Snake River Run

Beautiful River, Long, Winding Road

Chevrolet Apache

It was a chance to see the Snake River from the top of a mountain.  It had been quite the day for us, taking that tight little road up and up and up, coming off the backside of Riggins, Idaho for a tour of the small piece of the state we were looking at so intensely.  Pop’s Apache truck was getting the ride of a lifetime, because we had been up and down the mountains over the last few days, sitting in the back of the truck, dragging big sticks up the dirt road, making designs in the gravel and dirt.  We had run the campgrounds, looked at deer feeding through the trees, watching them as they looked so small, knowing that they were big creatures, just grabbing a snack before heading off to sleep.

The river looked small as well.  The Snake River passes within 30 miles of the Idaho state capital of Boise, the river then surges past the state border into Oregon, close to where it meets the Owyhee River, Boise River and Payette River. The Snake River then begins to define the roughly 200-mile-long Idaho-Oregon state border, which follows the river into Hells Canyon, a steep and spectacular gorge that cuts through the Salmon River Mountains and Blue Mountains of Idaho and Oregon. Hells Canyon is one of the most rugged and treacherous portions of the course of the Snake River, which pioneers on the Oregon Trail and steamboat operators in the 19th century, had great difficulty negotiating.  


Pop was well into the 20th Century, and he could see the river below, and there was the gravel, dirt, and plain old ordinary road, leading down from the top of this mountain.  8473’. That’s eight-thousand, four hundred and seventy three feet. Little did we know, it was about to be a little over an hour of pure fun (definition to be determined) and it started out great.


Since there is no video or movie film associated with this scrabble of writing, it would be best to try and tell you, as any kid would, that the mountain road was steep, dirt, one-lane and a narrow one at that, and (I think this is the most important “and”), there was no fence or safeguard, bumper-type roll off thing or protective anything on this road.  On one side was the mountain, with its growth of meager plants, but made up mostly of rocks, large and small, a few strips of green grass through it, and at places rocks, small, and large.  The road was cut into the side of the mountain, so the other side of the road, all the way to the bottom, was air.

This is a wide wide wide road

Cool, crisp Idaho air, just in the very low fifty degree’s temperature, and absolutely nothing standing between the edge of the road, and the bottom of God’s clear sky, leaving it all until one would make contact with the earth.  Remembering this, it was the early sixties, and one June 29th, 1956 President Eisenhower signed the highway revenue act, enacting the Interstate Highway System, which means, this road was the best Idaho was going to do at the time.


There were three kids in the back of the truck, a cooler of water, a stick or two we had picked up along the mountain roads, and Mom and Pop were in the front.  I think it is important to note, right here and for the sake of this writing, that Mom has reached the ripe old age of twenty seven to twenty eight years of age, and Pop, following that six year theory, was thirty-three or thirty-four.  Figuring the ages of my brother and sister, and throwing mine in for good luck, that means that they, averaging, about half our ages now, or that they were the ages of our children now.


This may sound just a little bit screwed up, but if you look at your son or daughter as to being of the age to make decisions, or to marry, or to have children, then it is best to think that we were once half as smart as we are now, and we were half the age, and we had fully fun little kids running around, and thinking later that you put them all at risk for something as simple as travelling down a dirt road, well, it just seems incredible.  That was a lot of verbiage getting to the end point, but if you stayed with it throughout, or you are at least fifty years old, the meaning will find its way home.

Mom's Camera  (or it looks like it)

Off we went.  Mom had her movie camera, she had cranked it up, and was ready to film some of this ride.  (This was a small camera about four inches wide and seven inches long, wrapped in a leather case with a strap attached to it.  It had snaps on that leather that clicked into place and kept the lens protected, and you would put the film in, snap the case, wind it up and there you would go to work.)  Mom took her film (no sound) and it is fascinating to watch.

Pop had the truck in second gear as we made those first few turns down the road.  Everyone was happy, we kids weren’t fighting and Pop was in control of the ride.  We were doing somewhere close to twenty mile per hour, with three pedals on the floor, Pop was having to stab the brakes, put the clutch in from time to time, and down shift to first. 


The river ran so peacefully, just a little stream from up here, and Pop kept going down the mountain.   It was likely about a third of the way down, that little things began to creep in to Pop and Mom’s minds that would become conversation, then tepid conversation, then that, we-better-keep-our-mouth-shut-and-get-this-over-with conversation.  One of the things was; what do we do if we meet another vehicle?  This road, in seriousness, was the width of Pop’s truck, plus about one foot on the right side and one foot on the left, and regardless of how popular turn outs were on the highway, or even on the logging roads camping, there was no turnout here.  This meant that if we met another vehicle, one of us was going to have to back up or back down the length of the road traveled, just to clear the road.


We rumbled on down, slower, with the brake on, and now the left foot kind of poised at the brake.  Another question: What if the brakes didn’t hold? Down we went, curving back around the side of the mountain, to where we couldn’t see the river any longer, and the back out onto the river view we came.  What would you do, in this deep stint of a drop, should the truck die?  What would you do if it started raining?  Well that was an easy one to answer because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  We rolled down.

There were just three of us, not six...play along

As one of the three monsters riding in the back, I took a turn at looking over the side of the pick-up bed, and could see all the bright green little grass growing, the rocks, the hillside and the river flowing at the bottom.  Because Mom and Pop were too busy watching the road, they couldn’t or wouldn’t see us in the back of the truck, and my sister had moved to the mountain side of it, I was over the left rear wheel well, and there, came loving brother, behind me, grabbing my leg and “pretending” to throw me out of the truck, down that deep and extra steep incline, hoping I would claim the bottom long before the truck did, but with enough hard kicks, and screaming voice and tears flowing out of my eyes, he backed off and moved to the front of the bed.


There were rocks in the road, just about six inches or smaller, that kept shooting off of the side of the mountain, tumbling and rolling downward to the river.  The truck would bump and lurch and you could feel every rock as it hit the tires, and you asked yourself; could one of these rocks send us down the mountain upside down and sideways?  Being one to always look for the positive in situations, I figured at least I could survive, because I kept both hands on the bed of that truck and was constantly based to jump.

Chevy Apache

Pop shifted into granny-gear, throwing that clutch as quickly as he possibly could, bringing our now heating up engine to a grind and the transmission to a slow crawl and the road became narrower.  Looking back, it was interesting to think about the tractor, or grader or bulldozer that cut that road and the guy driving it.  Did he start at the top or the bottom?  Was he scared as bad as I was when he was doing it?  Did he have a celebration and a drink congratulating himself for not falling over the side when he was finished or was this a daily celebration that he kept doing to remind himself that he had just spent one more day alive?  Down we went slow as slow, Mom kept cranking and filming and Pop gripped the steering wheel firmly enough that it would take a couple of days for him to wash out the steering wheel paint or covering that was now becoming a part of his body.  Pop’s ears were red, his neck was red, and down, down, down, further we went.


There were things one was grateful for.  It wasn’t snowing, so the road was firm as a dirt road could be which let a person slide from time to time.   It wasn’t raining, so you could see; except that the dust would roll toward the back of the truck, and then catch back up with you and blind you when you would slow down to make a turn.


By now my sister, who was always worried and sick about situations like this was nodding off with her head against the front of the bed of the truck.  My brother had settled and was looking over the side with me, and Mom had given up about an hour and a half ago trying to keep winding that camera, to get fifteen minutes of film of this harrowing  hour ride.  The river was loud and noisy and the road broke free into one last downhill run, just past a sign facing away from us, the mountain seemed to shrink back and the road bed became wider, and the rocks were bigger than your car or your house, and the river seemed extra wide, and the grass was green, and we had made it to the bottom with only the slightest bit of smoke rolling out from under the truck.  Pop pulled it over to the side, and the entire family stood in the road, shivered (from excitement it seemed) walked up and down the banks of the river for a ten or fifteen minutes and basically enjoyed life.  

Pop had already figured out that he was not going to the top of that mountain via that road, so he picked the way out, turned the truck around and we started out of the valley.   


There at the foot of the road, was the small white sign at the bottom of the road down.  Pop hit the brakes and the clutch at the same time and read the sign:  Road for Crews Only, Dangerous Fall Out.  I swear you could have picked Pop from that seat and taken the seat covers with you.