarted another Middle Fork rapid and were rightfully proud of their accomplishment.
What the TV audience did not see or hear during all this was me on shore, yelling to the videographer on the bluff to “Keep rolling! Keep rolling!” while other boaters in our group were rushing downstream to rescue the women.
Television viewers didn’t hear 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.
Friend 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, near our campsite for that evening. He had been “running sweep,” and by the time he arrived at camp, we already had the camera positioned to capture footage.
Jim couldn’t have been pleased seeing us so close to him, gathering wide shots and close-ups, for almost a minute, until he eventually freed himself, rather elegantly, at that.
“I was outsmarted by the rapid,” offered 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, bad rafting makes great television, especially with Outdoor Idaho, and that increases my chances of making it into the show, instead of winding up on the cutting room floor.”
The Middle Fork has always been good to me, which may explain why I like it so much. I understand the risk of publicly praising something you love. The Forest Service had a tight clamp on daily numbers, and I wanted to show our audience why Idaho is such a grand and wonderful place, worthy of affection so long as we treat it properly.
Every river guide has a favorite Middle Fork rapid: Velvet Falls, Hell’s Half Mile, Haystack, House of Rocks. My personal favorite is Powerhouse, a half-mile stretch of continuous whitewater, demanding full concentration to avoid the rocks, ending with a high-speed move that drives boaters hard toward a cliff wall. There’s a genuine sense of accomplishment in surviving Powerhouse unscathed.
We filmed “A Middle Fork Journey” during a low-water September shoot. For the hikers, Kay Johnson and Norm Nelson, it was an eight-mile descent, over two days. For the rest of us, the rafting distance to camp was twenty-five miles, a two-day float. Just as we boaters pulled into camp, the hikers appeared on the trail. That afternoon, everyone sat for interviews, and Pat Metzler created the illusion of multiple locations by how he positioned the backdrop.
Our program highlighted cultural resources, including ancient pictographs by the Tuka-Deka (Sheep Eater people) and the effects of wildfires. In the program was also rare footage of early river runners and giant Chinook salmon from the 1930s.
Few people have rafted the Middle Fork more than outfitter Jerry Hughes, who told us: “There is probably no other river in Utah, Oregon, and Idaho that combines as many neat characteristics as the Middle Fork. 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.”
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Every whitewater enthusiast knows Lochsa Falls: the massive rolling waves, the cold, pushy water, the way the rapid seems to wait patiently for mistakes. We set up just downstream of the falls, close enough to feel the spray, ready to document rafters and kayakers as they streamed into view.
Right on schedule, the river delivered. About every third raft or kayak flipped directly in front of the camera. Before long, we could read the water well enough to spot trouble early: an approach just a little off, a line taken at the wrong angle. The boaters didn’t know it yet, but in that instant they had made themselves famous.
One group of rafters, clearly determined to secure their place in an Outdoor Idaho program, clustered at the very back of their raft, virtually guaranteeing their fate. When they hit the big wave, the raft executed a flawless backward flip, depositing everyone into the river and sending them swimming for the closest eddy. We got it all on video. Their dream had come true.
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Nothing has done more to showcase the beauty of the Owyhee Canyonlands than the cameras of Outdoor Idaho. We started early, back in 1991, with a program called “Spring Fever.” Our trip leader, Phil Lansing, was eager to show the world the quiet wonders of the East Fork of the Owyhee River.
At the time, that gentle stream was under threat from an ill-conceived proposal by the U.S. Air Force. Their very first proposal called for dropping live ordnance. Air Force officials backed off that fairly quickly, but conservationists continued calling it a “bombing” range vs a “training” range. “The reason we did that,” one conservationist told me, “is that it pissed off the proponents and stirred up opposition to their proposal.”
So it was more a publicity stunt than a literal threat, since the only things falling on animals and rafters would be wind streamers, although several opponents of the bombing range said the planes also dropped flares and bundles of aluminum chaff to jam missile guidance.
Referring to it as a bombing range also angered then governor Cecil Andrus, who did not want Idaho to lose the Air Force base to another state. That concern mattered little to conservationists, who argued the range could—and should—be moved elsewhere in the desert. In the end, that’s what happened.
From Outdoor Idaho’s perspective, the controversy also marked our first journey down a canyon river by canoe. That canoe trip, followed by a four-day raft trip down the Bruneau River in 1993 for “Desert Chronicles,” cemented our growing love affair with desert canyons.
Dr. Keith Taylor, considered by many to be the first person to run the Jarbidge-Bruneau River in a kayak, and raft builder Alan Hamilton of AIRE led the Bruneau trip. Together, they guided us through the canyon while offering a historical perspective that few could match.
Neither one of those trips was an outfitted trip. The same was true of a lower Owyhee River excursion. It’s a trip that still makes me smile.
Just before we reached camp for the night, above Class IV Montgomery Rapid, a rattlesnake attempted to climb aboard the Rei-ley. Apparently, yelling at a reptile intent on boarding a raft is completely ineffective. It takes a well-timed swat with an oar to persuade the snake that the brown river isn’t so bad.
The next morning, Montgomery rapid awaited. We were still working on our first cup of coffee when Jim gathered everyone around. We knew something important was coming because he was on his hands and knees, stick in hand, drawing in the sand. It took a moment to realize he was sketching the rapid, his version of a pre-run briefing.
The wind was howling as he explained the best line for us to take. We appreciated the tutorial, though at the time we figured the rapid couldn’t be much worse than the sandstorm raging around us.
Jim would often bring his dog, Asia, on some of our river trips. We realized early on that she was no ordinary dog. Having been taught not to pee in Jim’s boat, Asia would wait until another raft got too close, at which point she would jump onto that boat, respond to Nature’s call, and then jump back into her boat.
Asia was apparently not listening to the Montgomery rapid tutorial. Once we pushed off, a few of us noticed a small orange shape drifting downstream, nose barely above water. Asia was usually a master at riding high on the back of the raft, but a large bump had knocked her from the raft. We yelled at Jim, but it wasn’t until Asia floated past him that he realized his dog was doing better in the Class IV rapid than he was.
Fortunately, the small-dog life vest Asia was wearing kept her afloat enough for a safety kayaker to rescue her at the bottom of the rapid. For the rest of the trip, Asia paid closer attention to upcoming waves.
Back at the station, when Pat Metzler began editing the segment for our 1997 “Path Less Traveled,” we discovered our microphone had captured more wind than voice. For continuity, we needed usable audio of Jim explaining the rapid in the sand. We called him and explained our dilemma. He wasn’t too concerned until we told him he’d have to come into the station to relive that moment with the stick.
We were on deadline, so we let Jim watch the footage only once. Then we ushered him into the audio booth and directed him to start talking. “Just relive the moment,” Pat advised. “You can do this.” The result surprised all of us. We had salvaged a scene shot in a windstorm, twenty miles from civilization, and no one could tell the difference. It was unsettling how easy it was.
I remember thinking, if we can do that with the barest equipment, imagine what Hollywood does every day as a matter of course. Never trust movies or television, I told myself, though I suspect I already knew that.
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It was when colleague John Crancer hooked up with outfitter John Barker of Barker River Expeditions that things notched up tenfold.
John Barker’s escapades on the rivers of the Owyhee Canyonlands were legendary. One of them we managed to capture on video.
In fact, I consider it the most exciting 20 seconds of river footage Outdoor Idaho possesses. There would have been more, but in all the chaos, videographer Chuck Cathcart had taped over the scariest part of the river disaster. As you read John’s account, it’s understandable how a mistake like that could occur. What video we do have made it into several of our programs and is still talked about today.
John Crancer remembers that trip well. In fact, I doubt he’ll ever forget about the rockslide that temporarily blocked the river, creating a rapid through a narrow chute.
Unlike other canyon trips, getting to the put-in of the Jarbidge River is the easy part, on decent dirt roads that wind along the Idaho-Nevada border. Like all the canyonlands rivers, the Jarbidge “window” is transitory: here today and gone in two or three weeks, depending upon the snow level in the mountains.
This is truly a secret place that few will ever visit. It compares favorably with Zion National Park, with narrow canyons in some places as deep as 800 feet. The boats for the excursion need to be special and small, for tight, technical maneuvering.
For this Outdoor Idaho trip, the current was satisfactory, so the first day on the river involved a steady whitewater flow of tight turns and obstacles to reach the first camp. John recalls that first night of the five-day trip. “Lying in our tents in the middle of the night we heard a distinct, low rumbling downriver. It would be an ominous harbinger of things to come.”
The next morning, after two hours of uneventful rafting, the group reached a slack-water pool. “This is not supposed to be here,” Barker remarked.
What they soon realized was that the rumbling the night before was a massive rockslide that temporarily blocked the entire flow of the Jarbidge. By the time they had reached the slide, the river had broken through to form a narrow, extremely rocky rapid on river left.
“The rest of the channel was filled with huge boulders,” recalled John, in a conversation with me after the trip. “We would have to portage most of our supplies and then try to line the rafts through the jumble of rocks and rushing water. While our first boat was gingerly guided down the channel, the second boat didn’t fare as well. Instead of staying in the churning chute, the boat bounced right and quickly became lodged in a narrow crack between two huge boulders. I thought to myself, we are never getting that boat out!”
But Barker seemed unperturbed. Apparently, these were problems he’s used to dealing with. He swam across the river below the slide and scurried onto the rocks on the other side, then leaped his way to the distressed boat. He then skillfully removed the frame of the raft and began jumping intensely on the tubes that were trapped between the boulders.
According to John, Barker jumped and pulled on the boat for several hours. Then he and his brother attached some long ropes to the D rings of the raft. At that point the entire group started tugging from different directions. Slowly, the tubes began to wriggle in the rocks. Then, to great applause, the raft was freed, although much worse for wear. It then took tedious patching and repairing to resurrect the craft into something that would float.
But before they could get all the gear and passengers back onto the water, they still had two more rafts to transfer past the slide. They lined the next boat through the carnage, something that was time-consuming and tricky. By now, hours had passed, and the group was running out of daylight.
“This is where outfitter Barker really surprised me,” laughed John. “He made the bold decision to get the last boat through by running the rocky waterfall that was the channel. To me, it seemed even crazier than his mid-river raft rescue.”
Crancer and the others all watched in amazement as the outfitter bounced from boulder to boulder and careened down the rushing chute. Incredibly he reached the calmer waters below the slide, unscathed and upright. Between that run and the miraculous raft rescue, they could now continue their expedition down the Jarbidge.
The group still hadn’t gotten to the one mandatory portage: the un-runnable Class VI Jarbidge Falls. It’s a strenuous portage, but the guides had successfully hauled the other boats and gear around the falls and were waiting for John’s boat.
Here’s his version of what happened next. “All the other boats were already securely on shore below the falls. Other rafters were stationed above the falls, waiting to catch our lead rope and pull us to shore for the portage. As our raft approached, one of my other boatmates, who was an older, retired guide, unfortunately completely short-armed the throw.
“As our crucial lifeline swirled in the water, we swiftly floated past the takeout above Jarbidge Falls. I still remember the guide on the oars yelling, ‘Well, I guess we’re going to run it.’ Nobody runs Jarbidge Falls.
“Before long, we were in a maelstrom of rocks and whitewater. In what seemed like slow motion, the violent waves began to flip our boat. My fellow passenger up front was the first in the water. He was followed by the oarsman, who frantically grabbed the trailing rope, to no avail. I was the only one left in the boat.
“I don’t know how, but mid-flip I was able to leap from the capsizing raft onto a large boulder in the middle of the raging rapid. The rushing water quickly pinned the raft sidewise on the same boulder.
“John Barker responded quickly. Now on the shore, he jumped into the water and swam across the swift current below the falls to reach the far side of the rapid. There, the retired older guide was clinging to a rock shelf and the waves were pounding him. He was in need of a quick rescue. Barker hopped over jagged rocks and pulled him out of the water. Rescue one was complete.
“The oarsman had somehow escaped the worst of the rapid and popped up in the river. Other guides on shore threw him a lifeline and pulled him to safety. Rescue two accomplished.
“Back on the boulder, about ten feet from shore, I was wondering how I was going to get out of this mess. Barker scrambled to a ledge well above my boulder. Over the din of the rushing water, he yelled that he was going to get a running start to hurtle the channel between us. He yelled that I should catch him as he landed.
“I braced the best I could to get ready for the flying Barker. I was thrilled when he made the jump and didn’t knock us both off the rock and into the rapid.” As John is telling the story, I’m thinking how fortunate I was to miss that trip! The men onshore now attached Barker’s rescue ropes to the pinned raft and caught more ropes hurled to them from the shore. Once in place, the rest of the party pulled in unison, trying to free the pinned boat. After several excruciating attempts, the raft flopped into the water upside down, but it was held in place by the ropes.
John continued with his story, but the smile on his face had disappeared as he re-lived the experience. “I needed to jump from the boulder to the bottom of the raft about six feet away. This was a one-shot deal. For Barker, no problem. For me, hurling my 200-pound body through the air was a bit of a challenge. But summoning my best leaping ability and with a good dose of adrenaline, I jumped. Flying in slow motion superman style, I landed spread-eagle on the wobbling bottom of the boat.
“Now all that remained was to pull the boat and me to shore. With the muscles of the entire group straining, the raft slowly edged toward dry land. Finally, after great exertion I reached the safety of the shore. We then floated the raft back toward Barker and the boulder and repeated the drill.”
Whew! The men had tested the fury of Jarbidge Falls and had survived. After a few repairs to the rafts, they were on the river again. The rest of the journey was uneventful, with no further complications or excitement. And they did not mind that at all.
Not surprisingly, outfitter Barker doesn’t use footage from that particular Outdoor Idaho adventure to lure customers to his outfitted trips. But for my money, I’d happily travel with someone who can handle the worst Mother Nature throws at him, turn it into a grand adventure, and still bring his passengers home, relatively unscathed.
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Idaho is defined by its rivers. There is something for everyone. Rivers like the Jarbidge demand total focus; their challenge and unpredictability tap a primal human urge for adventure and exploration.
The rush of adrenaline is certainly part of the appeal. But adrenaline isn’t the whole story, and it doesn’t begin to explain why river running has become the fastest-growing segment of Idaho’s outfitting business.
The word I use is awe. It’s the kind of awe that comes from full immersion in an extraordinary landscape, far from pavement, traffic, and skyscrapers. It’s a mindfulness that sweeps away mental clutter and daily worries, gradually syncing the body’s rhythms with the river and the canyon walls.
Every outfitter will tell you it takes at least three days for the transformation to begin. I don’t think that’s just a sales pitch for a longer trip. They’ve simply watched it happen too many times to doubt it.
Who knew an Idaho river could be such a powerful agent of change?
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