Hell’s Canyon and the Clearwater River
The Sea Bird arrived this morning at a puzzling fork in the river road: the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. To the right lay Hell’s Canyon, and the tantalizing prospect of a jet boat ride up the Snake and into some of the wildest and most remote country in the Lower 48. Straight ahead lay the Clearwater country, where the Lewis & Clark expedition recovered from its starvation trek across the Lolo Trail in 1805 and where, the following spring, it spent a convivial but hungry month among the Nez Perce.
With time sufficient to pursue just one route or the other, many of our party chose to thunder up the right-hand fork in spacious aluminum jet boats. They were rewarded for their efforts with spectacular desert canyon scenery and with sightings of what William Clark called “the big-horned animal,” or bighorn sheep. They also spotted several mule deer, a species first described for science by Lewis & Clark. But the animal that appeared to make the biggest impression was a 7-foot white sturgeon that a local fisherman hauled to the surface, measured, admired, and then released.
Lewis & Clark also admired sturgeon in the spring of 1806, but their admiration was based more on hunger than on simple awe for a prehistoric species. They tried to buy some sturgeon from the local fishermen, but the going price was too high.
The remainder of our party ascended the left-hand fork (the Clearwater) by land in the company of Linn Laughy, an historian well-versed in the lore of both Lewis & Clark and the Nez Perce. During the morning, we followed the Corps of Discovery’s 1806 return trip route, pausing here and there on the banks of the Clearwater to gaze at verified Lewis & Clark campsites and to munch on biscotti and sip freshly ground coffee. Lewis and Clark’s party was not so well provisioned, and their friends the Nez Perce had passed a hungry winter. Nonetheless, the Nez Perce welcomed the expedition and provided food in exchange for the medical services of William Clark and for small items from the party’s diminished stock of trade goods.
After a sumptuous lunch in the small village of Kamiah, we visited a Nez Perce legend site called the Heart of the Monster. Here, we heard the Nez Perce creation story and then learned to make fire the old-fashioned way – first with friction and two sticks, and then with flint and steel. After a quick primer on how to catch a speck of molten steel on charcloth, three of our party squared off in a contest to see who could get a fire going fastest.
As we returned to the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, we followed the expedition’s outbound route, landing at the “pine bottom” where they built canoes for their descent of the Snake and Columbia river systems. Before returning to the Seabird, we rendezvoused with our jet boat compatriots for a tour of the Nez Perce National Historic Park’s interpretive center.
The Sea Bird arrived this morning at a puzzling fork in the river road: the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. To the right lay Hell’s Canyon, and the tantalizing prospect of a jet boat ride up the Snake and into some of the wildest and most remote country in the Lower 48. Straight ahead lay the Clearwater country, where the Lewis & Clark expedition recovered from its starvation trek across the Lolo Trail in 1805 and where, the following spring, it spent a convivial but hungry month among the Nez Perce.
With time sufficient to pursue just one route or the other, many of our party chose to thunder up the right-hand fork in spacious aluminum jet boats. They were rewarded for their efforts with spectacular desert canyon scenery and with sightings of what William Clark called “the big-horned animal,” or bighorn sheep. They also spotted several mule deer, a species first described for science by Lewis & Clark. But the animal that appeared to make the biggest impression was a 7-foot white sturgeon that a local fisherman hauled to the surface, measured, admired, and then released.
Lewis & Clark also admired sturgeon in the spring of 1806, but their admiration was based more on hunger than on simple awe for a prehistoric species. They tried to buy some sturgeon from the local fishermen, but the going price was too high.
The remainder of our party ascended the left-hand fork (the Clearwater) by land in the company of Linn Laughy, an historian well-versed in the lore of both Lewis & Clark and the Nez Perce. During the morning, we followed the Corps of Discovery’s 1806 return trip route, pausing here and there on the banks of the Clearwater to gaze at verified Lewis & Clark campsites and to munch on biscotti and sip freshly ground coffee. Lewis and Clark’s party was not so well provisioned, and their friends the Nez Perce had passed a hungry winter. Nonetheless, the Nez Perce welcomed the expedition and provided food in exchange for the medical services of William Clark and for small items from the party’s diminished stock of trade goods.
After a sumptuous lunch in the small village of Kamiah, we visited a Nez Perce legend site called the Heart of the Monster. Here, we heard the Nez Perce creation story and then learned to make fire the old-fashioned way – first with friction and two sticks, and then with flint and steel. After a quick primer on how to catch a speck of molten steel on charcloth, three of our party squared off in a contest to see who could get a fire going fastest.
As we returned to the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers, we followed the expedition’s outbound route, landing at the “pine bottom” where they built canoes for their descent of the Snake and Columbia river systems. Before returning to the Seabird, we rendezvoused with our jet boat compatriots for a tour of the Nez Perce National Historic Park’s interpretive center.
