Since my first float trip down Joseph Creek last year, I have looked forward to doing a second trip.  The first trip was in inflatable kayaks at 200 cfs.  It was a fun and challenging trip, but I wouldn’t want to float it lower than that and the access point we used was not the most convenient.  Since purchasing two NRS packrafts last fall, I have only taken them on one test trip on a short float down the Wenaha.  The packrafts held up OK and I thought a really good test for it would be Joseph Creek.  The water is continuous and challenging with a few rapids approaching class IV and what better place to hike in a small inflatable boat than a 2,500 foot deep canyon.

I wanted someone to go with me and I thought my chances of convincing Jeff would be best if I could get an inflatable kayak down ahead of time for him and then I would take a packraft for myself later.  Joseph Creek had its first spike on the charts in mid March and my wife, kids, and I headed out on a Sunday scouting trip to see if the road to the Warm Springs Trail was good.  I loaded up five packs figuring that Lottie, our 3 boys, and I could pack almost everything down so that if flows cooperated Jeff and I would have everything staged for a float out the following weekend.  I kept the kids packs super light for the hike down and they would only have water to pack on the hike out.

The day did not go according to plan and we weren’t to the trailhead until early afternoon.  If I went down with the kids I wanted plenty of time so they wouldn’t have to be pushed on the hike out.  I have taken them on lots of hikes building them up to steep ridges that gain close to 2,500 feet in a mile or two.  When we began a few years ago it was a real challenge for them, but now I often wish they would slow down a little.  I knew they would have no problem hiking into and out of Joseph Canyon.

The first good news was that the road to the trailhead was passable by car.  When we arrived I still wasn’t sure if we were going to make the hike down or not and I thought we should walk down the trail a little ways and have a look first.  There is a wire gate at the trailhead and Mason tried to open it in a very odd fashion.  I wasn’t looking until I heard him give a yell out.  Apparently he stood in the fence line with his face behind the piece of wood that was wired to the post.  Normally a person pushes on the piece of wood with one hand to put slack in the wire loop that is holding the gate closed.  Then you can take your free hand and lift the wire loop off the piece of wood and let the gate down.  Mason however grabbed the wire loop with both hands and began jerking it up over the piece of wood until the gate was free and smacked him in the face.

I did not notice what he was doing until he yelled and blood began pouring from his nose.  After he calmed down I had to deduce what happened from the clues he gave me.  We then took a moment to demonstrate the right way to open a wire gate so it doesn’t smack you in the face.  Of course an adult would not be hit in the face.  At my height, if I had opened the gate the same way I would probably be wounded severely as well, but the injury would have been inflicted on a different body part.

Mason at the top of the Warm Springs Trail

Now with a late start and Mason already bleeding badly at the gate, I did not feel it was the right time to take the boys on their first hike all the way into Joseph Creek.  I thought we should simply walk down the trail a little way and have a look around.  I forgot the camera after Mason’s bloody encounter with the gate and frankly missed out on taking some really good pictures.  We hiked a good two thirds of the distance into Joseph Creek anyway and other than a bit of mud, the trail wasn’t too bad.

We made our way back up the trail and I pointed out the wild onions that like to grow all over in the rocky soil.  After everyone gave them a taste test the boys decided they should pick a couple to take home.

Back at the car we all got in, everyone except Mason that is.  He stood beside the car waiting for his brothers to get in with his hand on the car body between the two doors.  Lottie got in and swung her door shut.  Mason then hollered out “OOOOWWWWWW!”  and gave his mother a disgusted look.  Lottie looked surprised and then asked, “What?  Is your hand in the door?”  Mason replied by saying  “YEEESSSSSS!”  Poor Mason.  He was getting beat up right and left.  At least he didn’t do somersaults down the hillside in the rocks.  After the throbbing in his hand subsided he was able to laugh about the beating he had taken that day.

Part Two: Staging for the float

After we got home I continued to watch the flows.  Jeff and I were both a little concerned and we decided we would choose 600 cfs as a maximum flow with no significant rain forecasted while we were supposed to be on the water.  During the intervening week it rained hard several days in a row and a lot of new white stuff was appearing in the mountains.  Then three days before our possible float the satellite that relays flow data for most Eastern Oregon rivers went out.  Normally this would not be a big deal, but Joseph Creek is remote, hard to get to, hard to get out of if something went wrong, challenging to float, and I didn’t want to kill my friend off if the flows had spiked up to 2,000 cfs and I convinced him to go with me even if we didn’t know the flow.

Jeff and I’s tentative float was for Saturday and Sunday.  The website with streamflow data said the satellite might be up by 10 am Friday morning.  The plan was for me to hike in gear Friday if the flows looked good and Jeff and I would hike in Saturday and float out by the end of the day Sunday.  Friday morning at 10 I still had no streamflow data but decided to hike an inflatable kayak in anyway.  I was worried that new snow on the road might not allow my car to get through so I decided to take my pickup.

There was 4”-6” of new snow and I was glad that I had my pickup and four wheel drive.  My car may have not made it to the trailhead.  I was feeling unsure about our trip but decided to start hiking down with the inflatable kayak and gear.  The snow disappeared after losing some elevation and soon the snow turned to a light drizzle and then to a beautiful sunny day.  I was now glad I did not turn around at the top.

Inflatable kayak on Paragon Pack at Warm Springs Trail

Scanning the canyon I saw a black spot that appeared to dark to be a rock or a tree stump.  I squinted my eyes and waited for the black spot to move.  It didn’t so I kept on walking, keeping my eye on the black spot waiting for the spot to reveal itself as the first spring bear in the bottom of the canyon.  After making my way down the canyon some distance the spot became slightly elongated and I knew it was a black bear for sure.  I began to curse myself as I had brought a telephoto lens with me but left it in the pickup telling myself it was too early for any bears to be out and it would simply be unnecessary weight.  Making my way down the ridge I had to make a decision: go down the right finger towards the bear, a path I had not taken which kind of looked like it ended at a cliff or take the finger of the ridge that led to the left where I knew I could get down and stash my kayak for the float out the next day.  I chose the sure path to the left thinking that I would swing back by the bear on my hike out and see if there was a  hikeable path and hopefully get close enough for my wide angle lens to get a recognizable picture of the bear.

Taking the path to the left meant I lost sight of the bear pretty quickly but my last sight of him had him heading down the creek towards me so I was pretty confident I was going to get a closer shot.  I found a nice nook on a small rock bluff just above the creek that felt like a safe distance off the creek from any hungry spring bears willing to taste test anything including an inflatable kayak.  It was also a long ways from the trail and no reasonable person would have any reason to hike there.  Feeling my gear was safe for the night I headed upstream to find my bear.

As I was walking up the canyon I was also scouting the creek trying to decide if the flows were OK for Jeff and I to safely float.  I was feeling pretty comfortable with what the creek looked like although I was up the canyon wall a little ways which made it look smaller than it really was.  About a quarter mile upstream of where I left the kayak a helicopter appeared out of the blue and buzzed the canyon.  There goes my chance of getting a picture of my bear I thought.  I had never seen any helicopters buzzing the canyon before so it seemed a little odd on top of it being annoying.  My bear was gone.  I walked straight across from where I had spotted him before but I am sure the helicopter made him run for cover.

Molly at Joseph Canyon overlook on Warm Springs Trail

I got home fairly late but there was a small blurp of data on the streamflow chart showing Joseph Creek to be flowing a little above 700 cfs.  The blurp was so small I couldn’t tell if the creek was going up or down, but it hadn’t rained hard for almost a day and the weather forecast looked especially good for the weekend.  I called Jeff and we decided floating Joseph Creek was a go.

Part Three: Floating Joseph Creek to the takeout . . . almost

Saturday was filled with many delays and we didn’t get to the trailhead until afternoon again.  There was still some snow at the trailhead but it disappeared quickly once we started down the trail.  My bear was in the same location and I was happy that I was going to get a chance at a good picture this time since I packed my telephoto lens.  I watched the bear as we hiked down and was going to head down the right path this time, but he meandered off up the canyon into some brush and never reappeared.

Jeff walking down Warm Springs Trail

Once to the creek I began to feel a little uneasy about my NRS packraft being able to make the float out of Joseph Creek at these flows.  Jeff was game though and we inflated his kayak and my packraft.  I felt a little jealous as I looked at the kayak.  I was feeling like I didn’t want to be the test dummy.  We started our float anyway and the packraft felt like a flimsy pool toy.  I was not feeling overly confident in my packraft and Jeff’s kayak was sailing through the rapids with ease.  I asked him if he would mind carrying my drybag until I got the feel of my packraft again.  We strapped my drybag into his inflatable kayak and away we went.  I felt much better without the extra weight of the drybag and began to feel more confident in the NRS packraft as well.  We only floated about 3 miles on Saturday before we had an hour of light left.  We had stopped and scouted everything very cautiously and portaged one corner that was blocked by three different log jams.  We made camp on a beautiful small meadow with several caves across the creek.

The first three miles below the Warm Springs Trail were a good confidence builder for my packraft and the next morning I strapped my drybag back onto the front.  To be sure, the first three miles were a nice warmup really.  The rapids became longer, harder, bigger and more continuous.  Jeff did a great job being the lead man and handled all of the rapids in his inflatable kayak.

Jeff kayaking Joseph Creek

The two other write-ups I have read on floating Joseph Creek call it up to class IV or approaching class IV.  The two days we were on the water the creek was running between 650 and 700 cfs and there were a couple tough spots to be sure.  The first bigger rapid is below the first beaver pond.  The pond is somewhat natural, but the beaver has certainly helped maintain the pond.  There is a big boulder midstream and last year I remembered it having a log resting on it blocking one side.  I scouted downstream and found there was a clear path but was not comfortable taking my packraft through it.

The NRS packraft does not have a selfbailing floor like the inflatable kayak and does not have a sprayskirt like some packrafts.  As a result I had to pull over often to dump the water out.  This first rapid was big enough and long enough that I thought I would be swamped and sunk by the end of it so I portaged and Jeff ran it.  Jeff handled it like a pro in his IK.

Jeff kayaking Joseph Creek

The rapids in the lower canyon are continuous class III with few breaks and as mentioned before, some of the rapids are in the class IV range.  The alder and birch trees that line the bank are often whipping you in the face as well and wood is a constant concern.  We eddied out in the trunks of the birch and alder multiple times because we could not see what was coming next.

There was a second smaller beaver dam with a pretty tough spot through flooded trees.  The main current was on river right with a narrow chute.  The chute had a rock wall on the right and tree trunks angling and pushing you into the rock wall to the right which lead to a boulder and big hole that was almost unavoidable.  The chute was narrow enough that getting a paddle in the water would be difficult, especially with low lying branches.  You might be able to navigate through the tree trunks on the left and come in below the narrow chute.  I scouted first and then Jeff and I paddled close to the bank on the left and got out and walked our boats under some trees back to the main current around the beaver dam.  This was the only spot Jeff portaged besides the trio of log dams upriver.

From this point there were no complete barriers and Jeff and I paddled the rest without portaging.  Beware though, below the second beaver dam is a tough rapid.  You come around a corner where there are big waves in the center, big jagged rocks on the left and tree trunks on the right.  The worst part is how low the branches are.  And even worse is that there is a big branch that can rip you right off your kayak or packraft.  I vividly remembered this spot from last year as it was challenging even at 200 cfs.  At 650 cfs I came around the corner and was being pushed towards the jagged rocks.  I paddled hard to the right to avoid the rocks and went slightly too far.  I tried to recenter down the chute to avoid the tree trunks I was heading towards on the right.  I managed to correct myself and stay in the middle but not in time to get my body and kayak paddle laid flat to avoid the big branch.  The small branches tangled my arm and paddle as I tried to lay down and the big branch caught me and nearly threw me out the back of my packraft.  Jeff told me he didn’t get quite low enough either and took a good blow to his helmet which cracked the plastic.  There was also a tree that was mostly fallen but not so low that you couldn’t go under.  This tree will probably block the creek this year or next.

Joseph Creek is beautiful , but tough and challenging to float . . . especially in a packraft.  I was paddling much harder to get the packraft through the same water Jeff was taking the inflatable kayak.  The packraft was filling up constantly so I was working even harder to find the least splashy paths in hopes I could make it a few hundred feet further before I would have to bail out my packraft again.  The more water you get in the packraft, the worse it responds making you work harder still.  NRS is supposed to be coming out with a spray skirt this summer and that would make it much better.

Grant packrafting on Joseph Creek

Our takeout was at the Chief Joseph Wildlife Area just across the road from the old schoolhouse.  My GPS said it was 21 miles from our put in at Warm Springs to our takeout at the Fish & Wildlife parking area.  I however only made it about 19 miles in my packraft.  At the mouth of Cottonwood Creek, Joseph Creek returns to civilization and a public road.  I could see the bridge just a few hundred feet ahead of me when my packraft began to lose air and sink.  I paddled to shore but couldn’t get off the creek because of the blackberries.  Jeff took my drybag and I laid on the packraft and kicked downstream occasionally touching the bottom until I could see a path through the blackberries and to the road.  One good thing about the NRS packraft is that there are two main chambers, an inflated seat, and an inflated floor that doubles as an air mattress.  With only one tube going flat I was able to ride it down downstream to a better takeout spot.

Jeff paddled downstream to our vehicle and I began walking down the road.  There were a few people riding 4 wheelers that didn’t seem to be bothered by me packing a limp packraft and zoomed on by.  Then a rig or two passed.  I then passed two men standing beside their pickup and trailer who were waiting for the other people on their four wheelers.  They laughed at me and asked where my patch kit was.  Now I did have a patch kit, but with only a few miles left I didn’t want to take the time to patch the raft.  Walking was simply faster.  I explained this to them and kept on walking.  After walking a mile and half in my drysuit, a young man who had been hiking offered to give me a ride the last half mile.  Thank you unnamed person.  I am glad there are some people with common decency still.  It does not bother me to walk.  I like walking, but it does bother me that many people are selfish enough not to offer to help.

Now the embarrassing part.  With my packraft inflated in my living room, I can’t find a leak anywhere.  There are two small valves on the inside of the packraft that you can use to top off the air chamber.  The valve must have opened just enough to create a small leak.  When I had my back against the blackberry bushes on Joseph Creek and a rapidly deflating packraft in my hand I tried to find the leak but couldn’t quite tell where it was leaking from.  Instead of looking longer I made a quick decision to hand my drybag off to Jeff and us the remaining air to belly float downstream to a better escape route.  It goes without saying that if I had farther to float I would have got to a good spot and inspected the boat until I found the partially opened valve.  But with only a 30 minute walk to the van, I assumed walking would be much faster than locating a small leak and trying to fix it.

What can I say, the NRS packraft passed another major test.  It handled 19 miles of continuous class III water with a few rapids approaching class IV.  I would still be more comfortable in an inflatable kayak and I can’t honestly say that I want to float Joseph Creek again in the packraft.  I did it and the packraft made it, but I will probably try to get a kayak down there next time.  Class II water is much better for the packraft and does not require constant bailing out.

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Many people tie this fly big.  Very big.  I use to tie it on a 4x long streamer hook and up to a size 2.  Sure I could catch fish with it, but I hated casting it.  Over time I have moved down to a size 6 2x long nymph hook and I have not noticed any difference in how well the Double Bunny catches fish.  Now my flies take less room in the fly box (important for hike-in situations), the fly is easier to cast long distances, and it still catches lots of fish.

Part of the beauty of the double bunny is its simplicity.  A hook, a bead or cone if you want, some added weight if you want, two strips of rabbit hair, and a little flash is all that is needed.  My favorite color combination is grey on top with white on the bottom, but I will sometimes tie other colors as well.  Don’t be afraid to try many different color combinations.  They all seem to work, I just personally think grey over white works best.  There is a good possibility that I think that because I fish grey over white the most, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Now to strategy.  I will often dead drift the double bunny through a good spot first.  If that doesn’t catch the fish I see or the fish I think should be there, I will cast again and twitch the fly intermittently.  The Double Bunny rides upright with no tension, but when you apply some tension to the line in the form of a twitch–the fly rotates until it is upside down.  Twitching the line makes the fly rotate back and forth like an injured or dying baitfish.  Nothing says dinner to a big fish better than a white belly turning towards the sky and struggling to remain upright.

If that fails, strip the fly hard and fast and then pause.  This is a good tactic in those slow deep pools where you imagine a lunker is lying at the bottom.

The last way I fish the Double Bunny is by swimming it.  Sometimes this means guiding it across current between rocks.  It is always fun to watch a fish come out of his hiding spot and give chase.  Just don’t set the hook too early.  Let me repeat that, DONT SET THE HOOK TOO EARLY!  Inevitably we all set the hook too early at some point in time and pull the fly away from the fish before its mouth has finished closing around the Double Bunny.  But the excitement was worth it; don’t worry you will get another chance.

Another way I like to swim the fly is by casting upstream, allowing my fly to sink, mend upstream so your flyline is upstream of your fly.  Then slowly apply a small amount of tension to your Double Bunny so that it begins to swing out of the current towards the surface like a rising trout.  This often triggers a strike from a bigger fish waiting nearby.  If the nearby big fish is not enticed mend back into the current letting your fly drop deeper and move back into the current and repeat the process until you are through the run, pool, or pocket water.

The important thing to remember is that if you are not catching fish, change something.  Are you fishing deep enough?  Perhaps adding a couple of splitshot 12 inches above the Double Bunny will do the trick.  Are you dead drifting and nothing is reacting?  Start fishing your fly actively.  The fish may need to see a fleeing baitfish to get energized.  If you have been stripping your fly and not catching anything, slow your retrieve down or even try dead drifting.  When Chinook begin to decay and die, a dead drifted Double Bunny is often all that is needed.  There are many right ways to fish the Double Bunny, enjoy them all!

At the end of our rafting season last year we decided to buy two NRS packrafts to try out and if they held up to my use we would rent them out at the store.  I never had a good opportunity to test one out last fall but with last Sunday promising good weather and the need to pick up a rented raft in Troy at the end of the day, I thought there was no better time to hike up the Wenaha with an NRS packraft for a trial run.

Jeff joined me as co-test pilot which gave me a much better opportunity to get some picture taking done as well.  We headed out early and arrived at the Wenaha camping area near Troy mid-morning.  With the two NRS packrafts we had picked up a pair of NRS Paragon Packs.  The Paragon pack is a backpack harness system that allows you to attach a drybag and paddle to it.  After putting the packrafts, inflation bags, lunch, and a few odds and ends into our drybags we cinched them into the Paragon packs and began fishing our way upstream.

The Paragon packs worked well, but it felt like it was a little undersized for my frame.  It worked well enough and I was pretty comfortable fishing my way upstream with it for most of the day.  If a person had a good pack that fit them well, they would probably be better using it and carrying a big enough drybag that the pack would fit in, or simply strap the empty pack to the pack raft and let it get wet.  In most situations you would not need to use the pack once you are to the river anyway, so it wouldn’t really matter if it became wet during the float back.

The day was beautiful and warm and I had dressed with too many layers.  The Wenaha had lost its crystal clear quality and gained a slight greenish blue hue from snowmelt.  It was not too high to wade and Jeff and I fished our way upstream a couple of miles.  We were both recovering from colds and not 100% healthy so we were not pushing it.  We were simply enjoying the day out on the river.  I could have been perfectly happy to walk up the canyon with my camera and then blow up the raft and float back to our vehicle.  It almost felt like an early summer day it was so nice.

Jeff spotted a bighorn sheep appear on the skyline and I got out my long lens to try and capture a few pictures.  After a few minutes of watching the sheep a hiker appeared on the trail above us and the sheep ran out of sight.  We decided it was getting close to time to inflate the boats and head back so we walked part way up the ridge to the trail to see if we could spot the sheep for some closer pictures and then walked upstream to Dry Gulch so we would at least have 3 miles to float back in the packrafts.

From the time we opened our dry bags to begin setting up the rafts until we had them inflated, on the water, and our gear lashed down and ready to go was a mere 20 minutes.  I thought that was pretty good for our first time.  Directly downstream was a short wave-train and it felt a little odd having the drybag lashed to the front of the small pack raft.  To be honest, when I hit the first wave the drybag began to come my direction and I wasn’t sure it was going to stop.  It did of course and the packraft handled the wave fine.  We zoomed past the next couple miles getting a feel for the small rafts.  Less than a mile upstream of the parking area was a small rapid that I thought would be a good test for the packrafts and a good photo opportunity as well.

Grant packrafting on the lower Wenaha

We beached the packrafts and Jeff got in position to take some pictures.  I honestly was not sure if the pack raft would handle the rapid.  I had a small nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it might fold in half and sink when I hit the wave.  But I was wearing a lifejacket and the river was wade-able a short distance down from the rapid so I wasn’t too worried.

I lined up the small NRS packraft and punched the wave head on.  I got a good soaking but the packraft handled it with ease.  I eddied out laughing and walked upstream to take pictures of Jeff as he punched the wave with his NRS packraft.  Again no problems.  I was feeling a little more comfortable with the packraft by now and I decided I would carry it back upstream and do it a second time with the drybag off the front.  With no drybag on the front the packraft became even more responsive and I ran the rapid a second time while Jeff took more pictures.

Grant packrafting on the lower Wenaha

Packrafts are fun.  I am going to give these little NRS boats a thorough testing this spring and summer.  The only downfall I see so far is the lack of a spray skirt, which NRS tells me they will have available later this year.  With no spray skirt and splashy water, you will have to stop and dump the water out every couple miles.

The NRS packrafts passed their first test.  They handled a decent wave and did not pop running over shallow rocks.  So far so good . . .

Click Here to read about a multi-day NRS packrafting trip on Joseph Creek

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I have had cheap tents fill up with water like a bucket when it rains all night and flimsy ones that have blown over on me in the middle of the night, but I wanted something a little better for our first winter camping trip with the kids.  I do think slight hardships that the kids can overcome with a little effort build character, but I did not want to risk souring them to winter camping for the rest of their lives either.  Or for that matter endangering them since we would be miles away from any roads or other people.  Now the tent excuse would not keep us from going winter camping, but each Saturday in February the boys have been playing youth basketball.

Four or five days before February 20^th I realized that it was President’s Day.  Better yet our work load was such that I could also take the holiday off so Lottie and I quickly planned a two day getaway as soon as the kids basketball game was over early Saturday afternoon.  I was excited.  I had taken the boys steelhead fishing/rafting/camping last fall but my wife wasn’t able to go.  With two adults I thought I would be able to do a lot more picture taking, which I have come to really enjoy lately, and I might get a little more fishing in as well with another adult to help row and make/break camp.  Now don’t get me wrong, everyone has to help on our trips including the kids.  That is just part of being a family, but to be frank I can often do the things faster if I had simply done them myself rather than showing and helping the boys do it.

Saturday came and with it the basketball games.  We hadn’t been able to get everything ready but as soon as the games were over Lottie made a last trip to the store to get groceries for our trip while I loaded the pickup.  My wife called me from the store with good/bad news.  Someone wanted to rent a raft for a multi-day trip Monday morning, but that meant she would not be able to go rafting.  My heart sank a little, although there were times earlier in our relationship that I felt she slowed me down and got in my way, we have worked out our own way through trial and error how to enjoy hiking, camping, and fishing trips together.  Lottie has even joined me on multi-day hikes into and harder yet, out of Joseph Creek which many others would not be capable of.

Another variable I had to consider this time was myself.  My back had been going into spasms on a regular basis for a few days and I was on a regiment of ice and pain killers.  I was feeling slightly better but each night when I tried to roll over or get out of bed I was racked with pain as my back went into another spasm.  I decided I could do it if the boys were strong enough to help me carry the dryboxes and coolers.

We took a vote and the kids decided they still wanted to go on a rafting trip so we began to repack the pickup to adjust for one less adult and three less dogs.  I was perfectly comfortable taking three kids down the Grande Ronde in the middle of winter, but I didn’t want to worry about dogs as well.  At least not our Jack Russels.  I never have to worry about our border collie Molly, but the raft was already going to be a little crowded so we decided to leave the dogs at home.

We headed to Minam but still had to get a raft unpacked, inflated, and set up.  When I started rowing down the Wallowa I had less than an hour of light left.  We made it around three miles to the first camp site and as we began to unload the raft it was getting dark.  We had to get out our headlamps and made camp in the dark.  We hadn’t set up the new tent yet (a Kelty Hula House 6 which will be available to rent with rafts from Minam), but it was quick and easy even by the light of our headlamps.

With our tent pitched, dinner made, boys fed, we made our way into the tent and I taught the boys a card game.  Kolby, who is the oldest and often able to stay up the latest, began falling asleep not too far into our card game and we had to keep prodding him to wake up and play a card.  Once the hand was finished we decided it was time for bed since it was a 4 player game and one of the four players couldn’t keep his eyes open.

I had ordered a few nice sleeping pads from NRS that were nice and thick and sturdy with the thought that we will rent them out at Minam as well, but they didn’t show up in time for our trip.  Instead I used an older Coleman air mattress that had not leaked previously.  It started leaking that night, but not so bad that I was completely on the ground in the morning.  My back felt surprisingly good in the morning even with the half inflated mattress.  It had gotten down into the 20’s Saturday night, but I brought two sleeping bags for everyone and no one got cold.

Sunday we took our time floating the last 6 or 7 miles of the Wallowa and stopped to fish two spots.  I had watched someone hook and land a steelhead about two weeks earlier in a slot that I had passed over many times and not fished.  It is one of those spots that is easy to miss if you are not paying attention and is somewhat in the middle of the ten miles between Minam and Rondowa and I have spent less time fishing this section.  Having it brought to my attention, it was a good spot that the kids could fish easily as there was a shallow gravel bar and then a deep shelf just beyond it.  Long casts were not required here.

I slowed the raft down and then hopped out in the shallow gravel bar to hold the boat and let the kids out to fish.  I then waded the raft over to the bank and let them fish the slot.  They all fished it and then I took my turn and first caught a couple of rainbows and then hooked and fought a steelhead.  The boys decided they hadn’t fished the slot enough and went back to the top to give it another try.  No more success from the new slot was found and we headed down the river.

I didn’t stop the raft again until we were down the Grande Ronde a ways and it was getting close to evening.  This time we had enough daylight to pitch camp and just enough left over to fish the good looking run in front of our camp.  The kids gave up fishing quickly as they had been getting some fishing in as I rowed.  I however did not feel like I had even warmed up my casting arm and gave the run my full attention for the short amount of time there was still light.  Not long into the run I hooked and landed a wild steelhead on the Simple Egg pattern.  I tried to hand the camera to one of the kids to take a picture of it, but she got away before we could snap a shot off.  My success once again brought the kids attention back to the river and they decided to fish it a little harder.  I yielded the river to the boys and went to begin cooking dinner.

The night was getting colder and I knew the weather forecast had called for overnight temperatures in the low 20’s.  The boys wanted to make a fire and they had gathered what they called “firewood”.  I looked at what they had found and it looked to me like a small pile of kindling that would last 20-30 minutes at most.  I tried to explain the difference between kindling and firewood and they went off again.  Next they came back with a few pieces of sopping wet rotten wood.  And this is why it is often faster to do things yourself.  I went with the boys and picked good dry driftwood from the rocks that they could carry back to camp.  With a long enough walk upstream we found a good pile of driftwood that had collected during high water last spring and we had a good supply of firewood.

Winter camping on the Grande Ronde river

With dinner served the boys argued about the best way to roast a marshmallow and then showcased their different techniques.  Camping is good for kids.  Where else do they get to start their dessert on fire without the risk of burning down your house?  Winter is even better as there is snow surrounding your fire and it is hard to start a forest fire.

Monday morning the weather began to get very scenic with big heavy snowflakes.  After breakfast we all tried to get our frozen waders and wading boots on.  It was impossible.  We took our boots and waders down to the river and threw them in the shallow water so they would thaw out.  The waders thawed fairly quickly, but the boots were much slower to soften.

It was a cold morning and I had a good 26 or so miles to row out.  The boys fished a little but decided it was too cold.  I noticed Mason and Brenden were not wearing their gloves and I suggested that they put some on to stay warm.  I had supervised their clothes packing and had them bring two sets of gloves: a lighter pair for in the boat that they could manage to fish with and a heavy set of snow gloves for around camp or when they were not fishing.  They now informed me that they had left their gloves in the bottom of the raft all night.  Both sets, so the gloves were currently only capable of being blocks of ice.  I chastised them for a minute suggesting that the next winter raft trip they would listen to me and keep one set of dry gloves and perhaps bring the wet gloves up to camp to dry near the fire at night.

After I was pretty sure the lesson was learned (and I am never really sure the lesson is learned) I pulled the raft over and got out some chemical hand warmers out of my pack.  This helped, but they were still getting cold and after a while I pulled over and brought out my backup: Jeff’s propane heater.  That heater is great.  It is small enough that it fits into a dry box nicely and you can either screw a small green propane bottle into it or hook a hose up to it from a bigger propane tank.  I had brought one green propane bottle for quick warm-ups just in case someone went overboard and got wet.  Or in this case if they were just too cold.

The kids ate a little lunch crowded around the propane heater and pretty soon they were laughing and giggling like happy kids again.  The heater will shut off if it gets tipped over and I wasn’t sure it would stay on in the raft, but the kids carefully got in the raft with it and they had a new fun game: keep the heater steady enough to keep running and not so close it melted your clothes.  We went through several good sized waves and the heater never shut off and they managed not to melt any of their clothes.  The weather also began to warm a little.  Soon they were back to fishing and harassing one another if the other person fished too far into their section of water.

With three kids fly fishing in a raft it can feel a little crowded, but they did good at not getting in each other’s way too much and most importantly not hooking me as I was rowing.  They have gotten some practice at casting from a raft and yielding to each other if someone else has already begun to cast, but I was especially impressed out how well they did since this was their first trip using switch rods.  I built several switch rods this winter.  With five people who like to fly fish, I have to keep a lot of rods around now with a spare or two just in case one gets broke.  But the Grande Ronde is a good switch rod river too.  A single handed rod can feel a little limiting sometimes, but a good 7 weight switch rod can handle the distances without too much trouble.  The kids began to get the feel for casting two handed with just a few hints of instruction and they were covering the water much better than they have in the past with single handed rods.

I had planned everything just about right for maximum time on the water and we arrived at Powwatka bridge with about an hour of daylight left.  With the rowing, cooking, cleaning, making camp, breaking down camp, and keeping three boys in line . . . I did not get to take near as many pictures as I would have liked nor fished as much as I would have liked.   But we had a great time and soon I will have them trained to row good enough that I can get some fishing in on the boat as well.

Jeff has taught me a new trick and you can click the picture below for a photo gallery from the weekend.

Click on the picture to view the photo gallery

Grant kayaking the Wallowa: photo courtesy of Jeff

For those who are unfamiliar with the Grande Ronde and the Wallowa, most Grande Ronde trips start on the Wallowa River at Minam where there is enough flow throughout the year to float a raft.  Decent floating flows can often be had from late October through end of July and even sometimes into the beginning of August.  After floating on the Wallowa for ten miles the river joins the Grande Ronde.  At some point there was a functioning bridge and people could drive to Rondowa.  This is no longer the case and you must float (ten miles from Minam) or hike 3 ½ miles from the Palmer Junction access point.  We decided we would both float the ten miles and then hike the 3 ½.

When flows are high enough we will often do day trips from Minam to Powwatka bridge a distance of 39 miles, but it makes for a long day this time of year.

Jeff kayaking the Wallowa River

I bought a kayak dolly last year that I used to transport two kayaks five miles in to Joseph Creek.  Before we reached Joseph Creek the tires were pretty well destroyed.  I had bought new solid rubber tires since then and even purchased a different kayak dolly that was supposed to be “heavy duty.”  The new “heavy duty” dolly didn’t show up in time for me to take into the Wenaha so it has been sitting waiting for a test run.

Jeff and I planned on taking fly rods to fish, but as the morning came and our quick getaway wasn’t so quick, it was noon before we were actually on the water and floating.  We passed several bank fisherman at the Minam State Park and a few further down and saw several with steelhead on the line or steelhead lying on the bank.

I did catch a rare Wallowa River basketball floating just below the state park and Jeff and I tried to invent a new game that was a cross between lacrosse and kayaking.  We soon decided it was not quite warm enough to be throwing a basketball on the end of the kayak paddle when ice cold water was also being delivered with the basketball.  Abandoning our new game as quick as we started it, we didn’t stop to fish until we had covered 7 or 8 miles of our ten mile float.

I have built a few new rods this winter including a few switch rods.  Jeff had not had the chance to try one of them out yet and was trying to get the feel of casting two handed when I suggested he let me show him.  As he let the rod tip down and walked towards me the end of his line went under and he had a fish on.  I decided he was getting the hang of the switch rod since I merely had to suggest that I show him something for him to actually hook a fish and I waded back to the shore to grab my camera and play cameraman while he landed his fish.  Unfortunately he didn’t get it landed.  He hooked one more fish before we decided we had better keep moving down the river.  Near the bottom of the run Jeff noticed a bald eagle sitting in the top of a run which is just barely visible in the picture below as a small bump near the top of the standing snag in the middle of the picture.

Jeff steelhead fishing on the Wallowa River

I have become slightly obsessed with learning about photography over the last year hoping that I can begin to do a better job capturing the places I like to hike, float, and fish.  As luck would have it my latest “investment” in photography was a 1.7x teleconverter.  The teleconverter is a simple little device you attach between your lens and camera body.  The teleconverter more or less magnifies the image coming through the lens.  I have tried to take pictures of birds many times with little success in getting a presentable picture.  The picture I took below is probably my best attempt at an eagle so far.  Had I been on my game, a simple switch of my focus system would have tracked the bird with a focus point.  Next time I will do better.

Bald Eagle flying over the Wallowa River

Jeff and I made our way down to the Grande Ronde at Rondowa.  Although the Wallowa had been very clear the Grande Ronde was coming down from a snow melt binge and running brown.

Jeff and I broke out the kayak dollies, strapped the inflatable kayaks down, and began pulling them up the railroad tracks to Palmer Junction.  It worked OK.  I won’t say it worked great, but it worked.  The first small section of tracks had no snow and the wheels would go down between the ties and catch requiring a good pull to get them up and over.  I began hoping that there would be more snow to fill the hole in between the railroad ties.  I quickly got what I asked for and decided I did not like the snow any better.  The snow was simply more work to pull through and the wheels on my new kayak dolly are solid plastic which often tended to skid through the snow more than roll.  Next trip I think it is time to break out the pack rafts and see how easy they are to pack out.

As always, you can see more pictures on my flickr page here.  You can also look at pictures of all the trips I have done over the last five months that I have been too lazy to write about . . . or I mean too busy learning about photography to take time to write.  Perhaps I will have to begin simply putting up a few pictures when I don’t have enough time to do an actual write up.

Here I should say I have a good and understanding wife.  Or if not always understanding, at bare minimum an accepting wife.  She is always willing to go along with my plans, whether she knows exactly what I am up to or not.  And whether she understands my need to visit relatively undisturbed places to hike, camp, and fish in almost complete solitude, she never complains or tries to make me feel bad for loving the things that I love.  And the longer I go in life the more I understand that this trait, letting a person be who they are, is rare.

I took a four day weekend, giving me a day to hike in, two days to explore, and a last day to hike out.  It was labor day after all, at least that was the excuse I told myself to negate the nagging monkey on my back that told me I should work and be materially productive.

On Friday morning I drove with my wife and kids in the Explorer up the Lostine River in search of the Bowman trailhead.  We had never actually been up the Lostine.  Developed campgrounds always give me the impression of being . . . well . . . a little too developed and busy.  I go to the woods for simplicity, not for modern conveniences.  We were soon slowed down as we got behind some drivers that were much more comfortable on asphalt than gravel.  Feeling that 10 mph was a little overcautious I began to feel  a little irritated and wished the slow mini-van would pull over and let me find my trailhead.  The mini-van pulled into the trailhead and I was a little shocked at how many vehicles were there.

The actual trail was across the road from the overcrowded parking area so I drove on past to a wide spot in the road.  I pulled over and got my things ready there in the chaos that I am used to: three boys running around with three dogs.  After loading my pistol, turning on my GPS, and changing my footwear I told my wife to drive and I would get out at the trail so we didn’t have to brave the parking lot that I thought resembled Wal-mart.  She stopped momentarily, Molly (my border collie)and I jumped out and I said “See you in a few days.”  We headed up the trail as fast as we could trying to get away from the crowds at the parking lot.

I have frankly never seen so many people on a “wilderness” trail.  When I was travelling around the Northwest to rodeos we stopped a couple times on the coast at parks with trails and this is what it reminded me of; the city had come to the woods.  I am probably exaggerating a bit.  But it was a lot compared to what I am used to seeing, which is almost no one.

Near the top of the ridge there was a turn off to go to Chimney Lake and the traffic decreased substantially.  I guess a lot of those people just hike in there to see lakes.  I prefer rivers myself and my destination was many miles in the distance still.  After reaching the summit and heading down the other side into the Minam drainage I only saw one other group.  Once to the North Minam Meadows a man and woman on horseback went the opposite direction with two pack animals.

North Minam River

I had seen the North Minam Meadows for some time from the trail above.  Once I was at the bottom I dropped my pack and walked through the meadow to the creek.  The water was slow, smooth, and clear.  This looked more like a spring creek here than a high mountain river.  I walked up stream peering into the water for fish.  I spotted some small ones and as I continued along I saw slightly bigger ones darting in and out of mud holes.  These fish did not like being in the open water.  The water was slow and in many spots the river bottom was dirt with large and small holes in the dirt.  It was entertaining to watch small fish dart from one small hole into another only to be chased out by a larger fish that was already occupying that spot.  The fish were moving fast enough that I could not tell what species they were.

I turned around and decided I would walk downstream.  I saw a good sized pod of fish but they quickly spooked as I approached.  They swam downstream and regrouped.  I got down on my hands and knees and crawled through the grass so I could get a closer look.  I was having a hard time telling exactly what they were.  They were either brook trout or bull trout because of the light spots on a dark background, but their backs looked a little darker than usual, perhaps a little more dark olive in color than most bull trout I see.  After staring for some time I thought I saw some reddish color on their paired fins and dark marks on their dorsal fins indicating that they were probably brook trout.

Pod of trout in the North Minam River

I spooked them a number of times trying to get a closer look and when they all swam away I spotted a few nice 12” fish in the pods each time.  I should have walked back to my pack and strung up my flyrod to see exactly what species they were.  However I had a long ways to go still so I opted for simply leaving them alone.  I need to revisit this meadow someday to verify which kind of fish is in there.  I had hoped they were bull trout, but left a little downhearted thinking they were probably brook trout.

The trail from here more or less follows the North Minam River down to its confluence with the Minam River.  A short distance downstream I heard heavy water.  I went just a little ways off the trail to try and see what the sound was and I could get a partial view of a waterfall on the North Minam River.  I made my way through the fallen trees and thought I had better try and get a good picture of it, so I set my camera up on a rock and then a log since I have not been packing a tripod.  In the pool below the falls I spotted a fish that looked the same as the ones in the meadow and then I spotted another slightly lighter in color fish that I recognized as being a bull trout.  That reinforced my thought that the fish in the meadow were brook trout rather than bull trout.

A few more miles of walking and I was to the main trail on the Minam River.  It was getting close to evening by this point.  I had stopped and looked at lots of stuff, so it took me plenty of time to walk the 13+ miles.  Rather than walk the trail to find a campsite beside the trail, I walked through the fallen trees following the North Minam to its confluence with the Minam River.  Just below I found a nice sandy spot to pitch my tent.  I fished some dry flies near camp that night but did not stray far and did not find anything more or less than on my other trips into the Minam: I caught primarily smallish rainbows ten inches or less.

The plan for the next three days was to pack up camp each morning and wade and fish my way downstream with my pack.  When I felt like I had gone far enough for the day I would pitch my tent and make camp.

Saturday morning I packed up and began fishing my way downstream.  I primarily fished with an orange stimulator, but tied on a streamer or nymph when I got to a particularly deep run or pool.  The fishing continued very similar to what I had experienced on my other trips.  There are plenty of rainbows under ten inches willing to rise to a dry fly.  I was rather surprised that I did not see or catch any bull trout on Saturday when I fished the deeper runs and pools.

North Minam Falls

I thought the diversity of insect life was increasing quite a bit compared to my trip in the Elk Creek trail.  I was now seeing many stonefly shucks on the rocks near the waters edge and the number of cased caddis in the river seemed to be more abundant as well.  There were also some good hatches of small bugs that I did not see on the upper river.  I did see very small yellow stoneflies on the upper river, but here they were often thick when I shook a branch near the water’s edge.  I began to notice quite a bit of weed growth on many of the rocks near the edge.  I thought this was a bit unusual for a high mountain stream, but I would assume it is good for insect life and therefore should be good for fish.  In general there was more food for the fish and I had hopes of finding some larger trout with influx of more water from the North Minam and a more abundant food source.  The fishing was really pretty good, but I did not catch any fish over ten inches on Saturday.

The Minam is a beautiful river though.  It seems to receive almost no fishing pressure once you get away from the Minam Lodge and Red’s Horse Ranch.  I did not see a single person after leaving the North Minam Meadow until I got to Red’s Horse Ranch on Monday.

The Minam also changes character often.  You will fish a mile or two of nice gravel with runs and riffles, followed by ankle deep flats, followed by tumultuous boulder sections that just drop and drop never slowing down enough to create a pool or run.  The fast boulder sections do have fish in the pocket water if you take the time to work your fly through the best pieces.  Drag is a big issue in these sections as there are more currents then you can count.  Short casts are the ticket through these sections, allowing you to deal with 2-3 different current speeds rather than 5 or more different currents.

I was hopping along from boulder to boulder in one of these turbulent sections when I slipped and tried to break a piece of granite with my middle finger.  I apparently tried some sort of special karate move keeping all the fingers on my right hand straight and trying to drive my hand through the rock.  Unfortunately for my middle finger, it is the longest and bore the brunt of the force.  After looking to see if I broke my rod I simply laid there for a few minutes not wanting to look at my finger and trying to let the pain subside.  My hands look bad enough from the abuse they took riding bucking horses.  Several of my knuckles are large and stiff due to the buildup of calcium and cartilage.  My pinky on my left hand does not bend at the last joint from being broke and then fusing straight as it healed.  All I need is some more ugly half useless fingers I thought.

Eventually the pain died down to a throb and I tried to see if I broke my finger or just jammed it good.  The end of it looked a little bit like sausage and the joints didn’t want to bend.  Some people look at me funny when I take a drink with my left hand because my pinky won’t close all the way and often sticks out, now I thought I might also be flipping people the bird on a permanent basis with my other hand.  Happily my middle finger began to bend a little better after several days and sooner or later it should be back to closing easily.

Saturday I had made my way from the mouth of the North Minam River to a nice big meadow just above the Minam Falls.  It was a pretty spot and I decided there was no better spot to make my camp for the night, from my tent I could look a long distance upstream at a big open meadow and looking downstream was the Minam Falls.

I also wanted to see if the fishing was different below the falls than above the falls so I thought waiting to fish below the falls would help keep things clearer in my mind.  Besides the falls there are two remnant splash dams just downstream.  The three combined may keep some fish from accessing the upper river.  There were however lots of dead Chinook and their spawning redds above the falls, so Chinook certainly make it past in decent numbers.

I packed my Sierra Designs Origami tent which is basically a modern teepee.  If it isn’t too cold I have been pitching it with the sides about a foot off the ground which keeps the air fresh and allows me to see out in all directions.  After pitching my tent and eating my dinner I was simply standing around enjoying the evening when I noticed Molly acting a little differently.  She was catching the smell of something in the air.  She wasn’t growling, but there was definitely something up the meadow from us.  I began watching and a black bear appeared.  He was right on the edge of the meadow near the tree line and was walking behind some trees as he made his way towards us.  He did not see me although I could see him easily.

As he went behind a bush I tried to quietly duck down to get my camera and change out the lens.  I could still see him making his way down the meadow closer.  He finally passed behind my tent about 50 feet away.  When I tried to get a picture he saw me and took off at a run up the mountainside.  I didn’t even get one good picture.

It was nearly dark by that time so I crawled into my tent and did some reading by the light of my headlamp.  An hour after the bear sighting I heard something coming through the trees breaking branches as it came.  Molly began growling and I grabbed my pistol and rolled out from under the teepee tent with pistol and headlamp pointed towards the sound.  I couldn’t see whatever it was as it ran away down the meadow.  I stood up to get a better look but whatever it was wasted no time in leaving.  I decided I really liked having the tent setup a foot off the ground.  It made it really easy for me to roll out without fussing with zippers or anything and I could look straight out the direction the animal was rather than trying to get out a tent door and then peering around the other side of the tent.

Sunday I again packed up camp and headed downstream with my pack.  The section of river just below the Minam Falls is beautiful.  It has many pools and is channeled by granite bedrock on both sides.  I came across one piece of granite with grooves worn in it.  I was not sure if this was caused by being dragged along in a glacier or simply veins of a harder mineral that is wearing away more slowly.

The water below the falls had enough deep pools and runs that I fished a nymph and streamer most of the day and I began to catch a bull trout here and there.  I only switched to the stimulator a little throughout the day, but found the same kind of rainbow fishing as I had earlier.

Minam River Bull Trout

I began to see more basalt the closer I got to Red’s and I have to say it gave me kind of a warm feeling.  For some reason, the site of basalt ridges made me feel at home much more than the cold white granite peaks of the upper river.  I found a great place to pitch a tent a little over a mile upstream from Red’s Horse Ranch.

Molly at camp on the Minam River

Sunday I fished my way down to Red’s before hiking out to the Moss Springs trailhead.  The Minam is a beautiful river and rewarding in many ways.  It has fewer bull trout and fewer bigger rainbows than I thought there would be, but it has much to offer besides fishing for big trout.  The fishing is reasonably good, just not quite as good as a fisherman would like to imagine when he or she daydreams about a 50 mile wilderness stream with no road and primarily long trails leading to it.  I need to explore it more though.  There are a couple sections of canyon that I haven’t hiked and fished yet and I really need to try and get in here earlier next year so I can see the river from a different perspective.  Thus far I have only fished the Minam at the end of summer.  I will have to wait till next year to see if the early season offers anything different.

Pictures from this weekend

All pictures from Minam in 2011

Buck Creek Trailhead was not too hard to find, but my Eagle Cap Ranger District map didn’t appear to be accurate.  I am not sure where it went wrong, but the roads aren’t exactly like they show.  If you know about where you are going you will be able to find it though.

Molly (my border collie) and I arrived at the trailhead about 9:00 Saturday morning.  There were two men with about six pack mules and two riding mules trying to get situated for their start up the trail.  They seemed to be having a little trouble.  The first guy was mounted and waiting while the other guy struggled for some time out of sight behind the trailer.  I just kept hearing him cuss.  I didn’t want to get in the way of the guy with his string of mules on the trail so I pretended to look at my map and let them get on their way.

When he finally emerged from behind the trailer his gear was about as shiny and new as his pickup and trailer.  I hate to read a book by its cover, but this guy didn’t look real experienced.  But perhaps he just came into some money and was able to buy all new gear for himself and his mules and this was their first trip with the new gear.  Molly and I started on the trail after giving them some lead time and I was happy not to see the guy broken in the brush somewhere and his mules running off.  As a side note, my first horse was a mule, Minnie Pearl.  So I know how mules can be.

Minnie Pearl kicked me half ways across our front yard once when I was trying to crawl up into the saddle.  She was a small mule, but I was even smaller.  With one hand on the horn, I was trying to grab the cantle of the saddle with the other hand so I could pull myself up.  My hand slipped off and I probably groped her flank a bit.  She didn’t care for it and let me know with a quick kick to my belly which sent me sailing.  I was probably 6 years old or so.  Good lesson, don’t touch horses on the flank  . . .  or mules.

Minne Pearl was smart though.  My oldest brother Roy received her as a gift when he was 4 years old from my Grandpa Clark.  I am told that when Roy would ride her, mule and rider would do fine while my parents were watching.  Then when the adults went out of site, Minnie Pearl would walk behind the barn and sit down.  Now that is a smart mule.  I have a picture of my dad helping Roy onto Minnie Pearl on the Imnaha, probably on the ranch my other brother Monte was born on.

Dad, Roy, & Minnie Pearl somewhere near the Imnaha

Back to the present.  It seems that Buck Creek trailhead should really be called Elk Creek Trailhead since trail # 1944 is Elk Creek Trail and it goes all the way to the Minam River.  Unlike most of the trails that go into the Wenaha, this trail goes up and then back down before getting to the river.  So the trailhead starts out around 5,500 feet, climbs to 8,000 feet at Burger Pass, and then drops to the river at about 4,900 feet.  The hike in only gains 2,500 feet compared to the 3,100 feet gain hiking out, but the first couple miles of trail from the trailhead could really handle having some switchbacks added.  It wasn’t terrible, but there were plenty of spots that made me breathe a little heavier.

The beginning of the trail isn’t real special.  It meanders its way through logged over timber and you can’t see much past the surrounding trees.  As the trail gains elevation you begin getting some great views back towards the valley though.  I could see the Elkhorn range of the Blue Mountains towering over the valley below.  Unfortunately it wasn’t a very clear day, but I still got some pictures that I liked.

Burger Butte also begins to be a prominent landmark.  It appears as a towering chunk of rock and at one point I came into an area that looked as all the trees had been knocked over or broke off by an avalanche that began at Burger Butte.

Path of an avalanche?

As I made the last few steps to the summit of Burger Pass craggy granite peaks began to show themselves.  It was really a pretty sight.  A little below the 8,000 feet high pass I could see Burger Meadows with lush green grass cut by the serpentine path of a small creek.  This country seems to be one of extremes.  Big open meadows are followed by steep, rocky drops of exposed granite.  One area flat and full of greenery, the next area scattered with the twisted dead remains of trees that tried to grow on the nearly vertical face of granite.

The trail began to zigzag its way down rocky granite slopes.  This particular area looked like excellent cricket habitat as there was a large number of them bumbling along out of my way on the trail.  I wish those big crickets were down on the river bumbling their way into the water and into the bellies of waiting trout.

When I had been walking about ten miles my left foot began to tell me that it was tired and thought it was time for a rest.  Rather than stopping I tried to quicken my pace as I knew I only had another two miles to go and then I could give my left foot a rest.  A wooden bridge crossing the Minam River soon came into sight.  I stopped in the middle and looked down through clear cold water with colorful rocks on the riverbed.  If the fishing wasn’t any good it would be a shame because it is such a pretty little river up here.

Minam River

I made camp a hundred yards or so downstream of the bridge off the beaten path and out of sight of the trail.  Making camp was enough of a rest for my foot and I strung up my rod to make use of the late afternoon and early evening.  I started with a big fish setup; a streamer followed by a couple nymphs.  I fished my way upstream for some distance without hooking a single fish.  I had passed several dead Chinook and one live one and so had tied on a small egg pattern as my last fly, but it wasn’t even getting me any bites.  At this point I tied on one of the best dry fly patterns ever made, a stimulator.  Actually I tied on two stimulators, one that was bigger and orange and another that was the smallest I had put in my box.

I tied the big stimulator on because I could see it.  I tied the second smaller stimulator on because I had seen a couple of very small yellow stoneflies flying about.  They were really small though and I had nothing in my box that would match it.

Where I tied my flies on was above Elk Creek a little ways, so the Minam was pretty small.  I was not disappointed with its size though, I thought it was plenty fishable.  Elk Creek alone was fishable if you like fishing really small creeks.  Before switching my flies I examined a lot of rocks near the shoreline and found no big stonefly cases.  I also began to scoop up handfuls of gravel and sift through it looking for bugs.  I found none.  Examining the bottoms of rocks I didn’t find any mayfly nymphs attached either.  The only thing I was seeing for insect life were cased caddis scattered about, but I didn’t think they looked especially abundant.

I began fishing again upstream with my large and smallish stimulator.  And fish began to rise.  I landed several rainbows around eight inches that had bellies that were quite large for their length.  I assumed they were full and large from loose eggs.  I again caught a very small bull trout on the stimulator.  I fished my way back downstream towards camp and found only rainbows in that eight to ten inch range.  I did not hook or see anymore bull trout which kind of surprised me.  I took a temperature reading of the water and it was in the low to mid 50’s.  So water temperature was not an issue.  Abundance of food might be an issue though.

After returning to my camp I decided to move back upstream one more time to fish a deeper slot below the bridge.  I cast my two stimulators just under the bridge and a small fish bounced them up into the air.  I cast again a little more downstream and a sizeable fish took my larger stimulator.  The fish felt healthy but it did not fight like a rainbow.  As I got it closer I began to think that is was a bull trout.  Now I was getting confused.  Why was I confused?

Although I have recently caught some bull trout on dry flies, the bull trout were all under eight inches.  Juvenile bull trout may take dry flies, but I have personally never witnessed an adult bull trout taking a dry fly and I have fished a lot of water where bull trout reside all over the Blue Mountains.  So when this about 14” fish took my dry fly and then didn’t fight like a rainbow, and then did not look like a rainbow I was confused.  I examined the fish carefully.  It had red on its paired fins on its lower body and had black markings on its dorsal fin.  This was a brook trout.

Minam River Bull Trout

This was only my second brook trout I have ever caught.  The waters I typically fish are full of rainbows, bulls, and whitefish not brook trout.  Brook trout are an introduced species around here and the bad thing about them is that they will cross with our native bull trout, creating sterile hybrids.  I like catching bull trout and don’t want to see sterile hybrids so I bonked the brookie on the head and took him to camp for dinner.  I was glad I caught this fish because when I gutted her there were eggs inside.

I had only brought a small screw on burner for my small propane bottle and wasn’t really setup for cooking fish.  I rarely make a camp fire when I am by myself and didn’t feel like using what little daylight I had left to build one.  So I found a stick that formed a Y.  I sharpened the two points of the Y and impaled the brookie.  It didn’t work very well but I was able to rotate the fish back and forth over my small stove until I had it cooked.  I was really quite impressed with its flavor too.  Fresh brook trout taste pretty darn good.

The next morning I walked five miles downstream and then began fishing my way back upstream.  Rock Creek and a trail that goes out to the Catherine Creek trailhead was at the end of five miles and I thought that was a good turn around spot.  Fishing back upstream I found similar results to the evening before.  Rainbows in the 10” minus range were plentiful, but I did not see one bull trout or brook trout all day.

Typical Minam River Rainbow

Most of this section of river was gravel beds that made good spawning habitat for the Chinook that were lying about dead in the river.  There were also several long boulder stretches where the river steepened and lost elevation quickly.  Thrown in here and there was a nice slab of bedrock that would cause the river to make a decent pool and run.  At many of the deeper spots I fished with a streamer and nymph combination, but found nothing bigger in the depths.  The water was really clear and I spent quite a bit of time trying to spot fish in the pools but was always disappointed.

It is a beautiful river no doubt.  But after fishing 3 ½ miles back upstream towards camp my feet were feeling a bit worn from sliding on rocks all day and I had caught enough smallish rainbows.  I got back on the trail and walked the mile and a half back to camp.

That night as I lay in the dark with my headlamp on reading a magazine, two huge October Caddis began trying to land on my face.  I had kept up my big and small stimulator fishing for the most part all day.  The fish seemed to prefer my larger orange bellied stimulator better and now I knew why.  I had switched my smaller stimulator out for a number of different dries but none seemed to work any better.  Perhaps these fish up here only have two good food sources: Chinook eggs and October caddis.

I have read that there are two possible fish passage barriers farther downstream.  One is a falls and the other is an old splashdam from logging.  Some fish obviously get past.  There was a fair number of Chinook spawning up here, so I would assume steelhead make it up this high as well to spawn in the spring.  My only question then is the bull trout.  Can the bull trout make it past the falls and splashdam?  I only saw one small bull trout in water that I thought should have been full of them.  Most eastern Oregon rivers have pretty good populations of bull trout.  Reading different studies a common limiting factor to delisting a particular population is downstream water quality or quantity issues.  Bull trout tend to migrate a lot, moving out into bigger river systems in the winter to forage before moving back up their home waters in the spring.  This is why bull trout get so big, they move to where the best food sources are throughout the year.

Lightning and thunder came before dark Sunday night and then it began to rain fairly hard.  Monday morning I screwed around camp for awhile hoping my tent would dry out a little before packing it up for the hike out.  I finally gave up on that idea and started walking out at 9:30.  It was once again a beautiful hike and the 12 miles and 3,100 feet elevation gain didn’t feel bad.  I thought it would be harder really.  My left foot began bothering me around 10 miles again.  I broke that foot in high school and maybe it is a little weaker or less functional in some way that only becomes apparent after hiking with a pack for 10 miles.

Elk Creek Trail

More photos from the weekend here

I really prefer three day trips when I am hiking in somewhere or two and a half days at the worst.  This allows me to hike in on Friday and get camp situated and then explore close to camp without getting in too much of a hurry, a Saturday to devote to exploring without worrying about how far I have to hike out and then a Sunday to fish and hike out if it isn’t too far or simply to hike out if it is 10 miles or more.  The ideal is often not doable though and not having that much time, I hiked in late morning on Saturday.  It was hot, damn hot.

I had never been to Cougar Ridge, but besides Rock Springs it is one of the only short trails (around 5 miles) leading to the Minam river.  I headed up Big Canyon road that follows Deer Creek.  This is a good gravel road until it splits.  The sign said Bearwallow trailhead was to the left, my route was to the right.  The road immediately began to get worse.  It was somewhat rutted and there were lots of small trees partially across the road.  There began to be a lot of large rocks.  If you drive to the Cougar Ridge trailhead have good tires and at least as much clearance as a standard SUV has.

The upper end of the ridge is heavily wooded and I began walking through a patch of very young similar aged trees.  I assume this spot was clearcut or killed off by fire in the past.  The trail begins going uphill and you are quickly faced with a decision to go left or right.  There are no signs, but if you go left you will head south on Cougar Ridge for about 8 miles until you meet other trails at Standley guard station.  My route was to the right, heading North down the ridge into the canyon.  This top section was well wooded and moderate in slope until it came to a section of ridge where it lost elevation quickly for some distance.  I knew I wouldn’t like this section on the hike out.

The trail began to flatten out as I began to come out of the trees onto the exposed and dry Cougar Ridge.  To my left was a deep canyon with Trout Creek in the bottom and Big Sheep Ridge paralleling my path.  Big Sheep ridge looked pretty nice to walk.  Much more of a gentle slope all the way down and trees for shade most of the way as well.  Looking at my map that is a long way to the river, 17.6 miles according to my Eagle Cap Ranger District map from where you would start at Bearwallow trailhead.  A little over five miles was much better for a two day trip with the intent of fishing the river.

The trail down Cougar Ridge was worn heavily in places and then not even visible in others.  I don’t think it sees a whole lot of use, but it has been cleared fairly recently as there was only two trees across the trail.  As the ridge came closer to the river the trail got steep and especially hot as it either went straight down or zigzagged slightly down a dry rocky path.

My original plan was to have my wife, Lottie, drop me off at the top and then I would walk the ten miles or so out to the store on Sunday.  I changed my mind half ways to Minam on Saturday morning thinking that I could spend more time fishing and exploring the river on Sunday if I hiked back out Cougar ridge.  On my way down the hot exposed ridge, I had no desire to hike back up the next afternoon in searing heat.  I made a plan C at that point.  I had bought a new Delorme PN60W GPS with SPOT.  The SPOT satellite communicator was supposed to allow me to send one way SOS or text messages out.  Although I have had it for several months I have never turned it on or read the user manual.  I decided I would turn it on tonight and figure out how to send a text message, asking my wife to please come get my vehicle from the Cougar Ridge trailhead as I would be walking out to Minam late Sunday.  Feeling a little relieved that I would not have to walk up that ridge in the heat, I bore the heat I was in a little easier.

After the hot zigzag down the exposed part of the ridge the trail once again entered timber near the bottom and life began to feel a little better.  Soon I was to the river and my heart felt good at the site of the pristine looking clear water.  The Minam also has a slightly prettier river bed than the Wenaha since there are some granite rocks to add an extra bit of color.  This lower end of the canyon is primarily basalt, but there are still some granite boulders that have worked their way down from higher up the drainage.

I took my pack off near the river and found some shade to eat my lunch.  The shade kept moving though and by the time I was finished eating I had moved with the shade about 50 feet up river from my pack.  I found a shady looking spot to make camp a little downstream and then decided it was warm enough that I would simply wet wade rather than wear my waders.

My last trip into the Minam several years ago had been a little disappointing from the fishing end of things.  It was early September and the first day I had fished my way 4 miles downstream from the Little Minam River.  I found few fish and the river didn’t seem to offer much depth or cover for fish but for an occasional piece of bedrock or deep bend every mile or so.  The river had looked very promising to me where I had camped just downstream of the Little Minam.  The river was full of boulders and I thought fish would be all around these boulders.  I only found little 3” fish that would continually attack dry flies through this section.  Going upstream the next day the river emerged from the boulder section into wide shallow flats, even more disappointing from a fishing perspective although it appeared to make for good Chinook spawning grounds.  Again I found a spot with a little more depth every mile or so that provided slightly better fishing.

The third day I was up close to the Minam Lodge and Red’s Horse Ranch and the fishing did improve some.  Getting above Red’s the character of the canyon also began to change.  I began seeing large (car or house sized) granite boulders and the river began to make pools and runs with cover and depth for fish.

Back to the present below Cougar Ridge, I was finding a canyon that was somewhere in between the continuous wide shallow flats of the Minam just a little upriver and the nice pools and runs created by bedrock of the Wenaha.  The river right around the bottom of the Cougar Ridge trail was really pretty decent and I was happy to find many spots with some depth created either by bedrock or large boulders that had fallen into the river.  The water was not real cold though and my thermometer was reading in the low 60 degree range.  As a reference to the Wenaha, I would compare this to the Hoodoo section of the Wenaha for warmer, but not terribly warm water temperatures in late summer.

The river was much wider than the Wenaha though.  As I walked its banks I wondered whether the shallow water was a natural product of the geology or caused by lots of logs being floated down the river in years past.  Either way I thought it would do some good if someone could drop some trees or large boulders into the river to create more structure and more depth.  I also noticed this section of the Minam has few cased caddis clinging to the rocks compared to the Wenaha, but perhaps the Wenaha is above average in that respect.

As for the fishing, it was OK, but not great.  Each decent looking spot offered a couple of rainbows in the 8”-10” range and I landed one bull trout that was bigger than the rainbows.  I was switching my flies often as I thought there should probably have been more fish.  Changing the fly patterns didn’t seem to make much difference, but the fish did like the stonefly patterns perhaps slightly better than the other nymphs and dryflies.  I saw an occasional large stonefly from a distance, but never more than one or two here and there.  There were, however, a good number of newer stonefly shucks on the rocks.

Minam River Bull Trout with Flashback Stonefly

Back to camp, as the evening drew near I got out my Delorme GPS and SPOT to try and figure out how to send my wife a text message.  No luck though, it would only let me send an emergency SOS message that would also notify emergency services.  I quickly decided against that and reluctantly decided I would make the hike out Cougar Ridge the next day.  I should really read the manual and figure out how to use that thing if I am going to pack it I guess.

I brought my border collie Molly with me again and she only tried to sleep on my head a couple times during the night.  So it wasn’t too bad.  I am not sure what the appeal of my head is when we are camping because at home she sleeps on the floor.  As I again didn’t have any cougars ambush me this weekend I will credit her for adding an extra body and scaring them off whether she did or not.

Sunday I made my way downstream and found decent water close to camp.  It was average sized rainbows again and not lots of them.  If there was this much water on Joseph Creek, there would be rainbows everywhere and probably some big ones to boot.  If it were the Wenaha, it would probably be full of big bull trout.  I would like to know what exactly makes a good fishery.  The Wenaha is pristine, cold, narrower, and deeper through most of its reach.   Even the lower parts in the Wilderness area that get too warm for lots of bull trout in late summer will hold nice rainbows.  I actually think once the bigger bulls move out of a section of water on the Wenaha, the rainbow fishing tends to improve.  I suspect that the rainbows were probably taking less than prime feeding holds and once the bigger fish have moved on, they take up these better feeding areas.

Joseph Creek is really too warm in summer and rather skinny as well, yet it probably has a much higher density of trout than most other rivers in the region, especially this section of the Minam.  The Wenaha has abundant caddis and cold water, Joseph Creek has water too warm for Bull Trout or Salmon, but large numbers of crawdad.  Perhaps I will have to keep a rainbow from Joseph Creek sometime and see if its belly is stuffed full of crawdads.

Right by my camp was a dead Chinook partially eaten by some critter.  The Chinook was only partially out of the water, but I gave her a little nudge to submerge her the rest of the way so Molly wouldn’t be tempted to eat or roll on the dead fish.  I suspect I hooked a Chinook a little downstream as well.  There was a large car sized boulder that forced the water down into the gravel creating a nice deep, slower lane for fish to hold.  I cast a flashback stonefly and a stubby stone up along the boulder while I was positioned well downstream.  My nymphs stopped and I set the hook.  Nothing, so I pulled a little more and some leviathan began to move.  Chinook are about the only thing I hook that act in that way.  I had hopes of a large rainbow or bull, but in the back of my mind I know that it was a Chinook.  My fly pulled free and I never did get a glimpse of anything.  In the early afternoon I fished a similar kind of spot and once again hooked a large fish.  This time the fish came to the surface and I got to see the olive green back with large black spots before my copper john pulled loose.  Who knew that Chinook liked Copper John’s?  That is the way I have hooked Chinook though, with the most common trout flies you can imagine: woolly buggers, Czech nymphs, copper johns, and stonefly patterns.  They are not much fun though, it is like having a small log tied to the end of you line.  If I ever see one chasing my flies I pull them away as quickly as I can to avoid a hook up.

As the Minam River got closer to Meads Flat and the end of the Wilderness area it again widened and became shallow.  I walked a ways downstream to see if it changed before turning back towards camp but found nothing of note.

In my poor planning I took my water bladder out of my backpack since I was planning on hiking out to Minam along the river.  Now that it was hot out and I had to make my way up a steep, exposed ridge I really was cussing myself for taking the bladder out.  Back to camp I began drinking a lot of water to try and get myself hydrated for the hike out.  I was thinking that I would begin my hike out in early afternoon so I could get home at a decent time, but I couldn’t bring myself to start out in the heat.  I tried to rest and take a nap in my tent, but bald faced hornets kept coming in and pestering me along with some sort of horse fly.

I left the tent to the buzzing insects and found some shade and sand closer to the river where I continued to drink water and read an old issue of Northwest Fly Fishing.  By 4:30 it hadn’t gotten any cooler, but I thought I had better start the hike out.

Molly and I were out of the shade of the trees much too soon and exposed to the sun.  The ridge is the steepest here as well which only adds to the heat.  I began to worry a little about Molly as she began to lag behind and I had to wait for her.  She is a border collie and I have only known her to slow down when her body is coming close to its limits in some way.  She frankly usually outpaces me 3 to 1.  I slowed my pace a little and began stopping in each spot where there was a breeze.  I also stood in the sun to give her some shade in hopes she could cool off a little better.  Eventually we progressed to the top of the ridge where there was more shade, wind, and the temperatures began to get cooler.  Molly was soon outpacing me again and I didn’t feel too bad for her as I was beginning to wear down from the heat.

Typical of my poor planning, or more accurately, lack of planning on this trip I had not looked to see what kind of elevation change there was on the hike out.  From the river to the highest point on the trail was a 2,800 feet gain in elevation.  The trail is a little over five miles and the elevation gain would be much better if it were more gradual.  Instead there are two really steep sections (one near the bottom and one near the top) with the rest of the trail being pretty gradual.  I have a book on all the trails in the Eagle Cap Wilderness and it lists the trail as “Strenuous”, something I didn’t bother to check until getting back.  I eventually made it out, but the heat and the “strenuous” trail took its toll on me.

More Photos from this weekend

Each failure has deepened my knowledge of the river and the mountains surrounding it and I have come back better prepared each time.  After my last trip I was lucky enough to have Jason Shappart send me a 1950’s Forest Service survey in which they had spotted the falls by plane and placed its approximate location on a hand drawn map.  According to the hand drawn map, the falls should be just west of Buck Ridge.  My Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness area map also shows an old unmaintained trail going part way down Buck Ridge.  Hiking down Buck Ridge would put me much closer to my intended target, the North Fork Wenaha Falls.

After my cougar encounter the weekend before on Joseph Creek I decided to bring my border collie Molly along.  I thought I would sleep much better if I could rely on her much better ears and much better nose to smell things like stalking cougars.  So Molly and I headed out late Saturday morning.  Life has been hectic and hiking into the North Fork was a last minute plan that didn’t materialize until the night before.  It was OK though.  I don’t feel like I need to spend so many hours on the water as I have in the past.  This trip was less about fishing and more about finding the waterfall anyway.

We headed out to Dayton and then turned up the Touchet River towards Bluewood.  After going past Bluewood we took a left onto forest service road 46.  I wasn’t sure how the road would be, but it was quite good and would be easily travelled by a car.  I had turned my Delorme PN-60 GPS on (which we have for sale at the Minam Store by the way).  I wasn’t sure if there was going to be a parking area, but I came to a wide spot in the road where a trail clearly disappeared through the trees.  According to my GPS this was my starting point.  I pulled my rig off to the side and Molly and I got ready to go.

Buck Ridge is quite flat for a distance, following the natural slope up and down.  It was typical Wenaha scenery.  The ridge we were on was scattered with trees, brush, and flowers.  There were many open sections of ridge that were composed more of rock than anything resembling soil.  Straight out ahead lay the North Fork of the Wenaha in the bottom.  To our right was densely wooded slopes with Squaw Peak as the highest point, still holding what looked like from a distance a fair amount of snow.  To our left the slopes must have worse soil as there was a lot more exposed brown through the trees.

Buck Ridge Trail

The start of the trail was well worn, but grew less worn as we went.  There were few trees in the way for the most part, although the trail could handle being cleaned.  Like most unmaintained trails, I got off on game trails here and there that liked to disappear into nothing.  Finding the main trail again after losing it was not too difficult though.  As the ridge gets closer to the North Fork it also begins to lose more elevation and began to grow faint.  All in all, it wasn’t too bad.  Much easier than the Indian Tom trail and only 1,600 feet elevation to lose rather than 2,100 feet.  I knew I would appreciate not having to climb another 500 feet on the way out.

Flowers on Buck Ridge

Once on the bottom I scouted around until I found a semi-flat spot for my camp.  I again only packed my rainfly off my Hennesey Hammock tent for cover.  I started heading upstream as quickly as I could because I wanted to find the waterfall on the North Fork of the Wenaha that day.  I strung up my rod and sampled the fishing often though and I had a good time catching smaller rainbows on an orange stimulator with an occasional small bull trout rising to the fly as well.

Grant fishing the North Fork of the Wenaha River

The North Fork of the Wenaha is quite small up this high and the further I went the smaller it got.  Along the water the vegetation is super thick and there is no bank to walk on unless you want to fight the bushes.  There were even a few spots where the brush was completely covering the North Fork and I had to push my way through it midstream.  So Molly and I waded upstream, quickening our pace the later into the afternoon it got.  By the time I came to the waterfall it was getting closer to evening than later afternoon.  It was worth the hike to me though.

North Fork Wenaha Falls

I was not disappointed with the falls, although it is probably not 20 feet tall unless you count the plunge pool below it.  It was pretty though and I seriously doubt many fish make it upstream of this waterfall.  The first time I had read about the waterfall on the North Fork was in a paper about bull trout.  In the paper they mentioned the fish above the falls looking physically different from the fish below the falls.  After getting a few pictures of the waterfall I hiked up around it and went upstream a little ways to see.  I cast in a few likely looking riffles and caught a small bulltrout on the stimulator again.  I almost never catch bulltrout this small on the main Wenaha so I did not feel like I could objectively say whether this small bull trout above the falls looked much different than fish below.

Bull trout from above North Fork Wenaha Falls

After letting the small bull go it was time to make tracks the several miles downstream to camp before dark.  I can fly along pretty good on slippery rocks, I have had lots of practice.  Pretty soon my dog Molly was lagging behind a little though and at first I felt rather proud of myself for being able to out pace her for once.  She began to fall further behind and I stopped to let her catch up.  She was shivering badly.  I never thought about it before, but she was often nearly submerged in the cold North Fork.  I worried that if I made her stay in the water all the way back to camp it could lower her core body temperature pretty seriously so I decided to climb the bank and find a game trail so she could warm up.

I began on the west side of the creek and got up far enough from the water that the going wasn’t too bad.  Besides an occasional stand of extremely thick brush, I was primarily hopping over downed trees.  I came to a cliff face and was forced back down to the water for a while.   I followed the water for a short distance and then took Molly up the east bank to find a game trail again and let her warm up.  I hadn’t brought my waders and was wet wading.  I did not get out my thermometer to measure the water temperature, but my feet hurt from the cold after being in it for a little while.

Going down the east bank I eventually found a trail.  It surprised me a little because none of my maps show a trail here.  The trail had plenty of downed trees over it, but it was a good trail that has seen a lot of use at some points in the past.  Molly and I were able to follow it all the way down to our camp, although near our camp and the bottom of Buck Ridge the trail was not distinguishable at all because of the lush vegetation that was often eyeball high or more.

Sunday Molly and I explored downstream.  I was in no hurry.  I felt no need to cover miles of water as I usually do.  Molly does much better when I take my time and stop and fish.  This allows here to get out of the water on the sides and she never had a problem getting too cold on Sunday.

After wading and fishing downstream for a ways I got curious about that trail we had found the night before and I began getting off the creek and trying to find remnants of a trail.  I not only found remnants, I found a well used and maintained trail downstream of Buck Ridge.  It went downstream for some distance and we followed it until it ended at a campsite.  We then followed the trail back upstream and just before getting to the bottom of Buck Ridge the trail began following a small creek that runs down the canyon to the east of Buck Ridge.  I walked up the trail for a good 30 minutes and it had been used and cleaned this year.  I finally decided I had better turn around as my pack and everything was still at camp.  But there is a decent trail going into the North Fork of the Wenaha.  The trick is going to be finding where it starts at the top.

Molly and I made our way back to camp and I packed up my stuff.  We made a leisurely hike out.  Buck Ridge is a little steep in spots, but it really isn’t too bad if you are used to this kind of stuff.  I also packed super light, not taking a tent or waders which makes the hike out even easier.  If the North Fork were any deeper I would have my waders because it is cold enough that it made my feet and legs hurt after a short time.  I can check one more thing off my list now: I have seen the waterfall on the North Fork of the Wenaha and saw a bull trout that may be a genetically distinct strain from the fish below.

More Photos from this weekend

Joseph Canyon

I had seen a couple of smallmouth bass in the creek earlier in the spring and I thought I might as well see if the smallmouth bass fishing was any good.  What was drawing me back to Joseph Creek more was the history of the canyon.  When I first began hiking in last year I was ignorant of its history.  My first trips were in pursuit of pristine trout fishing.  I had read one description of the fishing that mentioned 18” rainbows.  I began to dream of a beautiful small creek far away from human civilization that was full of large rainbows just waiting to take a fly.  I mistakenly thought the creek would be full of big fish.  In reality Joseph Creek offers good trout fishing along parts of its banks, but most fish will be around six inches long.  Each good spot in the creek will offer up a larger rainbow in the 8”-12” range.  There are some trout that go longer as well, but they are not everywhere and you have to work to find them.  The biggest I have landed were close to sixteen inches, true champions among fish to grow that large in such skinny water that becomes much too warm for ideal trout water in the summer.

Joseph Canyon is awe inspiring.  Scenic vistas are never in short supply as you hike down a ridge.  The geology of the canyon is enough to drive my curiosity and make me want to explore the ridges for strange looking hoodoos and large basalt dikes.  Once on the bottom of the canyon each turn in the creek provides its own small mystery: a few logs might remain from an old cabin, a square of an old rock foundation with a stove sitting in the middle, a rusty horse drawn plow that is nearly covered over with brush, or a bit of old harness hanging from a tree.  There are some old cabins still standing with stoves and other house items still inside, looking as though someone walked out the door one morning with the intent to come back in the evening.  The amazing thing is the number of them.  If they were all inhabited at once, you would have plenty of neighbors within a short walk.  Most of the meadows have been farmed, evidenced by rock piles at the edge or farm equipment abandoned to the slow decay of time.

Cabin on Joseph Creek

Reading C.F. Buttons mystery novel Coyote Staircase stirred my imagination and made me look at the canyon from a new perspective.  Before all those cabins were there with homesteaders trying to farm, the Nez Perce used this canyon as a travel corridor and as a winter home.  I am told that there are meadows where faint teepee rings are still evident, although most will not be visible anymore because of the farming that came afterward.  I am no expert when it comes to seeing old teepee rings and I have seen some large circular depressions in the soil where rocks form part of the circle on the outside edge.  I personally am not confident enough to say, “Yes, that is a teepee ring!”  I only think to myself, “That might be a teepee ring?”

According to Nez Perce tradition, young Chief Joseph was also born in a cave in the bottom of Joseph Canyon.  I was not familiar with this knowledge last year or I might have spent all of my time looking for caves rather than fishing.  This year as I have walked the canyon I have had a hard time pulling myself away from the intrigue of each meadow, hoodoo, and basalt dike to devote a lot of time to the fishing end of things.  Several weekends ago I hiked in and camped on the BLM section of Joseph Creek downstream of the Forest service ground and it wasn’t until the canyon walls became extremely hot that I would quit exploring and go down to the creek bottom and fish where it was cooler.  There is too much to see and while keeping your eye open for that cave, you might walk past a teepee ring, or miss an old cabin that is now only three feet high and covered with brush.

I headed to the Warm Springs Trail Saturday morning.  This trail is on the Nez Perce Precious Lands that was purchased with funds from the Bonneville Power Administration for fish and wildlife mitigation.  It is managed for wildlife habitat but is open for public use as long as that use does not deteriorate the habitat.  It is a beautiful canyon, but I don’t think they have to worry about a lot of people using it.  Access is difficult at best and it is not an easy hike.

I went down this trail in the spring of 2010 and it was my first hike into Joseph Creek.  I had lost the trail in spots where a more dominant game trail would lead away from the manmade trail.  As I started down I again had doubts several times whether I was on THE trail or just a trail.  There is a lush green meadow at the top and the trail was even faint through this.  I did not get an early start and after getting halfway down the canyon it was hot.  By the time I got to the bottom where the warm spring flows out below a tree with rock walls on each side, all I wanted was some shade.  I threw my pack off and looked at the hot water wishing it were a cold spring instead.

Grasshopper season is now in full swing and hundreds fled from my path as I walked toward the creek.  Last year as I stood on the high bank looking at Joseph Creek, I could see spawning sucker fish in the gravel bars.  This year as I surveyed the scene five otters made their way blissfully down the creek stopping and playing under the shade of a tree just below me before they again headed downstream.

Otters on Joseph Creek

Knowing that the temperatures for the weekend would be somewhere between 90 and 100 I packed as light as possible.  I picked up a pair of super light weight pants with zip off bottoms and decided I would wet wade rather than bring waders.  I also did not bring a tent and opted to simply take my rainfly from my hammock tent.  After packing I weighed my pack and was happy to see that it only weighed 32 pounds with fishing gear, food, water and my good camera with a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens.  I decided I would not take my pistol since I was trying to get my pack weight as light as possible, but ended up changing my mind at the trailhead.

After watching the otters head down the creek I waded across to find somewhere I could tie up my rainfly.  It was hot out and I thought the best looking spots were on the creek between the alder and birch trees, but I couldn’t find much of a flat spot.  I settled for the open meadow and tied one end of my rainfly to a thorn bush and gathered a few sticks to make a tripod of sorts to hang the other end.  Satisfied with my camp and sweating from the heat I decided I would zip off the bottom of my pants and leave them at camp while I explored downstream.  I would later decide that was perhaps one of my worst decisions.

Since I had really focused my attention on the creek last spring this section of canyon still felt pretty new to me.  Each meadow I came to I crisscrossed hoping to find the remains of an old teepee ring and looking at the remains of the old homesteads and their wares.  I really wanted to find some sort of sign of the past Nez Perce use.  I stopped many times at different rock walls hoping that I might find a drawing of sorts.  I found a few circular depressions in the ground where it didn’t look the meadow would have been farmed and wondered and circled the spot trying to decide if I what I was staring at had been inside a teepee a hundred and some years ago.

A few miles downstream I came to a narrow spot on the creek bottom where two huge basalt dikes came down each canyon wall.  It was an impressive sight and I am sure that if the Nez Perce used this canyon to move from winter grounds along the Grande Ronde and Snake to summer grounds on the Wallowa, they would have had a name for this spot and perhaps a story to explain its existence.  Just downstream of this I found a cave right on the creek.  It had no bank between it and the creek and I did not think it looked like a good place for a pregnant woman to give birth to a future chief.  Just downstream of this first cave I found four more caves though.  The first two might be described as large alcoves.  Both of these provided good shelter though and I could see a person using these spots, although I again was not sure about someone wanting to give birth in one.  The next one was a good cave, but too small for human use and the last one made my imagination go to work.  This last cave was deep, flat, and wide.  It was also elevated about fifteen feet off the creek bottom where it was easy to get to but not so close you would roll into the creek at night.  Unfortunately there were no cave drawings that said “Joseph was born here.”  But I sat in the cave for a bit and imagined teepees setup in the flat meadow directly across the water.  This could be the cave.

Large Cave on Joseph Creek

It was time for me to be heading back and I began my walk upstream.  I stopped at the pools by the two large basalt dikes and fished for a moment until I looked upstream and saw a rattlesnake swimming downstream towards me.  I decided swimming rattlesnakes had the right of way and stepped out of the creek and got out my camera.  Snakes swim quite well.  This snake didn’t like seeing me either and decided to get out of the creek on the bank opposite of me.  I went on my way upstream.

There are many fruit trees and at least one walnut tree planted in some of the meadows near the old homesteads and I enjoyed a freshly plucked apple on my way downstream and up.  There is a trail that goes through each meadow and then crosses the creek when the meadow ends.  It is often overgrown though and in many spots with black berries.  My legs looked like they had been in a fight with a herd of cats and the several inches of my exposed socks above my boots was a solid mass of burrs.  Shorts are a dumb idea I thought again as I tenderly tried to work my way through another black berry bramble.  I can count the number of times each year I wear shorts outside on one hand and this day only served to reinforce my habits.  Pants provide protection against thorns, make ticks crawl a lot further before they get to your skin (yes I was pulling those off my legs right above the mass of burrs), and pants provide a much larger target for rattlesnakes so that if they ever do try to strike they might only get cloth instead of flesh.

Back to my camp I brought water from the creek to boil for my dinner and got out my small air mattress and sleeping bag.  I changed into some dry clothes and took my pistol off.  As I was going through things I thought I heard something crossing the creek.  I stood up and took a few steps towards the creek to try and see over and through the brush, but saw nothing.  I decided I would put the pistol back on anyway.  I would hate to be walking around the meadow when I needed it and have it a hundred yards away.  As I prepared my dinner I again thought I heard something down by the creek and once again I looked and saw nothing.  Maybe I was beginning to hear things.  I sat down and ate my dinner and drank the rest of the water I had, but was still thirsty.  It had been a hot day.  I stood up and took two steps down the meadow towards the creek when I saw a mountain lion.  It jumped out of the brush into the open meadow and began sprinting down the meadow.  I had frozen in my steps.  It had all happened so fast.  The cougar began to slow down a little as it got farther away and I pulled out my pistol and fired a shot to encourage it not to slow down until it was much further away.

I was not hearing things after all.  That cougar watched me eat my dinner.  It probably thought I was much smaller prey when I was sitting down.  I don’t know if it was my size when I stood up or the fact that I walked right toward it that made it run off, but either way I am glad it did run away rather than pounce me on my walk to the creek.  I was not scared, but I didn’t feel particularly comfortable sleeping that night.  I laid my pistol across my chest and tried to sleep after it got dark.  I slept terribly though as every small sound was the possibility of that cougar circling back for a second chance.  The thing I hate about cougars is that you can’t hear them.  I used to let cougars worry me every once in a while, but had let bears and rattle snakes take their place since I see and encounter them often.  I suppose now I will worry about the ghosts of the forest as well.

Sunday I made my way back downstream eating another apple off the homesteader’s fruit tree.  It surprised me to find some more horse drawn equipment and another old cabin that I had missed the day before.  Both were nearly covered with brush and it is easy to miss something with so much to look at down there.  I walked back down to the big basalt dikes and the caves and looked again for something I might have missed the day before.  Not seeing anything I began exploring further downstream.

Bottom of large basalt dike on Joseph Creek

I came to a spot that felt special.  The draw was especially full of big hoodoos that could look like whatever you wanted to imagine.  There was a large rock overhang also.  Walking up to it there was  a partial rock wall built on top.  50 yards away from this was another basalt dike with two crevices that might have been caves.  Below them were rocks stacked in a semi-circle.  I do not know if these rocks were stacked a long time ago or not, I suspect the smaller half circle is newer, but I do not know about the partial rock wall.  I tried to reach the two caves up higher but it was steep and I would have to climb a pretty steep rock face.  I got close enough to the first one to see the inside was steep and did not look habitable.  Across the creek and downstream just a little ways was another smaller basalt dike with a cave right underneath the dike.

This trip just left me wanting to know more.  What families of the Wallowa Band used this canyon the most?  How much time did they spend here in the winter?  What foods did they eat and gather?  I grew up in Nez Perce country and two of my cousins are half Nez Perce.  So I grew up familiar with the tales of their stories like the Ant and Yellowjacket and passed this rock formation often.  My cousins were of a similar age and we would sometimes go to Nez Perce gatherings where they would wear traditional clothes and dance.

If Joseph Canyon was important for travel and winter villages, the more unique rock formations would surely have names at minimum and probably have stories behind them as well.  I fear their story may have been lost though.  After Joseph and the Wallowa Band surrendered, many died of disease and sickness from the places they were forced to live.  When they were finally allowed to return to the Northwest many were sent to the Colville Reservation.  It seems doubtful to me that there is anyone left who had the oral history passed down.  If anyone has any information please contact me at grant@fishingandhiking.com

More photos from the weekend here