Idaho Trip

In June of 2007 Jeff invited me along on a trip to the middle fork Salmon river in Idaho. We took a 6 day river trip with the Adventure Sun Valley rafting company. Jeff had organized our group of 8 people. There were an additional 10 customers and 7 guides.

Sun Valley Idaho	I drove up to Idaho alone in my trusty Celica. I got through Nevada my first day and spent my first night outside Twin Falls Idaho. On my second day I took a much more leasurely drive along highway 75 into the Idaho mountains. This is Sun Valley just outside of Ketchum Idaho.
Ketchum	This is Ketchum, a big tourist ski area.
Valley Below Sawtooh Range	Highway 75 continues up a beautiful valley above Ketchum and then climbs up to a pass. This is a shot of the valley on the other side of the pass, with the Sawtooth mountain range in the distance. The town of Stanley, where we meet our river guide, is in this valley.
Sawtooth Range	This is a shot of the Sawtooth range.
Sawtooth Range Outside Stanley	This is another shoot of the Sawtooth range with Stanley at its base.
Area Outside of Stanley	This is my idea of the suburbs.
My Motel	This is the motel I stayed at with the Sawtooth range in the backround.
My Kind of Gas Station	This gas station in downtown Stanley has one heck of a setting.
On The River	This is a shot of the river near the put in point. This area is fairly heavily forested and colder than I thought it would be in June. The river flows from south to north with a fair elevation drop. As we get further along on the trip things get dryer and warmer.
On The River	Everyone in Jeff's group brought their own boats, either a hard shell kayak or an inflatable kayak. I rented my inflatable kayak.
Dinner By The River	The outfitter provided all our camping gear as well as all our food. Here we are at our first dinner. The service was so good, you could hardly call it a wilderness experience.
On The River	We have put in for lunch.
On The River	We have put in for lunch.
On The River	Life on the river is hard.
On The River	Jeff is returning to the boats, trying to look cool.
On The River	This is a shot down river.
On The River	Here we are loading up after a lunch break.
On The Trail	Our head guide decided to take a select few of us (the dumb ones) on a morning hike up a ridge to see the sun rise over the mountains. This is a shot from part way up looking north and down stream.
On The Trail	Here we are at the top of the ridge to meet the sun.
On The Trail	We are looking down on the camp site and rafts from the top of the ridge.
On The Trail	This is a shot looking south and up stream from the top of the ridge.
Camp Site	Some of the guides would take a gear boat ahead of the main group and set up the next night camp. When we got the the camp site the tents would be set up and the dinner almost ready. We slept 2 to a tent.
On The River	If you look carefully you can see a grouse sitting on the front of the kayak.
On The River	The guides are breaking camp and loading the rafts. The red rafts in the foreground are the guest boats and the gray boat behind them is the gear boat that is sent down ahead of the main group to prepair the next night's camp.
On The River	This is another lunch break.
Indian Writing	We took a short side trip to an area where there is indian writing. The writing was done on the cliff face behind me.
Indian Writing	The cliff in the backround is where the indian writing was. The cliff forms a concave U shape and is perhaps 100 feet high. A very small stream flows off the top and lands in the stoney area in the center of the picture.
On The River	This is the camp site where we spent our last night. That evening we watched a heard of mountain sheep on the far side of the river. There were some young sheep just learning how to climb.
At the Take Out	This is the take out point. It lies just downstream of the confluence of the middle and east forks of the Salmon river. It is also the first time in we have seen a road since we got on the river.
At the Take Out	This is the group Jeff organized.
At the Take Out	This is the full group of customers with the head guide on the left.
At the Take Out	These are our guides, with the bus that will return us to Stanley in the backround.
On the Bus	Shortly after we started our return trip on the bus, the driver stopped the bus so we could take some pictures of some mountain sheep.

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