Lower Salmon R in Idaho: rugged but hospitable

Courtesy of my job and the relative cheapness of hitting the river for a meeting instead of hitting the conference room, a group of river rats took to the Lower Salmon. Me included - paddling on the duckie (a formal name for it is an IK - inflatable kayak), rowing in a cataraft, or dunking my head off the oarboat. And yes! We did have a meeting!

The rock is exposed at the river, and according to a geology brochure distributed by the Forest Service, there are two distinct classes of rock exhibited on the Lower Salmon. One is the basalt shafts pictured here behind Kevin and John, formed from the geologically recent Columbia/Snake River lava flows. (You can also see evidence of the scouring floods that hurtled down the Salmon River corridor when Lake Missoula's ice dam released incomprehensively large floods that molded the entire eastern half of Washington into rolling hills.) The other type is an ancient, exotic rock that migrated east 200 million years ago from the Aleutian Islands area, "slamming" into the western rim of the continent and pushing inland. It marks a major fault line in the earth's crust. Seven Devils Mountains in Idaho is composed of this material - gives 'em that spooky dark look.