I will never forget going to Riggans to pick up some people in June, I think it was about 1975, the water was so high that they were going over the cables for the cable cars that cross the river, 5 day trips were done in 3 cause the water was going so fast they could not pull in so they kept on going. The road into the pickup place had water on it in some places, the normal water level was about 20 feet below the road. There was a whole boat load drowned when the river went down, their boat ran into a cable and flipped it. I could tell you all kinds of boating stories on the Salmon.
Here is one that comes to mind.
My friend and I spent the summer between Junior and Seniors in high school running shuttles for boaters between Salmon and Riggans, Boise and Salmon, so you could take a boaters cars to Riggans, hitch hike to Boise, pick up the other boaters cars and drive back to Salmon. We were riding colts for people and riding a grazing association in the mean time so we were making our real money from tourists but we got to do what we liked the rest of the time.
I got a contract with an outfitter to move all of their vehicles for the summer. One of the guides was alot of fun, we liked him alot, but he was from the East, deathly afraid of snakes, cause he never had been around them. Alot of the float boats are equiped with a boatmens box, which he has to sit on while steering, and it has ropes, patches, etc for caring for the boat. While on the way to Riggans to pick him and his party up, we encountered a very large Bull Snake. We threw it in, a good snake is alot of good comedy material when you piss them off. When we got to Riggans the boats were later than they should have been so this snake is gettting on the warm side of life. The boats pull in after 1:00, it is about 100 degrees, we kindly threw this Bull snake into the boatmans box when he was not looking and took a seat on the hill to watch the rest of the story. This snake was POed, this guy went to throw something into his boatmens box and that snake was doing the Cobra dance and hissing like a rattler. You could have heard that lid slam from a mile away over the sound of the river. When he had his heart back in his chest, he came runing after us cause he knew. He even bought us beer for the way home, made his week. BTW, drinking age in Montana was 18 then.
Can't you take me with you, Kolanu? 