The Steele Family Adventures

My boss, Dave Hirschi, rented a boat up at Strawberry Reservoir last Saturday and invited me to come along and go fishing with him. His son, Jeff Hirschi, and I went up after work the night before and camped over night. We grilled steaks and sat around the camp fire. It was fun but very cold. We woke up to a very hard, cold frost which made packing up camp more difficult and painful. Then we drove over to the marina where we met Dave, his father Frank, another co-worker Aaron Waite and his son Michael.

Jeff and his brothers Brad and Dan met up over the Labor Day weekend for a backpacking trip into Big Creek, which is in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho. Jeff and Brad came up from Salt Lake City, while Dan drove down from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Jeff and Brad got a late start, leaving Farmington around 4:00 pm. With a 6 hour drive to Cascade, and then a three to three-and-a-half hour drive over dirt roads to the trailhead, it was a long drive. We pulled in around 2:00 am. We were very anxious to find Dan, given that he had chosen a route with a 5 hour drive over dirt roads, the fact that he was driving alone, and the fact that there was some confusion over where we were supposed to meet up because we lost cell phone coverage at the worst possible time. After Brad and I pulled in we found a truck that we thought might be Dan's and I made Brad shine his light in the cab to see if anyone was in there. Dan bolted upright scaring us. Under the circumstances, it was a small miracle that we were able to meet up. We got to bed around 3:00 am, sleeping uncomfortably in the back seat of a car, the cab of a Dan's truck and the bed of the truck.




The next morning we woke up early and started off down the trail. We noticed a lot of bear scat (crap) on the trail. We had inquired from the Idaho Forest Service about bears in the area before the trip and had been told that there was a brown bear population but that no special bear precautions were required. Brad, who had worked with the UDWR to trap and track bears one summer said that he had never seen so much bear scat in one area as we hiked the trail.



After about three hours we climbed down off the trail and went dotwn by the river for a breakfast/lunch break. As we inspected the river we saw some huge Chinook Salmon that has run up the river to spawn. These fish easily pushed 3 feet long and were amazing. It was incredible to think how far they had come from the ocean to be here. Dan waded out for a better look and was a little scared when one of the larger bruisers turned and sped right at him. Fortunately both Dan and fish survived the encounter.


We decided not to camp there and to hike a little further. We hiked about another half hour before finding a nice area to pitch our camp. On the way, we found a huge dead salmon in the middle of the trail. It was few hundred yards from the river. We wondered whether maybe a bear had dragged the fish up to the trail and then been startled or scared away by hikers.



After setting up camp and resting for a while, we went fishing. We went downstream a few hundred yards from camp and fished our way back. The fishing was not as fast as we had hoped but the rewards were impresive. The fish were brilliant-colored cutthroat trout, and the size of some of them were larger than anticipated. We had hoped to make it downstream a little further to a confluence with another tributary where we understood the fishing would be better, but we never did. Brad and I both caught fish and Dan, who was fly fishing for the first time, missed a few strikes. It wasn't until we got back to camp that he realized he had been fishing with a fly where the hook had broken off. That will definitely make it difficult to cath anything.


After we got back to camp we cleaned up, made a fire and ate dinner. Dan worked at REI for a couple of months in the Spring and apparently spent all of his earnings on new backpacking gear, because he had all kinds of cool new stuff. Nothing was more appreciated, however, than his new tent. Shortly after dinner a storm rolled in and it got dark and cold real fast. By 9:30 the rain started and we retired to the tent. The lightning was close and the thunder was loud. It rained steadily until late the next morning. The rain was so hard that it woke us up several times. Dan's new tent was up to the challenge, however, and we stayed warm and dry.

In the morning we discovered that a bear had visited our camp. We found fresh scat at the outskirts of camp and the bear had apparently eaten our leftover scraps from dinner. We hadnt heard anything during the night because of the rain. It would have been cool to see the bear, and Dan claims he would have been a deadeye with his bear spray if necessary.


Because we had to go home the next day we decided that the drive in was so long that it made more sense to hike out that day and stay at a hotel that night, rather than trying to hike out and drive home all in the same day. So we cleaned up camp and hiked back out with a few stops to fish along the way. We noticed that the salmon on the trail the day before was gone and can only assume a bear ate it. By the time we made it out to the trailhead we were pretty tired. This is probably because we hadn't had nearly enough time to recover from the hike in. We drove out to McCall together and rented a hotel room. By the time we got out of the car we could barely move our legs. It was nice to take a hot shower and sleep in a bed. The next morning we separated with Dan going North and me and Brad heading South.

Some might think we were crazy to drive 16 hours or more roundtrip and hike another 7 hours roundtrip just to camp for a day and a half. They are probably right. But we sure had a fun time. Were already talking about where to go for next year's trip.