Salmon River Snowpack Report
Recent storms in the mountains of Idaho have increased the snowpack to 83% of average as of March 2, 2007 for the Salmon River basin. This is great news for our trips on the Middle Fork of the Salmon for this summer.
The Middle Fork is a free flowing river, it has no dams on it that control the flow of water. That means that the water that we float down in the summers is due to winter snowpack, spring rain, and summer temperatures. We like to have snowpack between 80% and 120% of average. From experience we have found that this range of snowpack gives us runnable flows through August while keeping the water at a reasonable level during the June runoff.
This is especially good news for the Salmon Supreme trip that starts on May 29th. Since we run both the Middle Fork and Main Salmon in seven days, we need higher water flows to do the 160 - 185 miles that we're planning on covering in such a short time. Below average snowpack means that the road Boundary Creek should open by then so that we can run the entire 100 miles of the Middle Fork. When the road is closed we have to fly into Indian Creek and miss the exciting upper 25 miles.
