The Glory Years    
(Draft 3.1)  
July 6

 

 

People ask me if I have a favorite Outdoor Idaho program. That's like asking a dad if he loves his children equally. If he's honest, he'll tell you it depends on the day. 

 

That’s the way it is with the 350(?) programs the Outdoor Idaho team has produced over 40 years. I can't help it if there are a handful of programs that I’m particularly fond of, where things just seemed to click, where the writing worked, the video was exceptional, serendipity was on our side, the gremlins in the edit bay had been vanquished, and the editor had made it all flow seamlessly.

 

Often the reason I’m particularly fond of a show is because I remember all the work that went into its creation and all the memories. For me that immediately brings to mind hour-long programs like “50 Years of Wilderness,” "Idaho Headwaters," “Land of the Lost River Range,” "Beyond the White Clouds," “Idaho Geology: A Convergence of Wonders,” "The River of No Return," "Sawtooths on My Mind,” “Into the Pioneers,”  "Pend Oreille Country," "Designing Idaho," "Spud Country," and “35^th Anniversary Special.”

I will occasionally run across one of these shows still airing on television, or I'll come across a show on-line, and I'll find myself saying, to no one in particular, "Hey, we didn't do too badly on that one."

 

How would you define your own "glory years"?  Would they be the years when big things -- good things -- were happening in your life? Perhaps you're too smart to label anything your "glory years." Perhaps some things are best saved for the obituary. And yet, maybe if I define the term "glory years" differently, I can avoid some of the usual pitfalls. You be the judge.

 

 I'm especially fond of those shows that required exceptional exertion on our part and where several of my colleagues shared in their creation.

 

One such collaboration that springs immediately to mind is "Idaho Headwaters."  The concept of the show was straightforward enough. We travel to the birth place of some of Idaho's favorite rivers, and we report on them.

 

"Idaho Headwaters" had a lot going for it from the start. The beginnings of rivers are some of the West's sacred places, usually located in the most beautiful, forgotten regions of the State. They can remind us what is worth protecting in this world of ours.  Most of these headwaters are protected because they are not easy to get to. For us that often meant a long, multi-day journey into seldom-visited country.

 

Work your way upstream until the river runs dry. It certainly seems simple enough. If programs are to be judged by difficulty alone, however, "Idaho Headwaters" is easily in the Top Five. The hour-long show featured the headwaters of a handful of rivers. Three stand out for me in terms of difficulty.

 

Years before the idea of an Idaho Headwaters show made it into the Outdoor Idaho consciousness, I had been hunting above Mores Creek, near Pilots Peak lookout when I spotted what I assumed was the headwaters of Mores Creek. This is one of the creeks that made Idaho City such a gold mining mecca and helped jump-start a state.

I had stopped to watch a fawn and noticed water seeping from under a small rock pile nearby. I followed it as the stream gathered steam and headed downhill toward Highway 21 and Mores Creek.

When “Idaho Headwaters” made it onto our official year-long schedule in 2015, I thought it would be fun to include a short segment on the headwaters of Mores Creek. I knew just where it was. It was close to my cabin. So, instead of a .270 Winchester, I brought a videographer. I told Jay Krajic this would be an easy shoot.

I never did find what I was looking for. But we did discover, in the same general vicinity, a cut in a hillside where a miner had been working a claim. From that cut flowed a tiny stream. There was no discernible water above the cut bank. Could there be multiple headwaters to Mores Creek?

 

I mention this because my colleagues John Crancer and Jay Krajic were heading toward the south entrance of Yellowstone National Park, in search of the headwaters of the Snake River.

An interesting thing about the beginning of Idaho’s mightiest waterway: for more than 100 years, the U.S. Geological Survey had mislabeled the source of the Snake, putting it just inside the border of America’s first national park, at a place called Wolverine Creek.

There had always been debate about that designation, and in 1989 the Geological Survey had to change the official map. Two geologists proved that the real source was a huge spring coming out of a hill guarded by a labyrinth of fallen trees. That meant the real source was outside Yellowstone National Park.

"That’s where we were headed,” said John. “Our guide said we were at least thirty miles of hard riding away from the Continental Divide. That's where the Snake begins its 1,000-mile journey westward. That was our planned destination."

For twelve hours John and Jay followed their guide and the pack horses through a stunning, untamed wilderness, the kind of terrain that few will ever experience. Grizzly bears and wolves were a real possibility. With darkness approaching, the group made camp that first night in a meadow alongside the ever-shrinking river. 

 "We figured we could reach the most remote upper headwaters the next day," recalls John. "In the morning, we tried to follow the course of the largest of the many tributary streams flowing into the Snake River. But our guide lost his bearings, and we followed the wrong branch of the river. After a long day in the saddle, we ended up on a sparkling stream that wasn’t actually the Snake’s source headwaters."

 

Hydrologists will tell you that the hydrology can get complicated with these large rivers. But that's little comfort when you're lost and on a strict timetable with the guide and his horses. 

"We finally deduced we had mistakenly crossed into Yellowstone Park. We knew the source of the Snake was just east of us, in the Bridger Teton National Forest. All we could do was backtrack to a spot near our original camp and try again.

"It was late afternoon when we started following a new course on the winding branches of the river. Unfortunately, we only had time to get a bit closer to the Snake’s upper reaches before impending darkness forced us to make camp."

Knowing both John and Jay, by this time they were immensely frustrated. Their guide did not know the way.  Luckily, John had worked on our numerous Lewis and Clark programs. At least the Outdoor Idaho team weren't having to slog through snow or eat one of their horses at "Colt Killed Creek" campsite.

But they were now two days into the trip and another two very long days of riding to reach the car they had shuttled to a trailhead in the Bridger Teton Forest. 

"To make matters worse," said Jay, "John slid off his horse and hit the ground. It had been a long day, and his stirrups weren’t tightened well enough to handle 12 hours in the saddle. It didn't help that I laughed."

 

My two colleagues only had the horses and the guide for two more days. That meant there would not be enough time to continue their search by climbing to a higher elevation.

"What's really frustrating," said John, "is that we later determined we were only about two miles from the actual source of the Snake.  We needed satellite GPS instead of paper maps to keep the guide on the right route.”

 

But as far as I was concerned, their trek was a major success. They had managed to arrive at one of the truly remarkable places in North America. They had witnessed and videotaped the only stream in North America where some of its water flows east and some of its water flows west.

"After a few more hours of riding along the Continental Divide, we reached Two Ocean Creek. Here we found the 'Parting of the Waters,' with half the creek flowing east toward the Atlantic Ocean and the other half flowing west to the Pacific.

"We may not have reached the Snake's penultimate source, but we had witnessed and documented the incredible country that gives rise to Idaho's largest river."

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"Idaho Headwaters" also featured a segment on the search for the source of the fabled Selway River, located in one of the least visited parts of Idaho, along the Idaho-Montana border.

This is the  only river in America to have received immediate entree into the National Wilderness and into the Wild and Scenic Rivers System.  

The famous 100 mile river begins in the Bitterroot Mountains and eventually meets up with the Lochsa River, to form the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River. 

"The Selway's not for sissies," outfitter Steve Burson reminded us, as we headed out on mules. "This is the most rugged country in the lower 48. There's a very small percentage of the population in the U.S. today that have the skills to come in on their own." 

He didn't have to tell us again, especially after spending more than ten hours on the back of a mule, on a narrow dusty trail, at 9,000 feet, surrounded by black charred trees for most of the 22 miles.

 

The Outdoor Idaho crew had rafted the Selway River several times, but no one we knew had experienced the headwaters of the Selway. We weren't sure what to expect. Outfitter Steve and his two guides had convinced us they knew right where it was.

Also joining us was retired Forest Service district ranger Dave Campbell and his wife Debi, from Missoula, Montana.

I had asked Dave to join us because he was used to defending the Forest Service's "Let it Burn" policy. During his 30 years with the federal agency, he had made decisions on at least 30 fires but remained a staunch advocate for letting wildfires burn. He held that philosophical position even when it wasn't popular, which was usually in June, July, August, and September.

 

Outfitter Steve Burson thought the "Let it Burn" policy was wrong-headed, especially during a drought year. Most of his permit area had already burned, and we had experienced the effects of the policy. I was sure it wasn't what people imagined back in 1980, when Congress declared this land official Wilderness.

I had already warned both men that our show "Idaho Headwaters" would not allow much time for a full-throated debate about wildfire policy, but it would add a nice layer of complexity to the program, which is why I had invited Dave to join us.

 

I was never so happy to see an outfitter's base camp, with lush trees and a tiny creek running through it. As I was walking off the backside pain, Debi Campbell came up to me and whispered that she would rather die than get back on the mule. I could feel her pain, but we still had a full day's ride to get back to civilization.

The discomfort was worth it for me, however, when Outfitter Steve Burson and Ranger Dave Campbell reached down to fill their metal cups with the cold clear water that Steve was convinced was the start of the legendary Selway River. "It comes right out of the rocks, with very little ground above it," remarked Steve. "I do believe this is the official headwater. I think we're here." 

Ranger Dave agreed, as he offered a toast. "It's an ecosystem that has all of the components. Here's to the Selway, the crown jewel of wild rivers in the Lower 48."

That was one thing the two men did agree upon.

A sidenote: Jay reminded me that when we finished our Selway trip, our faces were black from soot, the restaurants were closed except for Pizza Hut, and we ended up sleeping in a city park in Hamilton, Montana.

 

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The hazardous washboard road into the 1860's mining village of Atlanta would be enough for most people, but we still faced a 16-mile hike to Spangle Lakes, in the Sawtooth Mountains. No wonder we only met one hiker on the trail. It was all uphill.

We were in search of the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Boise River. 

At one point on the trail, Outfitter Darl Allred had to very carefully maneuver his packhorses through a swamp filled with downed trees everywhere. I had called the Forest Service office before the trip and was assured we wouldn't have any significant problems getting to Spangle Lakes.

 

But that day, after a lengthy scout, Outfitter Darl determined there was no way to avoid the knee-deep water. He couldn’t climb above it or drop down below it. He would have to take his horses through the bog.

Luckily, he was an expert horseman, and the animals had seen this rodeo before. They seemed comfortable jumping over the slippery, submerged logs, with Darl leading the way. By the time he had guided his horses through the water and had mud splashed on him, we were all glad he had brought an extra pair of clothes for the interview.

Afterwards, he commented to me that, for most people with horses, this is the spot where they would have turned around, fearful of a horse breaking a leg.  "Every year here in the Sawtooths there's a horse or two that goes down, For most people, the trip would have been over right here, at this bog." 

 

We decided to camp nearby and tackle the rest of the journey to Spangle Lakes in the morning. Our group realized we had avoided a serious setback. Darl Allred definitely earned our respect and a major role in our show. 

 

I had visited Spangle Lakes when I was a 12-year old. But that 50 mile hike started in Grandjean instead of Atlanta. Would I recognize the giant rock and the pool beneath it, where I hooked a dozen brook trout on grasshoppers that my buddy and I had captured at Ten Lake Basin, before climbing up to Spangle Lakes?

As we approached the lake from the opposite direction, a funny thing happened. That giant rock shrank, and the fish seemed smaller, too. 

The water, however, was still as crystal clear as I remembered, and the fish were still biting. The good things hadn't changed at all.

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Collaboration is Multiplication, and that’s especially true in the world of television. It’s really the only way you can keep something going for four decades.

In that spirit I invited some of my colleagues to share their favorite shows, to tell us what made those programs special to them. To be a memorable show requires exceptional talents of not only a producer who maps out the program, sets up the interviews and is often the writer as well.

It also requires a videographer to bring home images that enhance the storyline, even if the storyline is still to be worked out. It’s sometimes hard for a producer/writer to admit it, but often it’s the video that viewers remember and that keeps them coming back for more. Some of my friends take great delight in telling me that they turn the sound off when they watch an Outdoor Idaho show. They're there for the scenery.

 

Over the years I’ve come to believe that the magic sauce is the editor, the one who is sometimes also the videographer. I've seen editors turn a mediocre program into a work of art. Of course, they suffer for their art, spending days, often weeks, in an edit bay by themselves, combing through the hours of video to make sense of it all, combining words and images and music and natural sound into something truly inspiring. 

Luckily, Outdoor Idaho has had some exceptional editors and shooters. And the writing wasn't bad, either.

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 "A haunting and mysterious world lies under Idaho." That's how we introduced our 1993 program, “Under Idaho,” to folks above ground. The half hour program explored lava tubes in the southern Idaho desert, mining tunnels in Idaho’s Silver Valley, and a limestone cave in Shoshone County. 

Several of us worked on the show, but it was my colleague, Sauni Symonds, who went the furthest down under, into Papoose Cave, Idaho’s largest cave.

 

“I believed it was a great adventure,” she said, “and I wanted to be the producer who nailed Papoose Cave. No TV cameras had ever been inside the cave until our show.”

But it was 1993, and things didn’t always go as planned, especially when it came to equipment.

“Our cameras were very clunky and light challenged,” said Sauni. “The batteries to run the lights were huge and heavy, and those lights were not very strong.  We had to drag all the gear through dark, wet tunnels, up and down ladders, in the dark.

"And the dark was overwhelming. One climber prepared us by saying, it’s darker than you've ever experienced in your surface life. I quickly came to believe him.”

“But we were able to make a story with still photos taken by the cavers over the years.  The photos were excellent. Film and strong strobe flashes made a huge difference. 

“It always nagged at me that we could have had a better story with better TV gear.”   

 

By 2015, technology had improved tremendously, and the Outdoor Idaho crew decided to give it another go. We seldom revisit a story, unless there’s a changing public affairs angle. But we made an exception for Papoose Cave, just like we made an exception for our “Backcountry Pilots” show. Too many of the pilots had died after it first aired. We figured it was unseemly to keep re-airing the program. Hence, fifteen years later, “Flying Idaho.”

“We took in GoPros and DSLRs, which are super light sensitive, with multiple lights, and this time, lots of very small batteries,” said Sauni. “But the challenges of the dark were still there.  Again, the cavernous, pitch-black cave swallowed the light.” 

 

Cavers nationwide consider Papoose one of the most dangerous caves in the country and one of the most geologically significant. It descends to a depth of 800 feet below the surface of the earth, with documented passageways that extend for more than three miles.

After its discovery by a group of hunters in 1959, the Forest Service installed a locked gate at its entrance, allowing only expert climbers to enter.  A good thing, because almost immediately, Papoose requires ropes and special equipment to survive a drop-off of 50 feet. As one expert climber told Sauni, "It's a very challenging environment. Not many people are capable of going into this cave and coming out in one piece."

 

For our 2015 show “Middle Earth,” a group from the Gem State Grotto were our guides, and took the Outdoor Idaho crew (Sauni and Pat Metzler and later Troy Shreve) to a depth of  500 feet. They worked their way through tight squeezes and complex passageways that could keep a novice lost for weeks. One false move could mean cascading through an ice-cold waterfall or dropping dozens of feet onto hard limestone rock.

 

The expert cavers carry three lights, to guarantee plenty of redundancy. They also notify other cavers before entering Papoose.

But in Papoose, the silent killer is hypothermia, with an average temperature of 36 degrees and 98 percent humidity. "It’s virtually impossible not to get wet, something I discovered with my first rappel into the cave,” said Sauni.

 

Years later, while reminiscing about our various underground adventures, Sauni admitted that “‘Middle Earth" was one of the shows that kicked my butt, physically and mentally.”

“When ascending the underground waterfall on ropes to leave the cave, my ascender mechanism got jammed. So, as I’m straining to push myself up the waterfall, my rubber boots and coveralls filled with water, increasing my weight by what felt like 20 lbs.  That effort resulted in a shoulder injury that took years to heal.

“It made me realize that what we were doing back then was not only exciting but downright dangerous.”

It was also downright frustrating. Ever the perfectionist, Sauni realized she would need more usable footage to tell the lengthy story she wanted to tell. So another videographer went back to Papoose to gather even more footage.

 

“Even with all that, we used every image we secured,” noted Sauni. “Unlike so many shows, absolutely nothing landed on the cutting room floor." 

“Middle Earth” was one of those programs that Sauni produced, wrote, and edited.  The end result was wonderful. It won numerous awards, including an Emmy nomination.

Still, said Sauni, “those were the kinds of shows that I always wished we had a bigger budget for, to hire a production team with experience in that kind of difficult environment. In many ways, it was the most punishing show I worked on.

“But we did what we could on a shoestring.  And I’m proud of that.” 

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When someone asked Craig Gehrke of The Wilderness Society how cowboys and enviros could even stand to be in the same room together -- let alone hammer out a complicated Wilderness bill – Craig said simply: "a thousand cups of coffee."

Talk about the Idaho way! Begin listening and talking to your enemy, and sometimes wonderful things can happen.

The result from all that listening – and all that cowboy coffee -- was six new Wilderness Areas in Owyhee County, where trust in Guv’ment is an oxymoron, where the old West is still in full swing and where a bond of Trust determines what survives and what perishes among the sagebrush and the junipers.

 

It took 15 years of monthly 8-hour meetings around the proverbial campfire to gain that necessary trust between cowboys and kayakers, and among representatives from a dozen organizations – like the Owyhee County Commissioners, the Idaho Conservation League, The Nature Conservancy, the Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association, the Wilderness Society, the Idaho Fish & Game Department, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes, the Outfitters & Guides Association.

They knew Trust was key. They knew it would take thousands of truck miles and hundreds of hiking miles, visits to ranchers’ homes, and, yes, 1,000 cups of coffee.

                                                     

 

Outdoor Idaho began shooting parts of that story several years before the unlikely Canyonlands Wilderness bill became law. We made it a centerpiece of “Wilderness in the 21^st Century,” the first show of our 28^th season. Two months later we followed that up with our hour-long “Canyonlands Calling.”

Even if you’re philosophically opposed to legislated Wilderness, you have to appreciate the process. It took significant leadership roles from U.S. Senator Mike Crapo, as well as Owyhee County Commission consultant and rancher Fred Grant; and successful ranchers like Chris Black, Brenda Richards, Jerry Hoagland, and Dennis Stanford. And it took the willingness to believe anything was possible, from individuals like John McCarthy, Lou Lunte, and Craig Gehrke.

What kept them going was the belief that everyone wanted the same thing. 

"We all knew that the Owyhee Canyonlands, adjacent to one of the fastest growing regions in the country, were destined to change and probably not for the better for any of us," explained Craig Gehrke. "We hoped that working together we could come up with a plan to hang on to what made the Canyonlands special." 

                                        

 

I had the privilege of rafting the Grand Canyon of Southwest Idaho in 1993 with two icons of the whitewater fraternity.  Dr. Keith Taylor and Alan Hamilton were from different generations, but they spoke the same language.

 

Keith was one of the first to kayak the Bruneau River River, which is only “runnable” for several weeks in spring and early summer.  At one of the few decent campsites along the river, Keith reminded us that there were only general maps back then for many of the rivers he and kayak buddy Walt Blackadar ran. “We didn’t know what was around the next bend. We just knew that if something happened to us on the Bruneau, it would be tough getting out of that canyon.”

 

The younger Alan Hamilton made his mark as the co-owner of AIRE, an international rafting company famous for its two-layer boat system.  This was Alan’s first time rafting the river from near the top, at Indian Hot Springs, just below the junction of the Jarbidge and the Bruneau Rivers. 

(((He and his business partner Kris Walker and Dennis Hill had taken videographer Sauni Symonds and me down Five Mile Rapid several years earlier. Alan knew a shortcut that allowed us to enter the river just above the treacherous rapid, allowing us to finish the shoot in one day.)))

Keith rode in one of the AIRE catarafts, along with 100 pounds of food and kitchen supplies. More than once, he commented that this trip was a different experience for him. For one thing, he wasn't hungry. Outdoor Idaho videographer Pat Metzler rode on another of the catarafts.

 

I decided to try my luck in an inflatable kayak. I was a little apprehensive when Keith told me how difficult Five Mile Rapid would be, even in an AIRE kayak and suggested I should be prepared to capsize. But Pat reminded me it would make “good video” for our 1993 “Desert Chronicles” show. He knew I was a sucker for "good video."

 

It’s amazing what adrenaline can do. After surviving the most technical rapid on the Bruneau without flipping, I figured it was time to purchase a raft, which you can still see in several of our whitewater shows. The "Rei-ley," my co-owner friend Greg Harley dubbed our blue first generation AIRE raft. But eventually Rei-ley must have embarrassed Alan, because whenever he would see it in one of our programs, Alan would approach us with a great deal on a brand new raft. But we loved Rei-ley. It made a class III rapid feel like a class IV rapid, and we thought that was a nice feature.

 

That first trip, down the Bruneau, with those majestic 800-foot pale golden rhyolite canyon walls -- in some places only 900 feet apart -- made me think I had entered a magical kingdom that few even knew existed.

One day I met one of the magicians of Idaho's desert rivers. John Barker struck me as a crazy-ass outfitter with cold river water running through his veins. Definitely someone you'd want on your side in an emergency.

Perhaps it was inevitable that my Outdoor Idaho colleague John Crancer would one day join Barker on the Jarbidge River, for one of the gnarliest river trips in Outdoor Idaho’s 40 year history. And if some of the video hadn't been accidentally erased in all the excitement of the near catastophe, that TV segment for our "Owyhee Adventures" show would have been truly epic.

                                             

 

---- John’s recollection of that Jarbidge trip with outfitter John Barker on the Jarbidge --