Wednesday, August 13, I embarked on what was to become one of the best fishing trips my friend Randy McAllister and I have ever had. We have been fishing together since the mid 80's and both of us own shares in the Flat Rock Club in Island Park Idaho. We usually go there for 2 wks each summer to fish lower Montana, Yellowstone Park and the Henry's Fork drainages in eastern Idaho. Last year, my first full year in retirement, I drove out from Asheville to pick up Randy in Topeka and we fished some of the rivers in Colorado (Frying pan; Colorado; etc) on our way to Idaho. The extra flexibility my MDX provided had us looking for other options on our trip this year. Randy read in the Angling Report that an outfitter (Dave Hettinger Outfitting) wanted to explore some new water in the Chamberlain Creek basin of the Frank Church Wilderness in central Idaho. This would entail driving to Salmon Idaho, flying to a remote landing strip in the wilderness, horse packing into a base camp, and three days of fishing Chamberlain Creek. This would be somewhat of a challenge for me as I last sat on a horse about 15 years ago, was now 67, had a gimpy left knee and very little sense. So, of course, I agreed to go.
I decided to take it easy driving to Topeka and left early on the 13th so that I could make sure I would arrive at Randy's on the 14th. I only drove 11 hours that day, stopping in O'Fallon, Mo. No problem though as I never felt tired. This allowed me to eat lunch with my brother in law, Larry, in Lawrence, arriving at Randy's mid afternoon on the 14th.
Sharing driving responsibilities, Randy and I drove to Rock Springs, Wy. the 15th where we were in relatively easy driving distance from Salmon. While driving through Kemmerer, Wy on the 16th, we noticed a sign for the Fossil Butte National Monument and, of course, because Randy had previously collected a fossil fish from the Ulrich Fossil Gallery there, we took a brief detour and visited the monument and the gallery. It was fascinating looking at the exhibits of fossils recovered from the site and touring the Ulrich gallery where we each purchased a slab from the quarry to tease out our own Diplomystus or Priscacara (common Eocene fish fossils). Would have had many good pictures of this visit except that my photo disk developed a "formatting error" and I lost a few pictures. By the way, should you want to see any pictures of this trip, go to www.flickr.com under my site at "golfshrink" and have a look.
We arrived in Salmon, Idaho on the 16th, in plenty of time to scope out the Salmon River in that area so we could fish it on the 17th. You will note there are few pictures of the Salmon as fishing was not that great. Supposedly, the river had been "blown out" earlier that week and fishing was poor at best. We both caught a few small steelhead smolts and an occasional rainbow. The weather was hot so we opted to end our fishing day early (actually quit before dark!) and turn in, eager to start our wilderness adventure on the 18th.
Dawn on the 18th found us at the Salmon Airport, loading our gear on the single engine planes that carried us to the Moose Creek Ranger Station landing strip. The flight was uneventful except for heavy smoke in the wilderness due to wildfires (none close to our destination). Our pilot skillfully avoided the mountainsides as he banked in for our landing on the grass strip. There we met our hosts for the next 5 days: Dave Hettinger (outfitter); Bob (wrangler and our guide) and Nick (wrangler and guide for the other two adventurers, Barry and his son, Ian from Big Sky). You may have noticed that it was the "Moose Creek" Ranger Station, not the Chamberlain Creek Ranger Station. Only after we landed did we learn that the trail to Chamberlain Creek had been permanently blocked by a landslide and a bounder "the size of a Volkswagon" and that we would be fishing Moose Creek in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness instead. No less remote, but with a good hunter's base camp which included a cook's (Don) tent and stove; Cabela's two man tents; a portable cold shower; and a hole in the ground "outhouse tent"- pheew!!). Drinking water was supplied in large water bottles. Dave had indicated that we might want to bring in water filters or purifiers, which we did. However, we noticed that the crew drank straight from the small streams and that there were no filled water bottles packed in. Hmmmm... where do you suppose they got our drinking water - straight from the creek of course. We discovered this our second day and hadn't experienced 'Beaver Fever", so we didn't purify our water. The water was actually very clear and tasted great. Don, the cook, provided adequate camp food (chicken, beans, bacon, sausage and eggs, burnt biscuits, steak, canned corn and beans, pre-prepared pie, fruit cups, tapioca pudding cups, candy bars, cola drinks, beer, coffee which could be consumed with a fork (not actually that strong, but almost) and Tang, Tang, Tang, and did I mention Tang? We didn't lose weight or suffer any GI problems, so all was well on the nutrition front.
A 90 minute ride from the airstrip to the base camp confirmed that not only could I get on and off of a horse without a mounting block, but that my backside, surprisingly, conformed to the saddle and my horse's movements so that I was not even sore! After about 30 minutes into the ride, I asked the wrangler my horse's name - "Devil"... oh great! ... the least experienced rider on "Devil." Actually, he was a gentle riding horse with good response to rein commands and his name came from his tendency to snap at the person cinching him up. Fortunately, I did not have to saddle him. He also liked to eat, which we were told we should try to prevent while riding the trail. Horses are supposed to look at the trail, not lunch. We were often riding through virgin forest where the ferns were 3-4 feet high and it proved not possible to prevent Devil from snatching them. On one occasion, while I was letting him drink from a stream (we were supposed to allow them to drink) he subtly moved to a nice clear part of the stream to drink. Only too late, did I realize that there was also lush grass at the bank, which Devil quickly grabbed at the first opportunity. Oh well... I tried.
Once we had set up camp the morning of the 18th, we rode about an hour up the East Fork of Moose Creek where we caught many steelhead smolts and nice 12-14 in cutthroats on dries. We also caught 2-3 10-12 in rainbows, which, as we were to discover, were rare in this fishery.
After a good night's sleep, serenaded by the wolves, and a good breakfast, we rode a couple of hours up the North Fork of Moose Creek. Excellent water, several 12-15" cuts and many steelhead smolts, mostly on dries. Both Randy and I were having excellent fishing and we persuaded Bob, our guide, to join us in the catching. After wandering up the stream for a couple of miles, a stray thunderstorm, had us ducking for cover, after which we resumed our trek upstream for another half mile or so. Bob suggested, that in order to return to camp in time for dinner, we might want to climb through the brush up a 45 degree slope to the trail about 100 yards above us. Hmmm..... another one of those decisions that a 67 y/o gimp has to make in the wilderness. Of course I said, "No problem, let's go up". With Randy's pushing and my pulling up on vegetation, I actually made the ascent without too much difficulty. All this is to say that if you are not in good physical condition or have a cardiovascular or pulmonary problem, you have no business on this trip, a point which we clarified with Dave. I would recommend consulting a physician about taking such a trip and unless you could hike a moderate to strenuous mountain trail for 4 miles, you should stick to float trips. I am certainly glad I had been working out each morning for the past 16 months and walk and carry 18 holes of golf at least three times/wk.
The next morning (the 20th) while eating our sausage, eggs, biscuits and being fortified with coffee and Tang, Dave asked if anyone was up to a 3 hour horse ride on a fairly steep trail to fish a remote pool at Elbow Bend on the East Fork of Moose Creek. Randy and I quickly, without much thought, volunteered, "making our guide Bob's day". He had been hoping that someone would go on this ride as he had spotted several good pools which had largely been unfished. He stated that Randy and I would probably be only the second and third anglers to fish this pool ( he had evidently cast a few casts into them while transporting the horses and mules down the trail from the Selway River trail head). The previous two days were very hot (90's) and a front was coming through, triggering the thunderstorm on the 19th and resulting in intermittent rain on our 3hr ride through virgin forest. The forest was pristine with large pines, thick understory and with the exception of the occasional calls of birds, peaceful silence. Bob spotted a black bear moving away from our horses, but otherwise, there was little evidence of "quadrupeds" as Randy likes to call the larger wildlife. Bob had us lead our horses about a quarter mile during the middle of our ride to stretch our legs. This greatly alleviated the strain on the inner thighs, which was my only discomfort. There were several times when we traversed narrow stretches of trail with steep falloffs. Susan would not have liked this part of the trail ride. On one occasion, Randy's horse, Warren, balked and backed up quickly causing Randy to dismount to investigate the problem. The problem was a stick in the middle of the trail which closely resembled a snake. Randy was able to lead Warren close enough to the stick to remove it and continue. Otherwise Warren was heading back to camp. After about 3 hours we reached our destination, geared up and climbed down to one of the pools we were to fish. I was a little ahead of Randy, reaching the pool, and decided to give him first opportunity to fish the deepest stretches while I waded up to the riffle above the main pool. My first several casts with an Adam's parachute (#14) resulted in landing a few steelhead smolts and a nice 15", beautifully colored cutthroat. Randy had caught a few smolts and a steelhead from the main pool. I decided to fish deeper as the entry to the main pool dove around a deep corner along a rock wall. I asked Randy for one of his heavily weighted streamers and on the next 6 casts, caught and landed 5 steelhead over 15" with the largest around 22". Feeling "slightly" guilty at my good luck, I encouraged Randy to come to the head of the pool and fish with me. For some reason he had less luck than I and after he tried several casts with no luck, I resumed casting, figuring we might have fished out this part of the pool. Not only had we not fished out the pool but I kept landing fish after fish, all between 15 and 20" including one bull trout. Randy called my luck payback for a previous trip to the Lewis Channel in Yellowstone where he caught brown after brown while I, using the same flies in the same areas of the stream, caught only a rare brown. Fortunately, when Randy moved down to a pool below our "honey hole" he also landed about 20 cutthroats. Bob, our guide, also got into the action and we encouraged him to try a large mouse fly on the surface as I had hooked up and broken off a huge fish in the main pool. He landed a couple of the 20" cutthroats. We could probably have fished those two holes all day (as it was we fished them for 5 hours) and would have camped out if given the chance. However, we needed to head for camp as the weather was changing rapidly and we had a three hour ride back. This one day would have made the trip worthwhile and certainly made 6 hours on horseback more than tolerable. On our way out, the weather did break and we finished our ride into camp in a thunderstorm. A little nerve wracking as the storm broke as we were riding through some previously burned forest with plenty of "widow makers" ready to fall. We heard a few crash through the understory and past a few recent falls across the trail. All ended well with a warm meal and a dry tent.
That night I had the only mishap during the whole wilderness adventure. The previous two nights were hot and we slept on top of our sleeping bags. With the change in the weather, this night was considerably cooler. In the middle of the night, I decided to crawl into my sleeping bag, but the zipper stuck about 2 feet from the top. No problem... I would just inch up to the top of the bunk and slide in.... right?....wrong! The bunk attacked me!! Next thing I knew I was curled up between the head of my bunk and the tent side with my legs and the bottom of the bunk somewhere up above me in the dark. Randy, so rudely wakened, said he thought we were having an earthquake, but when he realized what was happening, he was so paralyzed with laughter he was no help! I was able to extricate myself with no injury except my pride and with a promise by Randy he "would tell no one" (a promise broken immediately at breakfast the next morning).
The 21st was a washout with steady rain the whole day. We finally ventured out about 3pm to fish Moose Creek near the camp. Caught a few steelhead smolts and a couple of 10-12" cutthroats and had a nice walk through the rain soaked forest. Our last night in camp, the sky partially cleared to reveal the crescent moon to which the wolves gave their respects.
On the 22nd we were greeted to cool, fresh air and clear skies for the 90 minute ride out of camp during which we saw some deer and a pileated woodpecker. I am constantly amazed at how lucky we are to have our creatures at home so unafraid of man that we see them often (sometimes too often when the bears raid the bird feeders) and how rarely the forest creatures expose themselves. I am certain they are there watching as I usually feel their presence but rarely see them.
Our flight back to Salmon flew over the Frank Church Wilderness we were originally scheduled to visit. We have no regrets, however, as our five days in the Selway Bitterrot Wilderness came to a close with excellent memories of a great fishing adventure few have a chance to experience in a lifetime.
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