Jackson Hole Underground

(Updated 6/27 with photos from the actual river trip, shot by passenger Paul Schnell)

I was back on the river yesterday, after a week’s layoff due to foul weather. The flow in Grand Teton National Park is surging, with the sudden arrival of sunshine finally triggering a melt-off in the high country.

Earlier I wrote about the experience of exploring the river in the park, and that’s the way spring has been: abundant wildlife, elk sightings nearly every trip, the uncertainty around each bend of not knowing just what you’ll encounter.

Last night, on the last of my three trips, I rowed into a small side channel. It’s quiet, and a good place to see wildlife up close, when animals happen to be there.

Within minutes I had spotted what looked like a large dirt clump on the side of the river. It was too large to be a beaver, but it wasn’t moving. We floated closer. A tourist asked me a question, and the brown shape slowly roused, turned around and looked at us with sad eyes.

“It’s a grizzly bear,” I said, and the tourists screamed.

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I have returned to river guiding on my first and favorite stretch of the Snake in Grand Teton National Park. There are many reasons for this, chief among them a desire to spend more time outside and less staring at a computer, while getting paid for it.

Late last week, a call came over the radio from two guides in front that I should hug a certain bank a few miles downstream of Deadman’s Bar. There was a carcass I might want to have a look at, the guides said.

So I rowed my boat, slowly rounding a curve. I stood on the oar frame to get a better look, and as ten expectant tourists arched their necks, we came in sight of … a dead wolf.

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(All photos © 2007 David Stubbs Photography)

The Bureau of Reclamation has scaled back the release of water from Jackson Lake Dam so that the Snake River is flowing at its normally low level for this time of year.

For more than six weeks, a magnificent stream was turned into a 90-mile-long irrigation ditch. An inquisitive person might ask, Where did all the water go?

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Last week’s trip to Idaho brought me to Twin Falls, a farming town best known for its nearby waterfalls and a botched jump by Evel Knievel.

Photographer David Stubbs and I gazed across the Snake River Canyon nearly 33 years to the day — Sept. 8, 1974 — that Knievel attempted to fly across the gorge in a custom-made rocket cycle.

Aesthetically, Knievel made a fine choice. The canyon is beautiful, 400 feet deep, with the green Snake slithering through cliffs of black volcanic basalt.

Too bad his chute opened shortly after takeoff, and the rocket did not come close to clearing the canyon.

No matter. There wasn’t a boy who grew up in the 1970s that did not idolize Knievel. I remember playing with an Evel Knievel toy figure and motorcycle that you could wind up and send across jumps.

On returning from Idaho, weary from our epic canoe journey, I spent an hour or two researching Knievel on the Web and watching clips of him on YouTube.

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Last week I was privileged to take part in the “Legends of the Snake” a float trip, a benefit for the Snake River Fund.

The event brought together many of the pioneers of river running and fly fishing in Jackson Hole: Frank Ewing, Dick Barker, Charlie Sands, John Simms, Dave Hansen, Jack Dennis and Paul Bruun. A collection of great guides and storytellers, they are the Jedi Masters of the Snake.

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