Our day began with an adventurous jet boat ride up the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington into Hells Canyon. The canyon landscape began with walls composed of horizontal layers of dark basalt flows, some of which had cooled and fractured into wonderful columns. Wildlife sightings began with flocks of geese and mallards and then egrets and white pelicans. Then we saw ospreys, wood ducks, great blue herons, belted kingfishers, and ravens.
As we zoomed upstream, the canyon walls continued to rise higher and higher. We reached the confluence with the Grande Ronde River and the geology changed suddenly and dramatically. The basalt layers were replaced by tilted and twisted beds of limestone, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks. These rocks were millions of years older than the basalt and were “rafted” and attached to Idaho, which was essentially the west coast of North America at that time.
We stopped briefly at Cache Creek, a former sheep ranch headquarters now a forest service visitor center, for a snack and coffee break among various fruit trees including fig, plum, apple, and walnut. The native net-leaf hackberry trees were also heavy with their pea-size fruits.
Back on the Snake River, we boated past its confluence with the Salmon River, one of the last totally free-flowing rivers left in the West. Approaching the Imnaha River confluence, we learned about the ill-fated trip and sinking of the Imnaha steamboat and the mine that never produced any profitable ore. This is also the deepest part of Hells Canyon, some 6,000 feet from rim to river.
Then we turned around and zipped back to Garden Creek Ranch, a Nature Conservancy property, for a picnic lunch, stopping to photograph a herd of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. At the ranch, we saw wild turkeys and a herd of deer.
Once back in Clarkston at the National Geographic Sea Bird, we had the opportunity to then go to the Nez Perce National Historical Park and learn a little about the local Native Americans.
Our historian Don finished the evening with a entertaining talk about the events and people that led up to and formation of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition. A very full day indeed but one of adventure and enlightenment.
