Bitterroot Adventures: Fire, Hot Spring, Rowdies

9/3/2006: Day 15, 45.1 miles; Total 577.5 Miles

Today it’s up the Lochsa River a designated a National Wild and Scenic River. We are in the middle of the Bitterroot Mountains that were described by Lewis and Clark as the most horrible of mountains. The L & C party ran out of food and water on several occasions. There were Indian Trails through the region for over 10,000 years as the Native Americans traveled back and forth through the region with the season, including going over Lolo Pass from Idaho into what is now Montana. There are historical signs along the way and I managed to read most of them. L & C came west in 1805 and returned east in 1806. The Nez Perce gave them plenty of help and in turn they were given “peace medals” from President Jefferson. The Nez Perce were said to have taken these medals very seriously, but within 70 years they were driven from their lands. The TB doesn’t read all this stuff and thinks I should just pedal more. Once he said, “I was studying the Atlas and these Indians sure have a lot of reservation land.” I said, “They used to own all of it!” And he responded, “Just think what lives we’d live if they still owned it.” I guess he has a point!

As I pedaled along I finally saw a fisherman in this the most beautiful looking trout fly-fishing water I have ever seen. His name is Alan and he’s a student in Fisheries Science at Idaho State University in Moscow, Idaho. Alan and his girlfriend had camped in the area and each was on the river fishing. She was a good quarter mile upstream and behind some trees so I never was able to talk with her; however, Alan was 20 yards from the road standing on a rock in a foot of water beautifully laying his line into some soft rapids. I stopped to join him vicariously, and verbally, from the road. He was using a nymph. As the line floated easily a cutthroat trout hit and gave a good fight but was landed with finesse, handled carefully never out of the water and easily released from the barb-less hook. Alan and I were both elated with the catch. It was a fair fish, measuring about 13 inches. On the next cast we threw out into the same pool and I could see a bigger fish hit. We played it carefully, cautiously, and it pulled out a good 25 yards of line until we thought it might get away. But alas we turned him and he was landed just as carefully and released unharmed. This one was over 15 inches. Our country and our wildlife are in good hands. Thank you Alan.

As I pedaled there were perhaps a hundred vehicles an hour with about 10 percent being motor homes on this holiday weekend. The motor home drivers (I’m profiling here.) are prone to not want to wander over the center line and Rout 12 is a 2 lane road with a white line on my side that some times gives me as little as 6 inches of shoulder. One camper truck came fairly close and immediately behind was an Idaho State Trooper who flashed his light and pulled him over. I figured it was for crowding me. I tried to listen as the trooper threw his hands in the air when the driver first got out of the camper, but I heard no conversation and proceeded onward.

After another mile or five (who knows) I saw a sign, “Smoke Ahead.” Soon I could see a forest fire on the slope to the left of the road. I stopped for a picture and a US Forest Service green pickup truck pulled off on the other side with “US Gov” license plates. Out stepped Frank Bruno from Red Rock Fire (www.redrockfire.com) with a radio, a satellite phone, and a cell phone. Frank was dressed in wool green pants and a yellow heavy long sleeve shirt on this day of 85 degrees. From the Red Rock web site is the following mission statement:

“Red Rock Fire's "mission" is to provide "state of the art" wildland fire suppression and management services on an "on-call" basis. These services are intended to augment the services provided by existing public and private agencies in the face of natural disasters.”

And Frank delivered.

I pulled over to give Frank a hand listening to his radios. I introduced myself and he said, “Doc, if you want to see the action, the helicopter will be here in 4 minutes.” True to his word he directed them in with the radio, and then called headquarters on the Satellite Phone. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask for a Pizza delivery, so I controlled myself. The pilot looked the fire over and Frank gave the order for “water suppression of the fire nearest the road.” He then explained to me that the fire was over 160 acres in size and had been burning for 13 days. It was caused by “dry lightning.” A week ago Frank had two men up on the mountain but it was too steep and dangerous for them. The slope was about 45 degrees. The only way to actually put out the fire was a combination of men and helicopter drops. If the fire was not so close to the road he would let it naturally burn as it produces good habitat for deer and elk and is “nature’s way.” However, because of public safety and steepness of the slope he wanted to keep the fire from getting closer to the road. The fire was at least 500 feet higher on the slope than the road and Frank pointed out that when all the trees burned they would fall to the road and create major rock slides that would be dangerous and very difficult to repair. Therefore, he was going to suppress this side of the fire.

The pilot told Frank he knew of a pool a mile or so down the Lochsa River and would pick up 200 gallons of water at a time from the bucket suspended on a 50-foot cable. Frank described it as, “like dipping water out of a bath tub with a cup.” Soon the helicopter was back and went directly over our heads spewing water as it went towards the fire. Soon we suffered a small shower as the spewed water came across the road. The pilot maneuvered expertly to the side of the fire towards the road and dropped his 200 gallons and went off for another load. Frank described it as a direct hit as we could see a change in the smoke color and the emergence of steam.

I watched as we dropped about 5 loads of water all direct hits, and suddenly a state trooper pulled up giving someone in a pickup truck a ticket. As soon as the newly ticketed pickup was gone, I approached the officer asking if he gave the ticket I had seen earlier. He had. That fellow had earned his ticket by weaving across the road in front of the officer and not for coming too close to me. I told the trooper (who asked that his name not be used since he doesn’t like the internet) he had a wonderful state, and he agreed. His distant grandparents came to Idaho on the Oregon Trail by wagon train more than 150 years ago and the family has written journals from that trip. I’d love to see those!

Back in Lewiston, ID, we heard about a Hot Spring that is poorly marked and not on our TransAm Bike Maps. It close to the 142-mile marker on the road and the TB, true to his name, found it. We had set the Hot Spring as our goal for the day and by the time I got there I was totally depleted just like in the old ultramarathon days. I had gone over 45 miles, all uphill, with an elevation gain of 1200 feet and the temperature above 85 most all of the day. The TB wasn’t quite ready for my exhaustion, but he was sitting in one of our chairs and gave it to me immediately. I asked for something to eat and he brought out a pint of macaroni salad, 4 slices of bread, a can of mandarin oranges, a dish of potato chips, and a couple of colas. Within an hour I felt better.

The TB said he wasn’t going to the hot spring and by the time I recovered I didn’t much want to go by myself. There had been two family groups and several couples come down from the Hot Spring and all said it was marvelous and about 104-108 degrees. Several of the females in wet t-shirts looked like it really would have been marvelous to be there with them! But I could not be deterred so I got a clean change of clothes and wore all my day cycling clothes and started up the ravine knowing full well this was bear and cougar country. The trail was abominable and because of all the tourists had offshoots running every direction. It was said to be half a mile. At about half way I came upon a lone camper sitting by a big campfire on the edge of the stream. We had seen signs that campfires were outlawed. Soon I saw about 20 feet up to my left two pipes coming out of the rocks. There was no steam. I climbed the rocks and there was the Hot Spring. It is about ten feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. It looks like it is a natural depression in the rocks that has a cemented lip on the low side to hold in the water. There is a wooden bench 3 inches above the water on the up-hill side and surprising to me, no mud. I laid out my clean clothes on the granite, sat on the bench, and dangled my feet. I have a hot tub at home that I don’t get into and it’s only 10 feet from my bedroom. Now I walked half a mile in bear and cougar country to this unknown tub. But it was worth it. If the water at home is above 103 degrees, it’s almost impossible to get in, so I would say this natural hot spring temperature was about 102. It was, in a word, perfect. I stripped and washed clothes and myself. Then I look down and there comes the TB. He couldn’t hold back and I was glad he made it.

After about half an hour of the tub we made our way back to the car arriving before nightfall. On the way we got off the trail twice, but it was obvious and no risk of being lost.

The TB had set up the camper and had it leveled and I had all my wet clothes draped from the bikes for drying and we went to bed at about 8 PM. Well, that was way too early for this place. Cars kept coming and going, horns blaring, with couples heading out for the hot spring well after dark. The TB was particularly intrigued by two girls holding hands as they headed for their tent just 50 yards from the cars. Then came the coups de grace when the TB was asleep (thank goodness) a car came into the parking lot way too fast and skidded in the gravel. It then made a quick reverse turn and backed in almost scrapping the glass off our headlights almost pinning us in our spot. It turns out they belonged to the tent just beside the van. They had a boom box in the car and let it all boom out! One of them walked around behind our van and the bikes and behind the car next to us. He fired up a generator twice as load as the boom box. He then turned on enough light for a night Super Bowl. About that time the TB who goes to church daily when at home awoke and wanted to know in somewhat salty language what the heck was going on. And then in rather loud voice he said from behind his tent curtains, “What are those jerks doing.” One of the guys took a huff from some type of pipe, and both were half the age and twice the size of the two of us. I encouraged the TB to not say anything, although he clearly wanted a piece of them. I thought that we could be in serious personal danger. So we moved his top bunk stuff, closed the top lid, put the Stallion on the bed (ala That Stallone Gangster Movie), removed the leveling blocks, and squeezed out of our space and departed. The Tb was hopping mad, but it was okay now as we were gone. About 7 miles up the road we found the Jerry Johnson Camp Site and pulled in to a nice spot and had a good nights sleep.