Minam

Date: 7/7/2024- 7/9/2024

Hike in: 7.5 miles

River Miles: 24

Flow: 400-350 cfs

Portages for wood: 2

GoPro Video: Packrafting the Lower Minam River

7/7: Kira and I hiked from the Moss Springs Trailhead which descends 2400 feet down to Red Horse Ranch. The trail is a bit chewed up from horse traffic but otherwise in good condition. It was a hot day but the trail is mostly in the forest and exposed sections didn’t last long. There are plenty of side creeks, so we could have carried less water. It follows the Little Minam river valley. We scouted that river for packraft potential, but saw that it was choked with wood. We got to the ranch in about 4 hours. We planned to meet up with a group that had started with the upper Minam (Jim, Yann, Quinn, Jacob, and Priscilla), and found them at a nice large camp across the bridge from the ranch. We were now a group of 7, with a fleet of 2 Alpacka Wolverines, 4 Alpacka Valkyries, and one Tater IK.

7/8: We set off from our camp around 9:45 am, flows were around 400 cfs. We soon encountered wood. The first log was at river level and we were able to boof or sneak around it. Then we encountered a log that had fallen in the river from the right bank. The Valkyries were able to duck under it by edging allll the way over, but me and Kira in Wolverines and Yann in an IK chose to portage. We navigated a lot of Class II boulder gardens. We wanted to camp before crossing out of the wilderness boundary, so in the early afternoon we started keeping an eye out for camps. Lots of promising looking river terraces ended up being really brushy and overgrown. We found a hunting camp on river right a couple miles before the wilderness boundary. We covered 12 miles in about 4 hours.

7/9: Again we set off from camp around 9:30 am, and flows were even lower, around 350 cfs. Fewer boulder gardens on the second day of paddling. We mostly floated with our feet out since it was so shallow. We encountered a log jam where the river splits around an island and portaged around it. We saw more cows along the banks after crossing out of the wilderness boundary. Then we approached what we thought was a bunch of cows in the river, but as we got closer realized it was a massive herd of elk! Females and their calves. We flushed them from the river, it was quite the sight to see. We reached the takeout at 11:30 am, so despite the low flows we covered about 12 miles in 2 hours.