Marsh Creek in less than two weeks!

My first experience with Marsh Creek is now less than two weeks away, with launch scheduled for May 24th. It will be ten guys and nine catarafts for 5 nights on the Middle Fork of the Salmon, and then move on to the Lochsa for a couple days. About 10 days total. This trip should make for some great photos with 9 cats on the beach at each camp. I really can hardly wait. Not only will this be the first time I’ve been on the Middle Fork in a couple years, but the whole Marsh Creek experience, launching from the highway bridge, and running Dagger Falls, etc. Just a lot of adventure to look forward to.

The flow will be anybody’s guess. The Middle Fork is currently running between 4-5 on the lodge gauge, with a big snow-pack still left to come off. I only hope with the hot weather predicted this week in Seattle that it doesn’t go completely sky-high like it did in 2006 at the time we launch. I don’t want my first Marsh Creek/Dagger experience to be at 9’. But a good peak between now and when we launch might clean out some of the wood from last year’s fires. But then again, that wood could get plugged up at Pistol Creek. My fingers are crossed big-time. It will be an adventure, for sure.

This is not the trip I was thinking I was going to take. The first one (actually several back-to-back) fell apart a week ago due to the permit holder’s health problem. So thankfully I got invited on this other Middle Fork trip. I’m doing a little packing almost every night. There are always lots of little projects to do for the first trip of the year. For instance, last year we had some problems with our huge kitchen shelter (“Big Top 440” model). The shelter would lift off the 10’ oar we used as the center pole in wind gusts. So we started jacking the oar up off the ground on a stack of ammo cans and such to lift the shelter higher and in doing so, create more tension and down-force. So this weekend I cut up an old Carlisle oar blade, and glued it into about a 4.5’ piece of ABS tubing. Should work pretty slick; remove the blade from that center oar, insert this thing, it snaps into place like the blade, and presto, a 14’ center pole! ABS doesn’t weight very much. But it looks kind of goofy – I’m gonna call it the ‘null blade’. Snap it onto your oar shaft and you can row in circles forever!