The Lochsa River in Northern Idaho not only offers up some great big water fun, but as we found out during mid-May, it also hides a few secrets up its sleeves. Or rather, the secrets are hidden in its tributaries. The one other thing we found out, is that food poisoning while camping sucks. The up side to this is that you can simply roll out your tent door to vomit. No rush to the bathroom necessary.
We arrived at the Lochsa May 16, and found a nice juicy 9.5 feet, or thereabouts at the put-in. Stoked on the high water, we rallied a lap, and then went to find a camp. The next morning, we decided to make a quick trip up one of the tributary streams to search out a falls that is visible on Google Earth. In doing so, we learned several valuable lessons. First, Google Earth is not completely reliable for gauging distances. Bring a map. Second, when you think something is "only a few miles up the trail" double check that.
After about five miles of bushwhacking upstream, we finally arrived at our destination. A beautiful waterfall set in a scenic Idaho canyon. The flow was about 10 times what we expected, and the three of us were very happy to have not packed in our boats. Looking intimidating, and mostly unrunnable, the falls plunged around thirty feet into a massive boil, where most of the water recirculated into a cave behind the falls, and the water that flushed went straight into a nasty sieved out mess downstream.
Happy to have made it to our goal, we headed back to the car in search of food, intent on returning as soon as flows looked less than deadly.
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| Lochsa Area Rainforest. |
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| Rosalynn, happy to have at last found some sort of trail, and a lot farther from home than expected. |
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| Ummm, so Where are we again? And where the hell is this waterfall? |
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| Finally. The falls from the river right cliffs. |
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| Close up of the Falls. Notice the big cave on the left side of the photo. |
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| And the run-out from the drop... Nasty. |
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| Jesse, trying to become an American Whitewater accident report. |
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| Wrangler sizing up the falls for the first Canine decent. |
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| Big water Lochsa fun. |
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