Testing New Waters It Was An Extreme Trip, Even For Guides - No Dutch Ovens, No Ice And Precious Little Beer

River guides are know-it-alls. Their clients like it that way.

Before leading wide-eyed pilgrims on whitewater adventures, a good river guide studies every rock, hole and drop on the chosen stream.

The guide tests the waters and learns the safest line to run a raft through the rapids.

Familiarity helps a river guide stay calm even when hearts are pounding throughout the rest of the boat.

But there’s a first time for everything and river running is no exception.

“I’m really pumped for this,” said Mike Arndt during the shuttle for his first encounter with southwest Idaho’s Bruneau River.

“Could be scary,” said Tim Kaufman, summoning insight from 18 years of river running.

Four of the top guides for River Odysseys West were about to make their debut on the Bruneau last month with one guide who works with another outfitter.

Bob Jost of Hailey, Idaho, had run the Bruneau 18 times. His job on this expedition was to dish out as much insight as he could in a single pre-season run down a remote desert canyon system.

“This is part of the licensing requirements before we can run our first guided trips down here,” said Peter Grubb, co-owner of the Coeur d’Alene-based river adventure company.

ROW is one of the largest rafting companies in the region. Its staple trips are on the Snake and Salmon rivers, along with daylong adventures on the Moyie, Clark Fork, St. Joe and Lochsa.

The desert canyon rivers offer an early-season change of scenery for clients and guides alike.

Lonnie Lane, ROW’s lead guide for trips on the nearby Owyhee River, seemed to revel in the desert expansion plans, even though this particular trip included an unexpected twist.

“I’ve never been on the Jarbidge,” said Bob, bringing the ROW guides to attention.

There was an almost palpable quiet in the shuttle truck, until Mike broke the silence.

“Cool,” he said.

The first two days of the trip would be on the narrow Bruneau tributary that rips through canyon walls so steep, the sun doesn’t touch the water until 11 a.m.

“I’m betting that we’ll make it alive,” said Lonnie.

“After all, this is the A-team,” Bob said.

Peter had added the Jarbidge to the Bruneau reconnaissance simply to spice the adventure.

“We have no intention of leading guided trips on the Jarbidge,” Peter said. “But guides need trips like this to remind themselves why they’re in the business.”

This was a guides-only trip - no clients - although a writer was allowed to take a paddle seat along with Courtney Hayes, who was escaping from ROW’s reservation office for a five-day tryst with adventure.

The plan was to go light with two paddle rafts and do both rivers in the time clients would later spend on the Bruneau alone.

No Dutch ovens were packed for this trip. The cooler had no ice. The beer ration allowed for less than one can a day per person.

“I guess you could call that going to extremes,” Tim said.

The whitewater was the focus they shared. But the bond couldn’t form until at least one last issue was cleared.

“What’s the deal, Bob,” Mike said, recalling that Jost had driven to Bruneau in a late model Ford Explorer. “Do you have a real job?”

“No, I’m just a guide,” Bob said, defensively.

“Guides don’t have cars like that,” Mike said.

“My wife has a real job,” Bob admitted.

“I can live with that,” said Mike.

The Bruneau River is about as remote as rivers come in the lower 48 states. No airplane landing strips are found on this shoreline. Jet boat rescues aren’t possible. Cell phones don’t work.

Clients on guided trips routinely take the option of walking the last two miles to the put-in. Despite the rattlesnakes, hiking is the safer option to staying in the four-wheel-drive rigs that brave the precipitous descent.

The Bruneau is in Idaho’s sagebrush nowhere. The Jarbidge is even more isolated.

Chukar partridge that thrive in these tortured canyons die from old age and rockfall, not from gunfire.

Running a new river in surroundings such as this leaves a guide trembling at first, then giddy on the beach after surviving the first day.

Testing new waters is like love with a new partner.

They drank two-days ration of beer the first night, and feasted on steaks cooked over a juniper driftwood fire.

“Enjoy the meat now,” Lonnie said. “We’ll be down to nuts by the end of the trip.”

“And don’t forget the portage,” Peter said.

The second day on the Jarbidge was everything the guides had bargained for.

At a set of severe rapids, more accurately called falls, Peter toyed with the notion of running the difficult maze through log jams and boulders.

But everyone, including him, agreed it would be crazy.

“We have too much talent and experience to have any guts,” he laughed.

They wound up flipping one raft just lining it through the torrent.

Tim seemed to pucker at every twist in a river that never runs straight. “It’s a little different than running a river where you know what’s around every bend,” he said.

Log jams were common.

“I’d like to look at the scenery,” Tim said, “but I don’t have time.”

Late in the day, when feet were numb from the cold water and arms were limp from fatigue, the lead raft made an error and wrapped temporarily on a rock.

Peter, Mike and Lonnie sprang like gymnasts to the high side of the raft, which lodged vertically on its side.

Courtney wasn’t so quick. She slipped off the rock, gasped from the shock of cold water and swam the rest of the rapid. The others clawed their way to the top of the boulder, six feet above the water.

Surprisingly, the raft squirted out from the rock and spun off in the current upside down. Peter jumped onto the boat and tried to work it to shore.

Mike and Lonnie had only two options: Swim in the icy cold water or leap into the second raft as it swept by the boulder.

There was no room in the second raft, which was stuffed with three paddlers and a pile of gear. But they jumped anyway, looking like Newman and Redford at the end of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

The soggy guides made camp just downstream, daylight already gone from the canyon, but the beer well chilled from the long immersion in the frigid stream.

‘The latrine is over there,” Peter said pointing to a clump of sagebrush as all hands wearily did their camp chores. “If we had guests, I’d put up a tarp. But that will do for a guide trip.”

Evenings on guide trips are filled with stories of trips gone wrong. “Every one is a learning experience,” Peter said.

“Every one makes you think of other careers, such as accounting,” Mike added.

They haggle over what equipment works and what doesn’t.

“I guess this means the hand coffee grinder is a failure,” said Bob as he watched Mike use a rock to grind the French Roast beans in a bowl much as Native Americans ground their corn.

“I have 12 hours until breakfast,” Mike said.

And they appreciate where they are.

“The Big Ditch doesn’t have anything on this place,” Tim said, craning his neck at the towering rock walls rising from the sagebrush camp.

The third and last day on the Jarbidge was dominated by a long portage around Jarbidge Falls.

“I don’t mind the rattlesnakes so much as the poison ivy,” said Peter, pointing to the flourishing menace that towered four-feet tall along the shoreline.

“The stinging nettles are more pleasant,” Lonnie added.

“You can see why there’s not a lot of commercial activity on the Jarbidge,” Peter said, taking a breather from the teamwork needed to haul a 110-pound raft over a talus slope.

Later, he opened a duffle and dumped it on the ground. Apples and oranges rolled, bagels and peanut butter fell out, bags of cheese and nuts tumbled. The carrots cartwheeled onto the rocks.

“There’s lunch,” he said. “Come and get it.

“We don’t get sensitive about food presentation until the clients are on board,” he said.

Indeed, when they finally reached the Bruneau River, three of the guides declined a bath in a natural hot spring.

Late into the evening, the beer long gone, they stood around the camp’s single 30-inch square table, using coffee mugs for bowls as well as cups.

They reeked of experience, wearing lifejackets faded from the sun.

Many traditional camp luxuries were abandoned for this trip, but not the basic river etiquette. Mike took the dishwater away from camp, poured it through a strainer, and put food bits in a garbage bag to pack out. Ashes from the fire were packed out, too, as was human waste.

After the Jarbidge, the Bruneau would be a piece of cake, Bob said that night. “Although we could loose it all in Five Mile Rapids with the water running big and brown like this,” he said parenthetically.

“But what the hell, that’s a day away. Give me the rock, the bowl and the coffee beans.”

The last night on the river was more serious.

Peter pored over the maps with Mike long after the others had tucked into their tents.

They plotted campsites they’d use for outfitted trips in June. They talked and talked about the slug of Class 4 and Class 5 rapids with names like Wild Burro, Boneyard and Devil’s Garden.

Despite the planning, the guides spent even more hours looking at the rapids the next day.

This rampage known as Five Mile drowns out the call of canyon wrens and even the thunder of Air Force training jets that streak across the canyon with unspeakable rudeness.

“We could look all day, but eventually we have to rock ‘n’ roll,” Bob said.

The A Team chuckled nervously for a second. They joked about death - and the less savory alternative of embarrassment.

Then they went stonefaced.

Bob looked like Picabo Street preparing for the downhill. He weaved his hand, visualizing his route through the rocks.

They nodded to each other, and ran the rapids like pros.

Map of area

1. RAFTING BUZZ WORDS River-rafting guides have their own lingo. For example: The Big Ditch - The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Boney water - Shallow water spiked with rocks. Fish counters - Clients who get bounced out of the raft in rapids. Keeper - A dangerous hole of turbulence in rapids that can hold a swimmer underwater. Leaving rubber - Abandoning irretrievable raft wreckage on the river. Lily dippers - Paddle raft clients who don’t put muscle into their strokes. Maggots - Kayakers. Privates - Rafters who don’t use outfitter services.

2. RAFT THE SNAKE Although the desert river season is over on the Bruneau and Owyhee, River Odysseys West still has openings for multi-day trips on the Snake River in Hells Canyon, the Middle Fork of the Salmon, and the main Salmon, as well as day trips on the Lochsa and Clark Fork rivers. Info: (800) 451-6034.