River of No Return: The Middle Fork of the Salmon River

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The little Cessna banks hard over the mile-deep canyon, filled this morning with the pungent smoke of a half dozen nearby wildfires. Below me, the wingtip points along the serpentine course of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, its surface tinted orange by the smoke-stained morning sun and punctuated with ivory patches—whitewater rapids—and plenty of them. Two days’ worth of river miles are framed by the dusty window of the old plane—two days of the six I’ll spend with a group of friends from Minnesota, rafting and fly fishing in the 2.3-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the largest forested wilderness area in the Lower 48.

Wild & Scenic

Few rivers in America evoke the wonderment and awe we feel at the vastness of the wilderness and the untamed power of moving water like Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon. One of the original eight rivers protected by the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act—signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968—the Middle Fork begins at around 7,000 feet in the Sawtooth Mountains, where Bear and Marsh creeks converge.

The river tumbles more than 4,000 feet in elevation over roughly 104 miles, through the aptly named Impassable Canyon, to its confluence with the river William Clark named “Lewis’s River” in August 1805. The early fur traders dubbed it “The River of No Return,” but the Middle Fork later became known for the dominant fish that once teemed in its pools by the millions: the Salmon River. With some 300 rapids—most between Class III and Class IV+ in high water—and a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon, the Middle Fork has drawn river rats and thrill seekers for more than a century. (By contrast, the Colorado River has only 80 rapids over 225 river miles.) There’s little argument that the Middle Fork is the premier multi-day wilderness float on the continent.

But lost in all the talk of whitewater and mile-deep canyons is the fact that the Middle Fork is one of the finest cutthroat trout rivers on earth, known for its spectacular dry-fly action. Because access is strictly controlled through the permit system, fishing pressure is decidedly light. The Middle Fork offers seemingly nonstop whitewater action, but there’s also plenty of pocketwater, and many flat stretches where a well-placed attractor pattern such as a Stimulator will often trigger an aggressive strike from one of the resident westslope cutthroats, estimated at 2,400 per mile. And since 1972, the Middle Fork has been a strictly catch-and-release, barbless-single-hook river.

As the Cessna banks, the gravel airstrip at Indian Creek comes into view, and I watch as the two other planes in our group make their final approaches far below us. We descend in a spiral, the steep canyon walls towering sharply above us, and then it’s our turn to bounce to a stop on the dusty gravel airstrip.

Our river guides from ROW Adventures meet us at the airstrip and help shuttle our gear from the planes to the rafts, which line the broad sandy beach, barely 100 yards away down a steep, well-traveled trail. The scene at Indian Creek is a great river bazaar of brightly colored rafts, kayaks, waterproof packs, Pelican cases, food boxes, fire pans, portable toilets, PFDs, and summer-bronzed Teva-clad guides.

The frenetic energy on the bustling riverbank only builds on the nervous excitement of the dramatic flight from Salmon to Indian Creek. The canyon here is layered with receding ridges carpeted with ponderosa pines and dotted with blackened stumps from forest fires. Before we’ve finished toting the last of our equipment down to the beach, our three planes roar off one by one into the smoky sky, and we realize the only way out now is six days and a hundred miles downriver.

Historic Floats

Indian Creek is also where President Jimmy Carter and his family launched on a three-day float in August 1978. Despite breaking an oar at Tappan Falls, one of the more challenging rapids, the president reportedly enjoyed the trip. Carter, an avid—if inexperienced at the time—fly fisher relished the time in the wilderness out of the public eye. “It was nice that I caught a lot of fish and nice that I didn’t have to comment to the press about it.”

In 1966, Robert F. Kennedy kayaked the river with astronaut John Glenn. Four years later, journalist Tom Brokaw’s trip down the river in high water with a small group of friends ended in tragedy when two boats overturned in Redside/Weber rapids at mile 83, killing his friend Ellis Harmon and guide Gene Teagle. Brokaw himself was pitched into the raging current, but he and the other passengers in his boat managed to swim to shore, and were rescued by helicopter the following day.

We shove off just before noon in six rafts, each outfitted with an aluminum fishing frame, two anglers, and a river guide. My friends Steve Carlton and TroutRoutes founder Zach Pope row out first, with guide Chloe at the oars.

Almost immediately, a chorus of shouts erupts from their raft, and I look up to see they both have fish on, with their raft no more than 20 yards from the launch. It was the first of countless “doubles” our group would experience over the course of the following days, but I’ll admit to a tinge of jealousy at my friends catching fish before I’d even finished stringing my rod.

My guide today is the irrepressible Maggy, a transplant from the Midwest, whose laid-back humor and expert boat-handling skills keep me and my fishing partner, Jamie Vater, in fish and laughter all afternoon.

We encounter our first set of rapids almost immediately, and to flatlanders like us they feel intimidating. “What class rapid was that?” I ask Maggy after one early run of whitewater. She leans into an oar and smiles. “Class fun,” she says.

Hot Springs

Despite Steve and Zach’s early success, my fishing gets off to a slower start. I tie on a purple Chubby Chernobyl, picking up a few colorful cutthroats as we navigate downriver, but missing more than I’m landing. “Last week, most of the fish were caught on nymphs,” Maggy says casually. I switch to a size 16 orange Fire Starter Perdigon nymph tied on a barbless Ultimate Dry Fly Hook as a dropper below the purple Chubby—the fish count rises sharply. In addition to the westslope cutthroats, the Middle Fork holds rainbow trout, steelhead, Chinook salmon, mountain whitefish, bull trout, and northern pikeminnows (Ptychocheilus oregonensis).

I’m casting a 6-weight Orvis Pro textured trout line on a vintage Sage XP rod with a sweet old Abel Pt. 5 reel, a favorite setup of mine that feels like an old friend. Steve and Zach are throwing brand-new Orvis rods, a 5-weight Helios 4 and a 6-weight Recon, respectively. The cutthroat trout in the Middle Fork, though abundant, lack slightly the length and girth of those I’ve taken on the rivers in Alberta and B.C. to the north.

It may be that these Salmon River westslope cutthroats (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi) have adapted to this swift river system differently than their northern cousins. Or perhaps the larger fish have begun to move downstream to their winter holes in the main Salmon River. Whatever the reason, this sometimes feels to me like a 4-weight river—until a monster bull trout ghosts up from a deep pool and grabs hold of the cutthroat I’m trying to bring to the net.

At 4 o’clock, 7 river miles from our put-in, we round a bend to find the rest of our group standing on the bank in various states of undress. “Hot springs,” explains Maggy, beaching the raft. Terraced into the cliffside above the river are a series of natural pools named Sunflower Hot Springs, with a natural shower falling from the last pool to the rocky beach below.

There are a half dozen or so hot springs along the first 60 miles of the Middle Fork. Several of them, like Sunflower, Hospital Bar, and Loon Creek—where we’d camp on the second night—are perfect places to soothe tired muscles, warm up on a cool autumn evening, or watch the stars late at night. After we’ve all lingered in the hot springs for a while, we shove off again for the final two miles to our first camp.

Camp Comforts

In the late afternoon we arrive at our first camp, called State Land Left, a long, narrow river terrace or “bench” with a stony beach and a crown of ponderosa pines. Guides Kim and Tyler had rowed ahead of our group with two cargo rafts loaded with our personal gear, tents, sleeping bags, food boxes, cooking equipment, fire pan, portable toilet (called the “groover”), and everything we’d need for a comfortable camp. As we beach the raft, the smell of a cooking fire greets us, and we see our tents already set up under the tall pines. There are hors d’oeuvres set out, with a selection of excellent wines, on a long table near the makeshift kitchen. We find our personal packs, choose our tents, and gather in comfortable chairs around folding tables to relax with plates of appetizers until dinner is announced. Tonight’s menu includes four slabs of Atlantic salmon, each dressed in a different combination of seasonings, with potatoes and vegetables, and chocolate cake for dessert.

After dinner, as night settles into the canyon, the group gathers around the fire, a bottle of bourbon is passed, and the conversations turn to fishing and the river, until one by one we drift off to our tents.

Late in the night, I awaken to the staccato chorus of coyotes close at hand. The voice of the river insinuates among the rocks and pines, punctuated with the rasping of crickets. The coyotes grow quiet. I strain my ears for sounds beyond the murmur of the water flowing over the rocks beyond the beach.

I step out of my tent into the cool night air and look up. I catch my breath. The smoke has cleared and the stars dazzle overhead, framed by the black outlines of the canyon walls and bisected by the pale ribbon of the Milky Way. I try to guess how far it is, as the crow flies, to the lights of the nearest town. Forty miles to Challis and Stanley, I figure, perhaps 50 to Salmon. Too far to dim the riot of stars overhead on this moonless night.

Sheepeaters

This is the same sky the indigenous Tukudeka people knew, except for the intermittent satellites, the blinking airliners filled with weary travelers, and the occasional slow passage of the International Space Station. To the scientists aboard the ISS, this vast roadless wilderness is a rare dark patch on an overly lit landmass below.

Something rustles in the dry willows nearby and I’m startled from my stargazing. I take one last look at the sky and retreat back to the warmth of my sleeping bag.

Humans have inhabited this canyon for millennia. The evidence is everywhere, though the countless inscrutable pictographs you find everywhere along the river only hint at the extent of the earliest habitation.

On our second day, we climb to a rock wall a few hundred feet above the water to view a collection of red pictographs. Our guide, Kim, gives a thoughtful and emotional talk on the history of the Tukudeka people, a band of the Shoshone also known as the Sheepeaters, who were the last of the many bands of indigenous people to live in the canyon.

In 1879, the Tukudeka were blamed—without evidence—for the murders of five Chinese miners on Loon Creek. The U.S. Army retaliated against the Tukudeka in what became known as the Sheepeater War. The Army pursued the Tukudeka, many of whom were captured or surrendered, and relocated them to the Fort Hall Reservation. It’s a tragic legacy, yet the spirit of the ancient people still abides in the canyon.

Each morning, as the sun rises over the towering canyon walls, I down the last of my breakfast and hot coffee and step into my raft, full of anticipation for both the fishing and the whitewater. Several times a day, my attention is so focused on my drifting fly or a trout on my line that my guide has to warn me to brace for whitewater. And each day it is a joy to watch our guides navigate the many rapids, with their colorful names like Jackass Rapids, Ski Jump, Earthquake Rock, Devil’s Tooth, and Tappan Falls.

On the third day, as I’m casting to a rock wall that looks particularly fishy, my guide Shane says, “Reel in,” with a gentle urgency, and I hear the rapids before I see them. He stands briefly at the oars, reading the water ahead. The voice of the river rises and we hang for a moment on the calm pool above the falls, stripping in our lines and securing our rods.

Once he’s chosen his route—partly from experience, partly from instinct—Shane sits down, braces his feet, tightens his grip on the oars, and begins his approach. As the current gathers strength, he fine-tunes his line, now with a soft twist of one oar, then with a hard pull on both, and we plunge, fully committed, into the riotous whitewater. The raft dips and rises and dips again, as we deftly thread the turbulent current.

We swoop and swing like a waterbird, first one way, then, with the skilled flick of an oar, the other. We spin in a careful pirouette, all while dodging rocks that could easily snag our raft and pitch us into the maelstrom. And all the water that isn’t lost as sunlit mist carries us through the slots between the boulders until, suddenly, we are clear of the rapids and in calm water again. For a moment I remain motionless, my hands still grasping the raft’s frame. Shane laughs, breaking the spell. “You can go back to fishing now,” he says calmly.

On the fifth day, we enter Impassable Canyon, the deepest section of the Middle Fork. Here, the sheer cliff walls rise thousands of feet above the river, revealing that this is the second-deepest canyon in North America—behind only Hells Canyon on the nearby Snake River.

At midday, our flotilla of six rafts converge on the rocky bank below Veil Cave Rapids, and we prepare to climb the steep, 600-foot-high boulder field to the spectacular Veil Cave, which resembles an amphitheater. A herd of bighorn sheep graze along the shore, and a pair of river otters playing in the current below the rapids entertain us with their antics.

Suddenly, one of our guides shouts, “Salmon!” We turn to see a large Chinook salmon, dark and tattered from its 900-mile journey from the Pacific, moving slowly upstream in the deep emerald pool. We watch in silence, astonished at the sight of this now-rare fish.

Though their pre-20th-century spawning runs here are estimated to have numbered more than a million fish annually, the sharp decline in the salmon runs began even before the completion of the eight massive dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, to which the Salmon River is a tributary.

Early, unsound lumbering, mining, fishing, and agricultural practices in the local watersheds proved devastating to the salmon populations. The construction of the dams, from the late 1930s through the 1970s, merely sealed the fate of the legendary runs.

In 2021, only 362 salmon were seen across more than 450 miles of the Middle Fork and its tributaries. In 2024, only one redd was identified in the main stem of the Middle Fork, below Boundary Creek. And the journey to the sea for the smolts (juveniles) through the four Snake River dams and four Columbia River dams is no less daunting.

The current survival rate for young salmon passing downstream through the turbines—with the eight dams—and predation in the reservoirs, is estimated at only 14 percent. This ragged apparition swimming slowly through the pool had survived a nearly 1,800-mile round-trip journey through an almost inconceivable gauntlet of dams, turbines, dramatic changes in hydraulic pressure, life-threatening water temperatures, predators, and stress. But this lone salmon’s presence here in this vast wilderness represented a glimmer of hope for a population on the brink.

Frank Church

The Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness is named for the late U.S. senator from Idaho, whose vision and tenacity ensured the protection of this rugged yet fragile wilderness, and this river that was at risk of being dammed. Church was a rare Democrat in a solidly Republican state, and his sponsorship of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, and the creation of the River of No Return Wilderness in 1980 cost him his Senate seat but secured his legacy as a staunch defender of America’s last wild places. The protected wilderness area was renamed in his honor in 1984, less than a month before his death from pancreatic cancer.

Fulfilling Church’s vision, roughly 10,000 people run the Middle Fork annually, though access is tightly controlled through the permit system. The odds of winning a permit are notoriously low. In 2021 there were 22,389 applications for only 220 available permits. Only seven launches (commercial and private combined) are allowed per day, and group sizes are limited. Private river runners can apply for a permit from December 1 to January 31, though the Forest Service regulates commercial outfitters under separate special-use permits. So people floating with guides and outfitters don’t need to apply for a permit. ROW Adventures of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, organized our trip. They’ve been guiding on the Middle Fork for almost half a century.

On our sixth and final day on the river, we stop for lunch at Goat Creek, our final meal together before the takeout. It’s bittersweet, as these are our last few hours on the river and the last float of the season for the guides. Kim pops the cork on a bottle of Champagne and we stand in a circle to share an emotional final toast to our amazing guides, our good friends, the spectacular fishing, and the wild river that has borne us here. The Middle Fork has thrilled us with its countless trout, abundant wildlife, heart-pounding whitewater, and breathtaking scenery. Less than two miles downstream from Goat Creek, the Middle Fork empties into the Salmon River, the River of No Return.

From the confluence, it’s a short stretch to the takeout at Cache Bar, where an old yellow school bus is waiting to take us on the long, dusty drive back to the town of Salmon. I am tired and sunburned, but like the tattered old salmon at the Veil Cave pool, I will return to this river again one day.

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John van Vliet is the author of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, Trout Fishing in Southwest Wisconsin (2023, troutrunpress.com). He’s a writer, filmmaker, and sailor whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Big River Magazine, and many other publications. His previous story in Fly Fisherman was “Coulee Country: Exploring Wisconsin’s Driftless Area” in the April-May 2024 issue.

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