Approaching the Sawtooth Mountains outside of Stanley, Idaho.
How do you fill the gap created by not posting for five months? Simply buck up and get on with it, is what I have come to realize. With that, I will jump from the lush jungles of Ecuador of my last posting, to the alpine setting of the Middle Fork of the Salmon.
For many years now we’ve been running two trips on the Middle Fork Salmon in Idaho, with ECHO providing excellent raft-support. Our trips start June 25th and July 3rd. These late spring dates allow for friendly, playful water levels and stable weather- key ingredients for a six-day camp trip
The upward trend of the MF gauge one week prior to our put in.
This year while our home state of California had a short-lived spring melt, spring in Idaho was dragging on and on! Cold temps and late-season snow delayed the run off. When it did begin to warm, the charted daily flows of the Middle Fork looked like the EKG of a recovering heart patient. Our concern, should the trend continue, would be high water -in the 7 to 8 foot range. We were getting mixed reports about the amount of snow left in the Sawtooth Mountains, the headwaters of the Middle Fork. We wouldn’t know for sure until we got to Stanley and saw for ourselves.
Much to our relief, and none too soon, we watched the gauge tip and the level begin to slide slowly downward. Arriving in Stanley, we were comforted by the diminished amount of snow we saw remaining in the mountains. Our put-in flow was a fast but manageable 4.44 ft on June 25th and 3.63 ft. on July 3rd. Previous years we’ve had anywhere from 1.88 ft. to 4.25 ft. This reminded us of two things; Idaho is unpredictable and normal isn’t normal anymore.
