I knew I wanted to get away for the weekend. I was a few days away from completing a two-month-long construction project that had absorbed nearly every thought. I was in desperate need of a reset. Thinking about a weekend road trip would get me through the difficult week ahead. But with North Idaho expecting snow over the weekend, I wondered where I might go.
I considered the directions. North and east would just get me into more snow. West would take me into Eastern Washington and the desert, but the weather forecast there looked bleak and rainy. That left south.
The weather to the south looked great. Now I just had to decide what I would do. I weighed the possibilities as I determinedly worked through the end of my construction project. A distant memory slowly worked itself into my awareness as I worked, setting the last of the cabinets.
Years ago, I had read about some hot springs outside of Riggins that were rarely frequented because the approach was difficult. They were on the other side of the river and the trail was only accessible by boat.
That evening, after failing to find my hot springs book, I searched online and found some vague descriptions about the Cable Car Hot Springs. I checked the weather for Riggins then I checked the river levels.
I could make this adventure happen. I was going to Riggins for the weekend.
Friday arrived, and after a long day of working, I cleaned up my equipment and then dashed home to empty my truck of tools and replace them with adventure gear.
Saturday morning, I woke to several inches of fresh snow on the ground. I had expected the snow but the reality was disheartening. I realized as I loaded up the last of my stuff that I had neglected to change out my almost bald tires for winter ones. I glanced at the note taped over the speedometer that read “winter tires!” and laughed at myself. The drive might be sketchy. I was faced with a decision. Stay home and not risk the long drive on snowy roads, or GO!
I’ve learned in my time adventuring that no matter how much I prepare, nothing will go as planned. I drank the last of my coffee, wrote down the vague directions I had found online onto a piece of scratch paper and left.
At first, the drive was as expected: sketchy and slow. All of North Idaho had been blanketed by the first snowstorm of the year. As I proceeded farther south, however, the snow disappeared, and I chuckled to myself because I thought I had pulled something off and escaped the wintry North. Driving past Lewiston and south through Grangeville, I watched as the sun began peeking through the clouds. By the time I reached Riggins it was warm and sunny, but when I turned up the Salmon River and faced a wall of black clouds, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
As I drove the 18.5 miles upriver toward French Creek I watched the darkness turn to snow. I looked for the handwritten directions and realized I had left them on the kitchen counter, probably right next to my coffee cup.
When I reached French Creek, I pulled into a campsite and quickly made a fire to beat back the cold dampness. I watched snow falling heavily just a few hundred feet above my campsite on the mountain and I wondered if I was about to fall into the misadventure portion of my weekend. I made dinner quickly as the light faded. I retreated to the back of my truck just in time to hear the rain begin to fall and sizzle on the rocks surrounding the fire.
As I curled up in my sleeping bag and listened to the rain, I hoped the temperature wouldn’t drop overnight. I knew I was at a balancing point — a few degrees colder and I would wake to snow. More than a couple inches of snow would make retreating out of the valley difficult.
I woke in the morning, crawled out of my cocoon to discover blue skies and breathed a sigh of relief. The clear skies had brought the cold, but the snow was still hundreds of feet above me on the valley walls.
Fingers numb, I lit my camp stove and made a cup of coffee.
I ate a quick breakfast as I scanned the hillsides across the river, wondering where the hot springs were. Without the handwritten directions I was left to take an educated guess. I spotted the A-frame remains of the cable car that once crossed the river here, giving the hot springs their name, and a trail leading upriver.
As the sky brightened to azure, I hauled my kayak down French Creek to the Salmon River and ferried across the swift current towards the remnants of the cable car on the far side. I stashed my kayak on the riverbank and followed the faint trail until it came to a small ravine, where I discovered Salmon River blackberries.
I grew up in Western Washington. As kids we made our forts inside blackberry thickets. We would make wood machetes and slice trails through the green mounds of thorns and berries. I thought I was well suited to tackle the bushes that stood in front of me, especially since I could easily see the correct and much-more-used trail 15 feet in front of me on the other side. For 20 minutes, I fought those bushes, which tore off pieces of skin on my hands and ripped a hole in my down jacket. At that point I admitted defeat, sighed, walked back down to the beach and found the beginning of the trail I should have been on.
Once on this trail, I hiked uphill about 2 miles, wondering as I plodded along if I was still on the wrong trail, until I came around a corner and found a steaming mine shaft in front of me.
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Cable Car Hot Springs is in an abandoned mine shaft piercing the slope about 50 feet from an equally abandoned shack housing a small carved out log bathtub with hot water piped into it.
I quickly dropped my gear and climbed into the nearly 100-degree water.
The mineshaft went deep back into the mountain toward complete darkness. I have never been very content in the dark, but I swam back far enough to feel the hot water dripping from the ceiling and to see the remnants of support timbers.
Occasionally, as I explored farther back, I could hear a tempo change to the drip of the water. A few times there were loud kerplunks, which sounded eerily like someone trampling through the water. I retreated to the entrance rationalizing away the chills running down my spine.
Trying not to think about the darkness behind me, I sat in the mouth of the mineshaft and lazily watched the world wake up.
As the sun continued to climb above the valley walls, I watched the line of shade retreat and birds begin to wake. Chickadees fluttered around in the bushes, steam floating in the air around them.
High above the Salmon River on the edge of the Gospel Hump and Frank Church Wildernesses I stretched out in the warm water for hours, nothing but the trickle of water and the occasional birdsong to disturb my contemplation.
Fourteen hours prior, I was doing everything I could to not let the stress of work get to me. Now I was fully immersed in an adventure on the beautiful Salmon River and the real world seemed distant and inconsequential.
I delayed as long as possible, but the sun was now high above the Salmon River and I had to return to that real world. I donned my clothes and sauntered down the trail, watching mule deer swish their tails as they kept a watchful eye on me.
I paused near the river’s edge to explore the rock foundations and rock walls along what was once a road leading to a gold rush in the mountains to the north.
Then, I paddled back across the river and began the drive home, with a long-sustained smile on my face and a mental reset complete. N
Story & Photography By Jason Wilmoth
1 Comment
Thank you for exposing such a special place, my great uncle Jack standish started everything there, It was his mining claim. The amount of stories I’ve heard from family,strangers and friends in the know is enough to write a boom on him and his legacy of cable car. My mother told me since I was a child of my grandfather loading the whole family up in the cable car and taking them across, my best friends father was a prospector with my uncle Jack. This was the work of some of idahos true last mountain men. Anyone who knew my family knew if uncle jacks work. He eventually caught cataracts, but could always describe the intrigue in colorful fashion, thank you