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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.
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2 Responses to “Salmon River Snowpack Report”
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April 6th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
looks like the snowpack is down to 67% of average now. What will that do to the Salmon Supreme trip? What does it look like the Salmon be like when permit season opens on June 20? Will this be a lower water year?
Thx - DBV
April 10th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
It’s so hard to say what the flows will be at the end of May because flows depends on spring rains, spring weather, and summer rains as much as snowpack. We can expect there to be plent of water for the Salmon Supreme since this week is usually around the peak of the snowmelt.
It’s so hard to guess what the water will be like on June 20th, but it seems like that would be the perfect time to go this year because you can be sure to start at Boundary Creek and have plenty of water even if we have a bad spring.
This will almost definitely be a low water year which means we’ll be starting more of our trips from Indian Creek and spend six days on the lower 75 miles. Even in low water years we’re able to run fun trips on the Middle Fork through August.