The Middle Fork Trail

This is a chapter from a book I'm writing. All the events and places are real.
Copyright 2001 by Grady Bradley
All rights reserved



Earlier that year, while caretaking the Duck Creek mine, my first home at Meyers Cove, I hiked the trail down Camas Creek to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, which flowed north through the Idaho Primitive Area. Growing up in Salmon, I was never very far from the Primitive Area (now called the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area). It was maybe twenty miles to the west of the town, accessible only by trail as you got closer to the boundary. My home at Duck Creek was the closest I’d ever been: the border of the primitive area was just eight miles down Camas Creek at the mouth of Yellowjacket Creek. Once every week or two, hikers or horseback riders would pass in front of my cabin on their way to the Middle Fork, stopping for a bit to pass the time of day. Each time, I sought to learn a little more about the trail.

I learned that the Middle Fork was about fourteen miles west, with the trail following Camas Creek the whole way. The portion of the trail nearest me had a few washouts but nothing that couldn’t be crossed. The terrain near the cabin tended to be steeper, with the trail fairly near the creek. Further down, nearer the river, the terrain flattened out and the trail passed through lots of brush. An easy hike going downstream and only moderately difficult coming back up.

It wasn’t long before I decided to see the Middle Fork for myself.

Like every other human being, I have made many mistakes. The more serious of these mistakes had great potential to either kill or seriously injure me. Such was my Middle Fork trip, with mistakes aplenty.

To prepare, I stuffed my backpack with a nylon shelter half, fifty feet of parachute cord, food for several days, stick matches in a waterproof metal container, backpacker’s grill, hatchet, candle lantern, iodine tablets, paperback book, first aid kit, tea, metal cup, cheap sleeping bag, foam sleeping pad, hat, my journal and pens, long underwear and a cotton long sleeved shirt. When I left I was wearing a cotton t-shirt, cotton jeans, socks, cotton Levi jacket, high-top leather work boots, leather gloves and, for the first eight miles of the trip, my Bell motorcycle helmet.

The weather was gorgeous: sunny, clear, temperature in the sixties as I left around nine a.m. I thought I was well prepared for a brief trek. Was I ever wrong.

I had driven the Trail 90 motorcycle many hundreds of miles at Meyers Cove, and an assortment of other motorcycles many thousands of miles, but I’d never before driven a cycle on a mountainous hiking trail. Live and learn, right? Nearly didn’t live to learn a bunch of valuable lessons.

My plan was to drive the cycle to the border of the Primitive Area at the mouth of Yellowjacket Creek, leave the cycle there and continue on foot down to the Middle Fork. This plan ran into difficulty a mile or so down the trail as I found it difficult to go forward and impossible to back up. The slope of the sidehill at this point was about sixty degrees. The trail crossed a slide zone perhaps two hundred feet across, not a shrub or tree in sight to anchor the soil, and Camas Creek to my left, right at the bottom, rushing and tumbling down a narrow gorge. Not only was the slope steep but the trail itself was angled down across this slide zone perhaps twenty degrees. Foolishly, I had driven into the slide zone without understanding what lay just ahead. When the realization hit me I stopped immediately, shut off the engine, wished I hadn’t done what I had just done, and unsuccessfully tried to pull the cycle back up the trail.

The main problem here was that – although I could rest my right foot on the ground - as the sidehill rose steeply to my right - my left foot was simply dangling in the air if I raised it off the foot peg. Plus, the trail was only eight to ten inches wide. The danger was very clear: if the cycle tipped even slightly to the left there could be no recovery, and if I were astride the cycle at the time, I would fall over with it.

Shit, I thought. Maybe should have left the cycle at home.

But here I was in a bed of my own making. So, in an excess of caution, I kept the engine off, transmission in neutral, and carefully applying the front brake with my right hand and leaning to the right with my right foot against the uphill slope, I crossed the slide zone in baby steps.

Yes, I got across without incident, but a troubling feeling persisted as the trail improved and I drove on with the engine, that this nasty little bit of trail would be waiting for me on the way back.

The terrain was very similar to that back at the cabin: steep, sagebrush-covered mountainsides, some Ponderosa pine, and occasional thick willow stands down near the creek. The air was sweet with the scent of the sage and the day had warmed nicely. The sound of Camas Creek, a creek that would pass for a river in many places in the world, was a constant for the fourteen miles to the Middle Fork. Where the trail was steep the creek fell heavily and loudly over boulders the size of cars. As I kept glancing at the creek I failed to find a safe place to recover from falling in: the current and volume of water would sweep me rapidly downstream against a chaos of boulders.

All this, of course, made me drive very carefully and slowly. Also, I vowed not to cross another of those nightmare slide zones like I had previously encountered but it was impossible to turn the cycle around and I was forced to cross two more, the last of which would nearly lead to my death tomorrow.


I finally reached the Primitive Area boundary at Yellowjacket Creek. A Forest Service sign announced that motor vehicles were prohibited and I dutifully parked the cycle to the side of the trail.

From here on, the sidehills weren’t so steep and the trail evened out somewhat although as the trail followed the creek bottom more closely it also wound through brush that had overgrown the sides of the trail. Although the trail itself was clear, I was constantly brushing against willows and pine branches with my head and shoulders, sagebrush with my knees, and other smaller plants with my boots. At the time, I attached no particular significance to the overgrown trail.

Late in the afternoon, with tired feet and aching shoulders, I arrived at the Middle Fork. Its shores were rocky with plenty of sandy patches suitable for pitching a tent. All around were sagebrush-covered hills with the occasional Ponderosa pine, nothing you’d call a forest. The river entered my view to the left, perhaps a half mile away, flowed vigorously past, then continued on to the north, disappearing around a bend another half mile away. The air temperature had risen to perhaps eighty degrees, making for a very pleasant afternoon. I saw no clouds in the sky and looked forward to a beautiful evening.

Over the next few hours I explored up and down the river, finding recent evidence of campfires, horse manure and faded footprints. While I was sitting on the sand, leaning back against a large rock and writing in my journal, a large inflatable boat passed by, carrying perhaps eight paddlers in bright orange life jackets and two standing men at front and back, each with a long sweeping oar in his hands. I smiled and waved and would have welcomed their company for a time but the river’s current carried them past at a walking pace. Greetings were exchanged, and good wishes, and then they were gone around the bend. The sense of aloneness deepened dramatically in the moments after their passing but quickly faded.

With the remaining daylight I set up the shelter half. Under this went the sleeping pad and sleeping bag and everything else I’d brought. I fixed some tea over an open fire and had a dinner of beef jerky and granola. Before the light faded completely I made my daily journal entry accompanied by the tumbling rapids of the river only twenty feet away.

For perhaps half an hour I read by candlelight the paperback book I’d brought, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” I was quite taken by the book; Robert Pirsig, the author, and I had both come through trials by fire. Both of us had that delicate “mechanic’s touch” that senses the limits of metal’s elasticity. Both of us sought to understand the function that lay beneath form, to understand the whole of which things are a part, desired to live a life of Quality. I would love to meet this man tell him how much I enjoyed his book but the important things I’d want to say could not be expressed in that brief meeting; perhaps he’d see in my eyes the length of my journey and, without needing words, would somehow acknowledge a fellow traveler.


I awoke before dawn, chilled despite my long underwear. The weather had changed: I couldn’t see anything at all, which meant an overcast sky was hiding the faint starlight and what should be the faint light of false dawn. A sound, so faint as to be almost beyond hearing, lightly brushed my ears. I extended a hand beyond the shelter half and felt wet ground. A very soft drizzle, falling as gently as snowflakes, caressed the back of my hand. The pervasive smell of sage was now muted, overpowered by wet rocks and sand. The river continued its murmured passsage.

I have no problem admitting it: I’m a fair weather camper. I don’t like being wet while camping. Especially I don’t like being wet and cold. And I dislike about equally being stuck inside a tent or, as now, under a shelter half, for the duration of inclement weather.

Nuts, I thought. This sucks. I responded to the turn of the weather by burying myself deeper into my sleeping bag, closing my eyes, relaxing all my muscles and letting myself drift in thought until sunrise.

Sunrise, of course, never happened. Instead, as the day slowly, sluggishly lightened, I could see low clouds hiding the sky and obscuring even the tops of nearby hills. The drizzle that I had awakened to earlier was still falling.

I stayed in the sleeping bag and read until eight. I then got up and built a small fire in front of the shelter half. I cursed the cheap metal waterproof match container that was difficult to open with wet fingers and didn’t offer an adequate striking surface. But the tea revived my spirits and the granola was adequate for breakfast. Still the drizzle continued. The air temperature by eleven a.m. hadn’t climbed above forty or forty five degrees but, mercifully, the drizzle had stopped.

What a miserable day. Stuck under the shelter half for most of the morning. No sign of improvement in the weather. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the low clouds just hung where they were as though they been assigned permanent positions.

My reaction to this weather was predictable if not very smart: hike out. At no time did I give a thought to the trail back up Camas Creek. Even though I had walked down this trail just yesterday, the significance of all that brush and this morning’s drizzle just didn’t make an impression.

And so, blithely and naively, I packed up and left. The shelter half was so wet that I tied it to the bottom of the pack. The sleeping bag I tied in its usual place on top of the pack. I left my long johns on because of the cold. In other words, I made every mistake there was to be made.

Within a mile of leaving the river I was wet. By two miles I was soaked. As the six miles between the Middlefork and Yellowjacket Creek passed, I became a walking, dripping, cold automaton. Just a few miles more, I kept thinking; no need to stop, just keep walking and I’ll be home soon. There had been no rain or drizzle, but everything in the environment was wet. I came to absolutely hate every leaf and pine needle and branch that I could not avoid, and there were many thousands of them. Each little leaf and needle was burdened with as much water as it could hold from hours of the fine drizzle, and each little leaf and pine needle willingly gave up that burden with each touch of my hat, my face, my shoulders, my arms, hands, waist, legs and feet. Did I mention the backpack? Soaked. As I neared Yellowjacket Creek, staving off the worst of the chills by the increasing steepness of the trail, I imagined getting on the cycle and spending at most forty five minutes driving the remaining eight miles to the cabin. I knew the slide zones would be tricky, but with great care and a few minutes for each one, I could manage it.

Boy, was I ever wrong.


I reached the Honda about three o’clock. My fingers inside the wet leather gloves were cold and stiff. My feet were ok, if soggy wet. Everything I wore and carried was sopping. The air temperature was up to about fifty degrees. Still the low clouds, no wind, no sound but the continuous splashing of Camas Creek and my soggy boots. There must have been heavy rain at the headwaters of Camas Creek for it was now boiling down the mountain.

With difficulty I removed my gloves, got the ignition key from my pocket, started the engine, stuffed my wet hat under a rope securing the sleeping bag, retrieved the helmet from beside the cycle and put it on, put my wet gloves back on and headed up the trail.

This was not the same experience as coming down the trail yesterday. I was continually fending off rocks and brush as I drove, in large part because of my inability to steer accurately. Within a very few minutes I was shivering heavily. The drizzle started again. Rocks on the trail that were dry and easy to navigate yesterday became slick obstacles today. I was glancing at the odometer every minute, watching the tenths of a mile creep past. My shivering had now spread throughout my body. I could not control my lower jaw and if I didn’t keep it clamped tight it would shake frighteningly. Not far now, I kept thinking. At that point, perhaps five miles from the cabin, if I had just continued at the current rate, I could have made it home safely in another twenty, maybe thirty minutes. I knew, with a disturbing, anxiety-inducing certainty that I’d better get there soon.

Instead, I wrecked. I was on a very rocky part of the trail; rocks about five to six inches across, a few larger, were half-buried in the trail, making for an uneven surface that needed constant attention. At this point the trail was turning to the left. The slope of the sidehill I was crossing was near sixty degrees, Camas Creek boiling past about seventy feet below. Above and below the trail was a tumble of huge boulders, those jagged car-sized boulders I’d seen yesterday, held in place on the steep slope only because of their irregular shape and huge size. Undoubtedly, workers many years ago had worked very hard indeed to construct the narrow walking trail through this mess.

Because of my growing anxiety to get home quickly I had abandoned my earlier cautious approach to crossing these steep sidehills and instead was just driving them normally, both feet on the pegs, legs ready to fend off as needed. So when the rear tire slipped to the left on a jagged rock, and the cycle and myself began tipping outward to the right, I was powerless to control, let alone stop, the fall.

That fall was right up there, along with the wreck south of Arco that shattered my left leg and by a miracle didn’t kill me, and the locking of the front tire on the Yamaguchi outside Baker that saw me flying over the handlebars.

If I let myself remember that fall fully, remember what I felt as I and cycle tipped out into space, I can’t help but shudder. As I lost control I knew this was going to have a very bad outcome. In the two to three seconds it took from being upright to impacting the rocks below, I had time for several thoughts. I remember feeling that this was it, the Big One. The Last One. I remember thinking that even if I didn’t die outright from the fall, or by drowning in Camas Creek, I was so weakened by hypothermia that I wouldn’t have the strength to make it back to the cabin with the bones that would be breaking soon. And, lastly, I remembered to push away from the cycle and keep myself out from under it as it fell.

As I look back on this incident two things strike me: that I had been exceedingly foolish to leave my dry bed at the Middle Fork, knowing (or should have known) of the challenges that I would face on the return trip; and, doing all the right things after the accident and thereby giving myself that slender thread of hope that would ultimately see me safely back home.


My guardian angel must have been with me that day. How else to explain no broken bones from such a fall, no dislocations. The helmet I wore surely prevented a major head injury because my head had struck heavily against the rocks several times as I tumbled down.

When I came to my senses I was lying on my back, crosswise on the steep, flat face of a ten foot boulder with my shoulder and hip resting against the next boulder toward the creek. Cautiously, I raised my head and looked around. I had fallen about thirty feet below the trail. The cycle was lying about ten feet away, wedged on its side in the V formed by two large rocks, its engine running at idle. From its angle, I knew the engine would be starving for lubricating oil and would be damaged soon. But I didn’t care a whole lot right at the moment.

Before trying to move, I closed my eyes and took an internal inventory: any severe pain? No. I let my awareness run up and down each leg, each arm, in my abdomen, chest, face, head. No warning signals. Intense pain in my left shoulder and hip. Moderate pain in numerous other places.

Opening my eyes again I checked for double vision (none); tried remembering my name and address (no problem).

The Honda’s engine was still running at idle, its rear tire slowly turning. Cautiously, groaning with the effort of lifting the wet pack still on my back, I pulled myself over to the cycle and awkwardly reached for the ignition key. I couldn’t turn it with my fingers, they were so stiff. Got the key between my index and middle fingers and turned my whole hand. The engine died immediately. This effort took more that I would have thought and I lay back against the rock, exhausted.

I could hear Camas Creek, maybe forty feet below. I couldn’t see it because of the wet edge of the boulder I was lying against, but the sound flowed on, a vigorous, energetic sound as all that snowmelt and rainwater tumbled past me on the way to the Middle Fork.

The drizzle had stopped. Inhaling deeply I smelled a thousand tons of wet rock, wet leaves, wet dirt. Nothing that was of concern before the wreck had gotten any better in the few minutes since I’d tumbled off the trail: I was still dressed in cold, wet clothing; I was still carrying a wet pack on my back filled almost entirely with wet camping equipment. I was still suffering from hypothermia. Since the wreck my circumstances had worsened dramatically.

I still hadn’t moved after shutting off the engine. As I lay on the rock, giving vague attention to lifeless fingers and toes, and real attention to the return of shaking and juddering, I was keenly aware of how close I was getting to dying of exposure. This knowledge had a profound effect on me. I realized that if I didn’t do the right things right now, given my dwindling strength in each passing moment, I would be dead before midnight. I thought of that time many years before, when I had faced a difficult choice, and had done the right thing.