Idaho: Land of Giant Water

So California Plans were set aside as word rolled in that the late melt had led to too high flows across the Sierras. Not to be discourage and with other info suggesting huge water fun to be had in Idaho, I set off with Jeff Clewell toward Banks, Idaho, home of the North Fork of the Payette River. The North Fork is a unique river, big water and uniform steep gradient combined with road blast rock make for some of the worlds longest and fastest rapids. This awesome stretch of whitewater is usually run at flows between 1500 and 3000. However, with a late spring melt and some heavy rain, the North fork was on a slow fall from a record high 9000 cfs when we arrived. We met Cooper Lambla and Will Stubblefield, two NC boys livin the dream in Idaho for the summer and went for a couple of laps on the 'easier' lower five miles to get our big water legs under us. I can honestly say i haven't ever paddled anything so enormous and so fast, and we were only on the 'lower five'.

The Upper 10 miles of the North Fork would have to wait till Monday, our next stop was the Secesh and South Fork of the Salmon River, a classic overnight adventure that takes you twenty miles down a steep action packed creek, into a huge big water canyon, with rapids the reminded me of Granite, Lava and Crystal on the Grand Canyon for 35 more miles, and finally out 20 miles on the Main Salmon river, one of the largest drainages in the North West. Seventy-five miles of steep creeking, huge water, and fantastic company made for a great 1st time kayaking overnight.

Back to Banks tired and happy, and scared as all get out cause next in line is a Top to Bottom North Fork Run and it is still running huge! Its hard to convey what this run is like from the paddlers perspective. Take every one of the biggest big water rapids you know of; take the Grand Canyon and eliminate every inch of flat water, make the rapids bigger, harder, way faster, no eddies. Drive your motorcycle at 30 mph into a big breaker off the Hawaiian coast and do that over and over again. In any case, I've been looking for that threshold, that piece of whitewater where i could say, thats as big as I really will ever care to go, and i think i found it on the North Fork of the Payette last week at those high flows. I had the great fortune to be able to follow two of the greatest big water paddlers I've ever seen through the melee; many thanks to Fred Coriell and Ryan Casey for the good beta and solid lines. Check out this Link for a fun visual reference: http://www.vimeo.com/12563837.