Sawtooth Traverse Part 2: Packrafting the Salmon River

Overview

• Location: Salmon River (near Stanley, Idaho)
• Dates: 8/7/24–8/8/24
• Distance: ~20 miles rafting, ~45 miles biking
• Gear lists:
• Strava: Raft Day 1, Raft Day 2, Bike Ride

After finishing our hike through the Sawtooths (Part 1) and enjoying a night on the town in Stanley, we started the next leg of our trip. Our plan was to raft two sections of the Salmon River—the Stanley Run and the Sunbeam Day Stretch—and then we’d pick up our bikes where we’d stashed them a few days prior and ride back to where we started our hike. The rafting would include some fun Class II and III rapids (maybe even some class IV), and the bike ride would be pretty easy with just a few turns and not much climbing.

Check out the video of this adventure on YouTube!

Logistics

Since the whole trip was a fairly compact loop, we had the luxury of stashing some of our gear at various points. Prior to starting the hike we stashed our rafting gear near our put-in spot and our bikes near our take-out spot. And we could drop our unneeded gear at those points too, meaning we wouldn’t need to load up our bikes for the ride back like we did for our Wind River trip a few years ago. After getting to the car we’d drive back and pick up our gear. (Stashing our gear also allowed us to bring some extra luxuries while rafting, like a grill and good food.)

We planned to get an early start rafting and finish that part of the trip in two days, or maybe even one long day. The early start didn’t quite work out. We woke up and checked out of the motel early enough, picked up our rafting gear, and started setting up our rafts, but then we had a medical delay. Sean’s eye was a little irritated when he woke up and it just seemed to get worse and worse. It was really red and swollen while we were inflating our rafts, so we decided to walk back into town and visit the medical clinic—we didn’t to risk it getting worse while out on the river. The clinic diagnosed a corneal abrasion (a scratched cornea), which was probably one of the better possible diagnoses. It would cause discomfort for the next few days but it would heal on its own. Sean decided to power through it and go on with the trip as planned. (I don’t think the doctor recommended going on a rafting trip, but they didn’t seem terribly concerned either.)

While Sean and I were at the medical clinic, Siyang stopped by a rafting company and got some information about the river. We had been monitoring the water levels on the USGS website so we already knew that it was lower than normal, but we learned that the water was so low that a couple of the rapids were impossible or unsafe to run. Specifically, the rafting companies were portaging around the Shotgun and Sunbeam Dam rapids so we’d have to skip those (or so we thought…).

Packrafting

After a long morning we finally made it back to our put-in spot and finished preparing our rafts. We finally got on the river a little after noon. The first few miles of the river are pretty mellow—a few splashy rapids here and there, but mostly just a lazy river. American Whitewater calls this section the Stanley Run. It was a beautiful day, so it was nice to ease into it with a relaxing float. It was the Sean’s first trip with his DIY packraft (and just the second major trip with my own), so it was also nice to get used to the raft on an easy section rather than jumping straight into some rapids.

We stopped a few times early on. We each found some small leaks in our rafts which were easily fixed with waterproof repair tape (pro tip: always carry repair tape in your packraft), and we checked out some hot springs that we found on the side of the river. We also passed a girl who had just caught her first fish—she and her grandfather were very excited.

After a few hours we reached the first notable rapid of the trip, Shotgun Rapid. This was the first rapid we weren’t sure whether we could run because of the low water levels. We pulled over to scout the rapid, and sure enough, it looked unrunnable. The water was low enough that tons of rocks were exposed, and we couldn’t see a clean line through the rapid that wouldn’t end with a rocky crash. We decided to take the rafts out of the water and portage around the rapid. (Shotgun can be rated up to a Class IV depending on the water level, so I might have skipped it even under good conditions. I’m sure Siyang would have given it a shot, though.)

We had heard that the portage around Shotgun would be easy, but I strongly disagree. The river bank is 20 feet high, steep, and rocky, which made it difficult to carry the rafts out. Then it was somehow even steeper and rockier a quarter mile down the road where we had to put the rafts back in. The portage took us well over an hour, which was way longer than we expected. (It didn’t help that we had some heavy stuff packed in our rafts.

Sean and I carried our rafts all the way past the end of the rapid, but Siyang decided to run the last section of it where it wasn’t quite as rocky. It probably wouldn’t be considered a Class IV at that point, but it was still a decent rapid. He got through it smoothly.

After our long portage, we floated down the river for another hour or so. We briefly stopped by the Sunbeam Hot Springs, which is a popular tourist spot. It was cool but a little crowded—I preferred the little hot springs that we found along the river earlier in the day. We ended our day at a campsite just before Sunbeam Dam.

At camp we enjoyed our best meal in days. The nice thing about rafting is that you can carry a ton of stuff. Our rafts have internal storage, so there’s plenty of room to gear and supplies inside the tubes. We packed a small propane grill and a grand feast of sausages, potatoes, and a box of wine.

On day 2 we planned to tackle the Sunbeam Day Stretch. Most of it, anyway. We expected to start the day with a long portage around Sunbeam Dam, which was the other rapid the rafting company told us we’d have to skip (apparently there was exposed rebar or something). I got up early and walked the half mile to see for myself. I viewed the rapid from above and then went down to the shore on the other side of the dam to get a closer look.

Sunbeam Dam has some cool history to it. In 1910 the dam was built along with a hydroelectric power plant to power a local gold mine. It operated for just one year before the mine closed down because it wasn’t profitable. The power plant sat unused for over 20 years and the dam started falling into disrepair. In the mid-1930s the dam was partially blown up to allow salmon to pass through. As a side effect, the half-destroyed dam created a fun whitewater rapid!

The Sunbeam Dam rapid is just one big drop. You plunge over the edge, drop about four feet, and then you’re done (assuming you go over it in the right spot). As I scouted it from afar and up close, I noticed there were definitely more exposed rocks than I’d seen in videos due to the low water level, but the landing zone looked free of hazards. There wouldn’t be much margin for error but the rapid looked runnable¹. And, importantly, there was a spot where we could pull over on the side of the river to get an even closer look and walk around the rapid if necessary. We tentatively decided to run it—we’d pull over just before the rapid, get a really close look at it, and make our final decision there.

Well, two of us decided to run the rapid. Sean opted to “run” it in a more literal sense. His eye was still bothering him a lot when he woke up, so he decided to skip the day of rafting rather than risk irritating it further. Instead, he would jog along the road from our campsite to our ending point (about 4.5 miles).

Sunbeam didn’t go quite as planned, although it wasn’t a disaster. Following our plan, I pulled over into the eddy on the right side of the river. I looked over my shoulder expecting to see Siyang pulling up behind me, but instead he was floating straight past, yelling that he didn’t get over early enough and now couldn’t avoid getting sucked into the rapid. So much for scouting it from up close! I got out of my raft and scrambled across the rocks as quickly as I could to see whether Siyang made it through safely. Fortunately he did—he hit exactly the right spot and ran the rapid cleanly. But unfortunately he didn’t get any footage. I was going to give him my GoPro when we pulled over, but obviously we missed that opportunity.

Inspired by Siyang’s successful run (and after seeing it was indeed free of hazards), I decided to give it a go. I walked back across the rocks, got back into my raft, psyched myself up, and paddled out into the river. As the drop came into view I lined myself up the best I could and then… got stranded on some rocks. It was difficult to see the correct line to follow while on the river, and I must have lined up just a little too far to the left. I went straight into the rocks in the middle of the rapid and got hopelessly stuck, with water rushing around me, for close to a full minute until I could wriggle myself free. It was a little nerve-racking, but not as scary as it might sound. It’s too bad I didn’t hit the entry point cleanly, because it would have been a fun rapid. At least I didn’t fall in.

After the Sunbeam fiasco I was a little nervous for the remaining rapids. There were two more named rapids before our take-out point, both Class III (in other words, big enough to knock you out of your boat if you’re not careful). First up was Piece of Cake, which came pretty soon after Sunbeam. It turns out it was aptly named, because I thought it was a piece of cake. There were a few splashy waves and some rocks to avoid, but overall it was pretty short and not too bad. It felt smaller than other Class IIIs we’ve run in the past.

The last obstacle of the day was Warm Springs Gorge, a half-mile-long series of rapids more popularly known as The Narrows. The description on American Whitewater says it has “the potential for a long swim if you have issues at the top”, which made me a little nervous. I couldn’t help but picture that long swim as we got closer and closer.

When we finally reached the rapid, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t very difficult. It was long, but definitely read-and-run like the description says. The risk of a long swim seemed a little overstated—there were several eddies that you could probably self-rescue into if you fell out. And I never felt at risk of falling out anyway. In my extremely amateur opinion, The Narrows felt more like a moderate Class II with only one or two features maybe deserving of a Class III rating (although it’s possible it would be more challenging at higher flows). It was long and splashy though, so I did take on a lot of water. It felt like I was paddling a bathtub by the end and I had to spend several minutes bailing water out of my boat.

Shortly after The Narrows we reached our take-out point where we had stashed our bikes and where Sean was already waiting for us. We climbed the steep river bank, swapped out our rafts for our bikes, and went on our way!

[Siyang] The Narrows section was quite a stress fess for me. Hoping to get drone footage, I decided to try piloting my drone while rafting down the rapid. At first, I thought this would be possible since the drone has an autopilot “follow subject” mode, but that didn’t work. Instead I decided to pull into an eddy and shoot Danny rafting. And at that point, the battery was running out and wouldn’t make it back to where I was, so I had to emergency land at some random spot on the side of the adjacent road. Shoutout to DJI for their excellent last known coordinate feature that made it a cinch for me to bike to the correct spot and fetch my drone. Was it worth it in the end? You tell me…

The bike ride

In my opinion, the bike ride was the easiest part of the trip and a nice way to finish things off. We had to go about 45 miles and there were no big hills along the whole route. We had finished rafting in the early afternoon, which left us plenty of daylight and allowed us to take the ride at a (somewhat) leisurely pace.

We had an interesting set of bikes. Siyang used his vintage 1980s Trek road bike, Sean used Siyang’s Kona mountain bike (the one that fell of his car on the drive to Idaho), and I used the bike that Siyang found on craigslist for $25 a few weeks before the trip. The seat on my bike got pretty uncomfortable after a couple hours of riding, but otherwise the bikes got the job done.

Our first priority was lunch. We packed a few snacks with us, but we decided to splurge on real food. We passed Sunbeam Village a few miles into the ride and we stopped at the Sunbeam Cafe. It was a nice little restaurant with a cozy vibe. Sean and I got the quesadillas (pretty good) and Siyang got the trout platter (excellent).

After lunch we pretty much rode nonstop. The first 15 or 20 miles followed the winding road along the river that we had just rafted down. The weather was nice when we started and the views were nice. The only things you could complain about were the slight headwind and the occasionally narrow shoulder on the road.

After a little over an hour we reached Stanley (again). We didn’t stop by any of the local businesses (or medical clinics) this time, opting instead to keep on rolling down ID-75. By this time the skies were noticeably hazier. The wind had blown in smoke from the wildfires in the area, and it kept on getting worse throughout the day. We should have had great views of the Sawtooth Range that we had just hiked through a few days ago, but instead we had mostly grey skies. At one point we saw a helicopter carrying a giant bucket of water to help fight the fires.

Most of the ride after Stanley was one long, straight shot. The setting and scenery—the sprawling plains to our right with a mountain range in the distance, the occasional cow pasture, the general middle-of-nowhere-ness—was pretty reminiscent of our ride after the Wind River High Route a few years ago. It made for nice riding.

Eventually we saw signs for Alturas Lake, which was where we had parked our car at the trailhead almost a week before. We turned off of ID-75 for the last five miles, which included some nice views of the lake. With about half a mile left the pavement ended and it turned into a dirt road (Sean’s time to shine on the mountain bike!). Shortly after that we reached the car and celebrated the successful trip with a well-earned high five.

And that’s a wrap on our Sawtooth trip! We spent the rest of the day driving back to pick up our hiking and rafting gear that we had left at each stop. It was getting late by the time we were done with that, so we decided to spend another night in Stanley, which was starting to feel like our home away from home. When we went out for dinner we stumbled upon a lively street festival in the center of town. It was a great end to a great trip!

In Memoriam

Siyang’s Kona mountain bike—the one that Sean rode—was tragically stolen a few months after this trip. I hope the new owner continues to take it on adventures. (We also both had our bikes stolen after our Wind River trip a few years ago… maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.)

Footnotes

1. Maybe the rafting companies were skipping it because the entry point was too small for a large raft. But it looked safe for small boats like our packrafts. ↩︎