Runaway To Riggins

A River Rafting Retreat-Part One

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Ooh, I am slightly stricken by the alliteration ailment. No worries, I am sure it will pass. Anyhoo, this past weekend was our annual trip to Riggins, Idaho for a whitewater rafting expedition extravaganza! Of course it couldn't be a straightforward affair, nay, it had to have a little bit of excitement.

Foreshadowing disclaimer: I actually made it safely home without any vehicle catastrophes.

Our friend Cam is a scout leader, and he organizes a big group rafting trip for scouts and their families in their conference thing every year. We don't do scouting, but my hubs has been a range safety officer at many a scout camp, not to mention the fact that my kiddos have also volunteered at multiple day camps as help as well. Honestly though, I am pretty sure that Cam and his wife M include us because we are pretty excellent friends. That's my theory.

Riggins, Idaho is a four and a half hour drive from my North Idaho abode. The town sits on the bank of the lower Salmon River. The canyon setting is pretty dramatic, and the thing I love the most about Riggins is it has thus far escaped commercialization. The entire place is a plethora of mom and pop businesses that revolve around rafting and water recreation. It's like stepping back in time.

We all took off on a Friday, our friends in their truck and trailer and my family in Rufus towing our trailer. After our winter road trip adventure, a 4.5 hour haul was pieces of cake. We did a quick pit stop in Moscow where I proceeded to stuff myself with deep fried cheesecurds from A&W. Life was good.

Now, earlier that day I had checked the forecast. It was supposed to be showery on Saturday when we rafted and there was a chance of thunderstorms that night. The sky had some thunderheads, but nothing too sinister looking, and I breathed a sigh of relief when we all pulled onto Short's Bar just down the road from Riggins proper.

Short's Bar is a BLM area right after you cross the bridge of the river road heading out of town. You can just pull up and camp wherever you like. We perched our trailer right on the edge of the bluff overlooking the Salmon River and set up a nice little camp. Our guides, Adventure Idaho, were going to cook us a dinner of chicken fajitas on the beach where we to launch our rafting trip the next morning, about ten miles up river from where we were camped. My husband who was still stuffed to the brim from our earlier A&W buffet and who was also pretty much done with humanity at the point, volunteered to hang with camp, preferring the company of our two dogs and a good book. Plans made, we threw all the children into the bed of my friend's one ton Chevy and wound our way up the canyon.

We arrived at the chunk of beach that we were to shove off from the following morning and discovered one of our guides prep cooking dinner. By then I noticed that the wind had kicked up a bit and the sky was looking just a little ominous. For once in my life, I wasn't in charge of or required to help with any of the to dos, so my friend and I sat amiably on some rocks and chatted. My baby gorilla of a son hurled his form into the water, where he pretty much stayed for the next two days other than to sleep. The kids had a blast running up the beach and floating down the little rapids, playing with the freshwater mussels that they found, and getting into all manner of riverside fights with sand, sticks, and rocks. They are all mostly teens after all.

My friend's husband, being the organizer of the expedition, busied himself with trying to find out where the heck everyone else was, as only about seventeen of the thirty-two souls signed up had shown up. Dinner was not getting cooked, we were getting hungry, and the sky was looking really sinister. In true when people are supposed to gather form, they were scattered all over the place or not super punctual.

Finally, Jason the guide started cooking up the fajitas and rice. As he was expertly cheffing chicken, peppers, and onions on a big gas griddle the wind decided to kick up and lift his tent toward the sky. We all scrambled around plucking up largish boulders from the river side and hurled them into his tent like giant paper weights. We then got to eat, and right when we were tucking into our scrumptious fajitas and rice the storm hit. The wind began roaring through the canyon, blowing detritus into our food, threatening to outright kill Jason's tent. We decided we better return to our camp and check on things and booked it out of there.

On the way back we found that the storm and the rain accompanying it were not a common thing for our location, and as thus the canyon gave up an offering of rocks which plummeted down upon the road. We had to dodge multiple boulders, not an easy thing to do in a one ton truck on a narrow one lane road. Some of the boulders that fell into the road were the size of small bathtubs. Then it started to hail a bit, my son found that event out the hard way with a nice hail stone to the cheek. Things were getting interesting.

We arrived back into camp energized by the natural disasterish turn of things to find all manner of chaos. The first thing we noticed was our neighbor's pop up was just missing. There had also been a trailer full of rafts sitting sort of close to our trailer. The rafts were gone. One was on the other side of the river. So much rain had fallen that my trailer resembled a float house, great were the puddles that were underneath it.

My hubs had saved all our camp chairs and camping accoutrements, for he had seen the storm coming and prepared just before it hit. Our poor neighbors were not so lucky, in fact, one of their vehicles, a white mini van, had been completely totaled by a hail storm as they drove into town. They were the people who told us the bigger news and the reason behind why half of our party wasn't in attendance. The storm had unleashed such a torrent that multiple mudslides had completely blocked highway 95 just north of Riggins. It was pretty bad apparently, and there it was, our way home was blocked.

I was just happy to hear that so far no one was hurt by the torrent. And as we had a raft trip to take the next morning, dry shelter, and plenty of food, we all turned in for the night to get our rest for tomorrow's adventure.

Coming Soon: Part Two, the raft trip!

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still sand covered iPhone. It's in the cracks!

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