Gourmet Magazine, July, 1988
-- by Kemp Miles Minifie
It all started with a recipe. A reader wrote to Gourmet requesting the recipe for chicken enchiladas served by a rafting outfitter on the Salmon River in Idaho. I was taken by surprise. Outdoor adventure trips didn't necessarily bring to mind visions of culinary delights. I remembered too clearly childhood trips with my father on the Appalachian Trail where dinner was a packet of freeze-dried powder and pellets reconstituted with water. Perhaps space age technology had vastly improved upon these dried foods to fool even the most discerning palate, but that was doubtful. More likely, it seemed to me, camp cooking had come of age.
The list of ingredients for the chicken enchilada recipe, when it arrived, confirmed the latter, and six days with Steven Shephard's Salmon River Outfitters convinced me that good food and outdoor adventure were not mutually exclusive. Unlike some outfitters, Shephard did not attempt fancy French cuisine: his preparations were straightforward renditions of such American favorites as blueberry coffeecake and potato salad. Using a propane stove, Dutch ovens, and a campfire grill, he and his five guides produced breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that all of the seventeen passengers relished. Served against the backdrop of the dramatic Salmon River Canyon, deeper than the Grand Canyon by one fifth of a mile, the meals were awaited as anxiously as the next white water rapid.
For the uninitiated the relatively new sport of rafting consists of floating down waterways and navigating their rapids in inflatable rubber boats powered solely by oars. Rivers once considered rugged, even impassable, with white water have been tamed by rubber rafts. With their buoyant sides and soft bottoms they slide over barely submerged rocks and bend in the swells of imposing rapids. Idaho's Main Salmon has a nicely spaced mix of turbulent rapids and stretches of smooth water, ideal for wildlife sightings. Novices and old hands alike have their share of excitement without fear of real danger.
We were a diverse group of nine men and eight women, ranging in age from Shephard's eighty-three-year-old Aunt Evie to a twenty-year-old college junior. There were two couples in the group, a family foursome of parents with their son and a daughter-in-law, and a father daughter duo. The rest of us were traveling solo.
Steven Shephard's first priority is the care and comfort of his passengers. He strives to provide as deluxe an experience as environmentally sound camping will allow. To that end he begins by easing each new group gradually into the wilderness, acclimating people to each other and to life on the Salmon. Instead of starting down the river immediately, we spent our first afternoon and night at a rustic guest lodge on the banks of the river.
The following morning we donned our life jackets and gathered for instruction in the rudiments of white water navigation. Facing us were five neatly packed rafts, each with a guide.
Our first day on the river was busy with extracurricular activities. Soon after Killum Rapid we pulled ashore and climbed the riverbank to inspect an excellent example of Indian pictography painted with a mixture of mineral oxides and ground chokecherries.
We experienced many of the Salmon River's moods that morning: there was the aggressive power of the rapids; the peace of a slow, smooth current; and the eerie calm of the Black Canyon, a geologist's dream of Idaho batholith. Rising almost vertically from the water, the sheer flat rock faces of dark gray granite formed a cathedral-like space for several miles.
The highlight of the afternoon was a half-hour soak in Barth Hot Springs. Our reward for a brief scramble up the steep river bank was a 108°F stone-lined pool, wrought by nature with a little helpful rearrangement of rocks by human hands.
It was obvious from our first dinner that the versatility of the cast-iron Dutch ovens more than made up for their excessive weight. Shephard used his primarily for baking, but the kettles also served as giant saucepans on top of the stove. I marveled daily at the excellent results.
The sun sets late on a summer evening in Idaho, but those of us who brought along flashlights were glad to have them as we headed to our individual dome tents and ensconced ourselves in sheet-lined Polyfill sleeping bags. All the necessary camping equipment was provided by Shephard. For a city slicker accustomed to the nighttime discord of garbage trucks and fire engines, the ripple of the Salmon River was a welcome lullaby.
Breakfast was a perfect example of why Steven Shephard has been so successful. Not content to serve plain buttermilk pancakes, he produced banana walnut buttermilk pancakes topped with yogurt chunky with coconut, walnuts and dates. For purists, there was real maple syrup, warmed over the campfire. The aroma of smoked bacon, my personal catnip, permeated the campground. Wedges of ripe honeydew and cantaloupe accompanied this and every other breakfast on the trip.
As I watched the meals take shape I couldn't help but be impressed by the careful planning that had clearly gone into each one. The logistics alone of gathering, organizing, and transporting enough food to feed a group this size are mind boggling, not to mention the limitations of refrigeration and space.
A measure of the success of Salmon River Outfitters is the number of repeat clients. To make future excursions for them more interesting and at the same time to attract new customers, Shephard instituted several theme trips. Ours happened to be focused on photography, but non-photographers be assured that there is nothing more formal about the workshop than the presence of Jeff Nixon, a protege of Ansel Adams, who served as consultant to the photographers in the group.
It won't take a specialty trip to encourage me to return. Of all the places I've been in my travels, the Salmon River with its peaceful majesty is something I want to experience again and again. |
