The River of No Return - Backpacking Frank Church Wilderness

for [Applause] all right I'm officially starting a backpacking trip in the Frank Church Wilderness which is the largest Wilderness in the lower 48 we got two nights out here where I'll basically just be following the s River for the entirety of it so I should be hearing this background sound for the next 48 hours which is just outstanding um the drivein was way better than expected it was super cruy like 30 mph the whole time it's pretty remote in there though it's it's like 2 hours is from the tiny little town of North Fork um so it does take a bit to get in here but I've heard nothing but great things about this Wilderness it's apparently three times the size of Rhode Island just the Wilderness alone of course I'm going to see not even a snippet of it but um this is the River of No Return here I'm going to hike 10 to 12 miles today to Lance bar to camp tonight tomorrow will probably just be like Day hike around and then I'm probably going to end up moving my Camp a little bit close to the trail head for tomorrow night since the weather's supposed to degrade pretty much as I'm here it's just going to get worse and worse so I have that to look forward to little sunshine right now so I'll take what I can get it's been sprinkling a little on and off so far but um we'll see hopefully we'll see some Wildlife this is also my first solo backpacking trip so we'll see how that goes backpack numerous times I've hiked day hiked alone quite a lot um but first backpacking trip of course I go to a pretty freaking remote area to do that so hopefully the nights are short [Music] also if you're wondering why the hood was popped on my car in the parking lot apparently these little dudes make nests and take shelter inside engine Bays so uh I was told to leave the hood up to hopefully prevent that from happening I pulled in the parking lot and saw about 15 cars with their hoods popped and I was like what in the world is going on here um but I guess it's just these little dudes one of the interesting things about the Frank is that motorized boats are permitted on the rivers in here as well as airplanes can land and take off at pre-existing Landing strips uh usually no motorized equipment is allowed inside Wilderness boundaries but I think when they were going back and forth debating and making compromises for how large this Wilderness was going to be uh they still wanted access to it other than just like foot so boats are allowed as well as airplanes that cabin I'm going to guess was grandfathered in and was there before the Wilderness boundary was set unless there's some kind of land going on I see the boat says Salmon River Lodge so I wasn't not entirely sure if that's allowed on Wilderness but I'm guessing it was grandfather in somebody's been busy on this thing SM [Music] [Music] for [Music] wish I did some research on the structures on this Trail wonder how old these are all right just got the tent set up made it to Lance bar a little camp by here I assume this is like a rafting stop super sweet campsite got my tent there food Camp ring here right on the salmon um I got to go get some fresh water which is going to be up over there there's a creek so right up on this is like a park Plateau it's just like green grass pasture really um so I'm going to walk up there and I got to come back collect firewood eat food and settle in for the night so I think this is like lar proper I guess there's like a home couple structures or old cabins back in there but it's really pretty in here golden hour I was going to Camp up here until I poked my head down there I kind of wanted to be a little close to the river so down on the sandbar all right it's the morning of day two um we're just going to Day hike a couple miles on the DWI Smith trail out of here um and then I'll just come back I'll probably end up packing up camp and moving close to the trail head today the weather has been beautiful this morning but I think it's leading me into a false sense of security I woke up late and I really would like to get to the second Camp before it starts raining um yeah so I'm to do a little act now glad I carry some tweezers thought I had a rock in my shoe but I had a splinter the bottom of my foot I was walking around Barefoot last night in the sand so that's not shocking all righty well fortunately we're we're barefooting across this one too bad all right I came up about 4 or 500 feet up on this dwire Smith Trail um I'm going to turn around here I wish I could keep going cuz it the views must only get better it's been pretty nice Trail most the way but got this fantastic view back here I was hoping it open up a little bit could see these peaks in here have so much more vertical relief than you'd think they're really tall and I I have such a narrow field of vision down there especially on weather when you're down hiking and camping down way down in this deep the Sam River Valley or any of these valleys around here you you can't see any clouds or anything coming so it's basically not till it's right on top of you or it's then you know it's raining so that's my only that's my only hint right there and that is the direction I have to go uh of course Direction I'm not going is the beautiful blue sky so um probably going to wrap this up and get back down to camp and break that and then Cruise back to I think Horse Creek uh Campground is where I was going to head to horse creek looked really cool there's quite a few campsites there and there was not a single person at that spot so I'm going to check that out probably so that's another 8 Miles 7 8 miles from Lance bar so got a decent day e found an alternate spots across that Creek where I don't have to get my feet wet just will have to get my nerves up a little bit bark was fairly loose so I ended up doing more of a reverse crawl technique I did make it across without injury uh I don't know if that took less time than taking my shoes off and getting my feet wet up M Creek uh so don't know if it was worth it but either way I got done leaving from Lance bar now just got packed up L Bar is awesome that's it's really a great place to Camp even if there's people here it's so big it's just a big Meadow area you can find a spot to be alone um hoping to make it 8 Miles back to the Horse Creek Camp if not there's a bunch of camps before that um but it just depends on this weather clouds are increasing but it's still pretty nice it's actually really quite warm out um so yeah hopefully before weather hits I'll be setting up that camp the forecast they had back at the trail had made it seem like tonight and tomorrow would be a pretty significant amount of rain um guess that remains to be seen but hopefully I don't get stuck out in it we setting up camp it's definitely at one point it was a decent place to live still some supplies in here so it's still used for something sure the forest service just uses it I guess but I don't know what it originally was here for someone was homesteading out here beautiful place to have that they be curious to see what this was like when it was first built it's pretty nice in there for a pretty remote cabin type deal Homestead just nearly steep on this dude don't think it's a r still a snake so I'm just going to go around this handsome fella and hopefully not step on one of his friends he hasn't moved at all since I walked near it still just completely still in the same position is starting to sprinkle now about halfway so I'm hoping it holds it a sprinkle for the next 4 miles Horse Creek is just around this Bend right here so almost there only been sprinkled on so I have some hope that I can get camp set up before it starts to rain to any significant amount this rock seriously looks like a giant turtle trying to swim upstream headed into Camp before any rain hit so no complaints here there's definitely some ominous clouds forming that direction and pretty much all around so going I'll probably try to have a campfire and eat food before it uh rains but yeah this is really cool here honestly Lance bar is awesome uh this is pretty spectacular there too though I don't know which one's better they're both stunning and both have had zero people in them I saw that one tent earlier uh that's the only other tent I've seen that looked like I think that was I think they were bear hunting um they got like a stove in there I think they're set up for a while and then I've only like walk past two different people so it's been pretty uh pretty quiet out here which is nice I kind of expected that I suppose how far out it is so once it turns into rafting season which is pretty much summer June July August I think this is quite a bit more busy I think there's more people in here it's probably noisier I don't know if it's like one after another or I don't know what that looks like but I know a lot of people do come here for rafting and there's lots of different campsites on my map I can see that are on the other side of the river that obviously the trail doesn't go to so that's all for uh rafting through here um but Spring's nice cuz it's it melts out early here this is mid late April and it's very well melted out we got wild flowers just blooming all the way way up the hillsides here so this is a really cool spring backpack that's um accessible with snow conditions so massive wind just came ripping through here so I uh ended my little fire I was having it was blowing Ash everywh where moov the tent Panic moved it back here it's a little better out there was not only in the direct path of the wind right there but it's like really sandy so this there's a little more purchase for your steaks and then I threw rocks on top after that so hopefully that'll hold if more gusts come ripping through here cuz um that will not be pleasant in the middle of the night if the tent comes falling down I think I've got this staked out pretty well got rocks on literally every one of the guidelines I really don't like this these Big Agnes uh and I'm maybe I have this in there backwards uh style Stakes they're just I don't I don't know why they even did that the J Hooks are so much easier to use um I don't know what do you save like .1 Oz not having a loop on the top I don't know there just way more possibility for to come off easily so I prefer this I'll be buying more of these MSR Stakes that are still really light um but definitely hold hold it on there a lot easier in the event of a wind event decided to get my wet campfire going again after about an hour of perfectly calm winds following the 30 to 60c jet stream blast that came through here um I just DED it out because P ponderosa pine country here you do not need the flames and Ash blowing sideways we would really quickly burn this whole Campground down so I have water prepared to douse it again in the event of another jet stream blast but for now I'm just going to kick back and uh enjoy the the river and Fire for [Music] [Applause] the brush overgrowth is a real bummer man it's not raining that hard but all the brush on the trail just completely soaked me [Music] e [Music] all right just one more big sweeping River Bend and I'll be back at the campground I'll check in with the ranger she took my name down when I um started my hike she actually approached similar to Les swabs like before I got parked started walking towards my car I was like oh no I'm supposed to have some kind of permits I was so worried about that after driving so far down the road but she was just really nice and informative and just told me stuff about the trail and took my name down in the event I don't turn so I'll check in back with them and then I'll be doing the two 2 and 1 half hour drive back to Salon where I will be getting food coffee and what have you um I'm just excited to get some dry clothes on I'm soaked waist down is soaked I just want to get this pack off so just another mile or so around this Bend I'll be back at Corn Creek Campground so what an awesome trip what an amazing place I need to come back to the Frank there's so much to see I'd like to get up higher so I think I'd at least wait another month or so for the higher up snow but I really want to come back here there's so many different areas of it so it's like going to the Frank barely even means anything specific it's just such a massive Wilderness so I'd like to do some bigger trips in here or deeper into it I don't know if it's like there's a ton of trails in here and I think I read if you connected them all it would go from San Francisco to Detroit which is just mindboggling like in a straight line it would reach that distance but I just don't know if it's like a patean Wilderness situation in Washington where it's like half of them aren't really there and it's only some of them get maintained a lot of them see no traffic so it's like I don't know if you kind of don't know what you're getting into at Each corner but I don't know I'd like to do some research and do something in the higher country in here maybe more into summer [Music]

Channel: M&M Outdoors

Views: 3,557

Keywords: Frank church, Idaho, Idaho wilderness, River of no return, Lantz bar, Salmon River, Corn creek campground, Backpacking, Solo backpacking

Id: FV5GUxT4Zok

Length: 39min 9sec (2349 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024