Day 1 - Blowin it up!

Red Kool-Aide, Yellow Banana, and little blue were the three rafts that ruled the river... oh and there were also five kyakers.





To get to the river we slide our rafts down a 200 foot ramp to an eddie so we could set up our boats. Because we are all now a bunch of desk-jockeys, it took all of us to pick up the boat to take it to the ramp. The following is a bunch of stills taking captain kool-aide down the ramp to the river.

Waterfall Creek

I am not sure which creek/waterfall this is.

This is waterfall creek. It would be fun to hike up the falls on the next trip.

Veil Cave

Elk Bar Camp

Elk Bar is a beautiful camp. You can see the impassable canyon from camp. In lower flows, the sand bar is supposed to be huge.

Widow keeping his shorts warm.

A gigantic patch of poison ivy in the left lower corner of the picture.

Mini Me

Whitey Cox Camp

Big Loon Hotsprings

Sunflower Hotsprings

Resolution

I thought the pictures were full resolution, but they are not. They are shrunk to just under 2 mega pixels, 1600 x 1200. If you guys want to share pictures in another format, let me know.

One Hit Wonder

The majority of the waves were one hit wonders, catch on the fly. They were hard to catch as the water was so swift.

Surfing

Day 1 Flip at .9 miles and 99 miles more to go.

We flipped one of the gear boats in Murphs Hole. I was worried that this was an ominous sign, but this was the only gear boat flip. There were a bunch of class IV and IV+ rapids and much more technical rapids, and no other gear boat flips. I wish I had walked upstream and got a picture of the hole.

I think this is a picture of the aftermath. Murphs hole is at the top of the eddie, out of view.

Day 1

They were having a sale on wetsuits at one of the paddleshops in Stanley, and I think we cleared them out. The sky cleared off and all the warm gear became uncomfortable warm by the time we launched.

Prologue

The sky was overcast, it was raining, and the temperature read 41 degrees as we drove to Challis. There was snow above us on the sides of the canyon. We decided not to camp at the put in, but to stay at a hotel. We soaked in the Challis hotsprings. These hot springs are semi-rustic. There was gravel on the bottom, but the pools had concrete walls. Breakfast was some awesome muffins from Costco and Juice. mmmMMMmmm.

Middle Fork of the Salmon 2009

Romer suggested a blog as a good way to share pictures. Post all your pictures here, along with any stories or descriptions. It was a lot of fun. Lets go again next year.