Holiday Hideaways Even Harder To Find Weather Takes Toll On Roads To Favorite Campsites
The end of the road is Avery these days.
Drive 13 miles past the tiny town and it looks like the mountainside exploded.
A February landslide of mud, rocks, trees and stumps buried the highway and ripped out a 100-yard strip of guardrail. The metal hangs over the St. Joe River, looking frail as a strip of tinsel.
The road to a popular fly-fishing getaway won’t be open for Memorial Day weekend - which also is the first weekend of the fly-fishing season.
In fact, the road may not be open until the end of summer.
“It’s going to hurt us,” said Tony Piccinini, bartender at the Avery Trading Post. “But we’ll survive.”
That road isn’t the only one closed in North Idaho. Holiday travelers planning an excursion to the backcountry this weekend should check to make sure their destinations are accessible.
Big Creek and Marble Creek roads are closed in the St. Joe Ranger District. Up around Priest Lake, Granite Pass and Beaver Creek roads are closed.
Wallace and Fernan ranger districts were reporting hazardous conditions on forest roads. Big Creek to Lake Elsie and the East Fork of Eagle Creek to the Settlers Grove are closed.
All over the Panhandle, early season hikers should not be surprised to encounter downed trees or washed out footbridges.
Most campgrounds will be open, however, if campers can get to them.
Judging by phone calls to state parks and U.S. Forest Service offices, campers will inundate area campsites that recently were flooded with water. The National Weather Service prediction calls for mostly dry weather with highs near 70 degrees.
At Priest Lake, Indian Creek Campground already is full. Lions Head Campground is expected to fill up easily by Friday evening, said Rick Just of the State Parks and Recreation Department.
This week, some campgrounds were getting last-minute repairs or maintenance.
At Huckleberry Campground along the St. Joe River, the Bureau of Land Management was marking hazardous trees and installing picnic tables.
In the February flooding, the water rose to knee-level in the campground. The BLM had to clean sediment out of the transformers to restore power to the campsites.
“We lost grills and tables,” said Terry Kincaid, a BLM recreation planner. Water came through and washed away a pile of gravel intended for paving. “It will take most of the summer to get it all fixed up.”
One of the hardest hit U.S. Forest Service campgrounds was the Shadowy St. Joe, which suffered about $20,000 in damage. The campground flooded three times since last season, but will be open this weekend.
Several campgrounds in the upper St. Joe region are not ready for the camping season because of the slide above Avery. Those campgrounds include Conrad Crossing, Fly Flat, Beaver Creek, Line Creek Stock Camp and Spruce Tree.
Anglers and campers still can reach those areas from St. Regis, Mont., over the Little Joe Road, No. 282 that crosses Gold Pass. Another route is over Bullion Pass from Montana.
Both roads are snowy and rough, requiring four-wheel drive vehicles. Trailers are not advised. The Moon Pass route into Wallace still is closed.
“We’re working on detours,” said Mary Laws at the Avery Ranger Station. The detours they have planned are now narrow, muddy, rocky and also have some landslides. “We’re just not ready for Memorial Day,” she said.
The big landslide occurred on Halfway Hill, just upstream of Prospector Creek. Above there, only catch-and-release fishing is allowed.
Carl Pfaff, an angler and manager of Cast Away Fly Shop in Coeur d’Alene, said the closure is an inconvenience.
“It means you can’t run up and down the river,” he said. “You have to choose the area of river you want to fish and pretty much stay with it over the weekend.
“No quick trips to Avery to get ice or anything like that.”
That’s exactly what Piccinini and other Avery business owners are worried about.
Over a cup of coffee, from a mug that reads “So many lures…so little time,” he groused about government inefficiency.
“Most of the loggers who have gone up and looked at it said we could have it open in three hours,” Piccinini said. “Once you turn it over to the federal people, you have to have an EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) and put it out 30 days to bid.”
Road or no road, Avery is planning its annual Fisherman’s Breakfast from 6 a.m. to noon Saturday at the community center.
For more information on campgrounds, road closures and trail conditions in the Panhandle Forests, call the appropriate district ranger station.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: HOLIDAY SCHEDULE The following is a list of closures and services that will be effected over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. All government facilities including state, county and city offices will be closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday. All branches of the U.S. Postal Service will have regularly scheduled hours on Saturday and will be closed on Monday. No mail delivery Garbage service will be set back one day next week. All area libraries will be closed Monday and the Coeur d’Alene Library will be closed Sunday; All outlying area libraries will offer regular weekend hours. Kootenai County, Boundary County, Bonner County, Benewah County and Shoshone County School Districts are all closed Monday. Banks will be closed Monday.