I started my flying job in January, I took my first vacation days last week. What did I do? I went flying, first to Colorado and then to Idaho. I went to Colorado and picked up camping gear, and got some work done on the plane.
I was planning on heading to Idaho on Sunday the 7th, but I woke up to low ceilings and rain that lasted most of the day. I moved the departure back a day. I took off from KGWS at about 6:45 am Monday, starting the trip out with a hop over to KEGE where I got fuel and picked up a new friend. It was a lovely day to fly, straight across the Flattops at 12,500. Dropping to 10,500 for the rest of the way up to Rigby, for a bathroom stop and some fuel. Dodging some clouds and peaks along the way, it was a quiet day on the radio with the only chatter being a couple of Huskys near Afton.
From Rigby it was on to Salmon. I had scheduled a visit to a property I had my heart set on. I used the courtesy car for the afternoon to go check out the property some 64 miles from Salmon down river. I really love that country down along the Salmon river, but alas the property was not for me. It was however, a wonderful afternoon. By the time we got back to Salmon, it was nearing 6:00, I had intended to fly in to Thomas that night, but I was quite tired and the weather was looking ominous. I didn't want to trudge through significant turbulence and potentially bad weather that tired at the end of a long day. So, I made a very good decision and flew over to May airstrip, a short but choppy ride at relatively low level following the river. The weather in the direction of the Middle Fork, looked progressively worse. After setting up camp at May, I reveled in my good decision as I watched the storm roll across the mountains to the west towards the Middle Fork, and come over us from the ridge to the south. It started to rain just before dark, and sometime during the night I could hear a difference in the sound the precip made on the tent. We woke to 500' ceilings and a pure white landscape. The mountains west of Challis, were not visible for hours, when they did appear, they were shrouded in clouds depositing snow and rain. Around noon, it looked much better, I convinced myself and my first time small airplane passenger that we would fly toward Thomas and if it got too rough, or the clouds lowered, or otherwise looked undoable, that we would turn around. The entire flight over was bumpy, sometimes a bit more than I cared to deal with, but only the highest of peaks were in the clouds, I was flying at 9400' or less weaving around low hanging cloud tentacles and the few higher peaks. My passenger noticed my sewing machine leg at one point, and acknowledged later that she could see that I was very focused. I noticed the complete lack of radio chatter, absolutely zero radio chatter, my determination was that no one else was dumb enough to fly that day.
But, I finally got to familiar country, I recognized the big rock formation on the left side of the valley as you head up to Upper Loon, at that point I knew exactly where I was and dropped down into the valley hoping to get out of some of the rough air. It didn't work, it was still rough, but I made the left turn over Lower Loon and pushed up the Middle Fork. The last turn in the canyon just up stream from Mahoney was where I found the roughest air of the day. And then there was Thomas, a wonderful sight, with big puddles in the middle of the runway and a swirling tailwind landing, we were there.
My new friend took a picture of me as I shut things down, I was pretty frazzled for a 45 minute flight, I immediately cracked a cold beer. We set up camp and set about for the hot spring. A pure pleasure in 45 to 50 degree temperatures with low hanging clouds and fresh snow on the mountains.
The next morning, the clouds had dropped around the nearby peaks, and we pondered our day. By mid day the weather looked wonderful and we made the short jaunt over to Johnson Creek. Johnson Creek, where I told her there would be other airplanes, and showers, and a car to we could take into town. I didn't realize that without a caretaker, there were no showers, there was no car, and there were no people. We made the hike up to the Tub. We cleaned the tub and spent a good hour and a half soaking, the water isn't hot, but it was enough to ward off the low 50 degrees and light breeze. The only problem with that hike to the tub was the massive amount of ticks we picked up. We picked ticks off each other all night, some 17 in total!
We had another couple days of Idaho to come.

Great trip report so far, looking forward to the rest of it!

Yep, keep the report/story coming

Wednesday night at Johnson Creek was the coldest night of the trip. I suspect it was mid 20's or so. But, the morning was clear and bright, a single Cub landed turned around and left not long after the sun hit the airstrip, a square tail 182 came in and parked at the far end. My blue wings once in the sun burn off frost very rapidly and the plane was clean shortly. My passenger got out her Yoga mat and enjoyed the bright sunny day. Late morning we took off for McCall to get fuel and some other small items, we had both forgotten our sunglasses and the headset batteries were on their last legs. With full tanks of fuel, ouch, some fresh fruits and a few beers, we headed south east to Weatherby. Passing just over the frozen over Deadwood Reservoir, I called my position. I got a response of someone else in the same position and same altitude, it was a Cub going over to Warm Springs, just a mile or so behind me. It was a beautiful sunny day, with scattered clouds at about 8500', some heating in the farm ground was getting the air moving a little bit. I had never been to Weatherby, the book describes it with a road running right past it, as a result, I had low expectations of it as far as a camping area. We circled the airstrip once, I could not indentify a wind sock, but it would be pretty tough to land downstream any way, so I pulled up and over the ridge to the west side of the airstrip and dropped down into the valley to come around the corner and land upstream. While I was out of sight of the runway I had gotten lower than needed and had to add power to make the runway, but I got a nice view of the sculpted dredge tailings in the river bed. We tied down between the runway and the river, and set up camp. She had told me of her regular cold plunges, after some chiding, we decided to do a short swim in the river, a very short swim. The clouds were coming and going, and I got tired of waiting for the sun to come back so I just bit the bullet and got in the water. Warm is not a word I would use to describe it, but very refreshing.
Several deer and a handful of elk were gathering at the springs across the river, there were also a few Canada Geese and goslings making their appearance. A Bald Eagle was catching thermals just a few hundred yards out, and another bird of prey that I am not familiar with, perhaps an Osprey passed overhead.
We built a small campfire as the sun dropped behind the ridge, while sitting there at the fire, I heard an elk cow call, and instantly the elk and deer were running away downstream, then I heard another sound that was an elk, but not a cow call, more of a distress call. I looked out at the river and there right below us was a cow elk swimming down the river with a wolf practically attached to her rear end. As they floated by, the wolf saw us, just 50 yards away, it abandoned the cow and swam to the opposite bank. A hastily fired shot by me gave it all the encouragement it needed to take off as fast as it could along the river. The cow continued down the river another hundred yards, finally standing up in the middle of the river where it remained for well over a half hour, eventually wandering off into the brush. We were in awe of what we had just seen, I had seen a wolf harassing some elk across the river from Thomas two days earlier, but this was right in front of us. My right seater had grown up in London, and had never been to Idaho, let alone ever seen a wolf in the wild. She did however manage to get a live photo of the elk swimming down the river with the wolf running away in the background!
It was a chilly night again after the river side entertainment had passed, In the morning we rose early to get a start on the trip back to Colorado. A wonderful magic carpet ride over the still heavily snow covered peaks and valleys to the southeast. We stopped at Laidlaw Corrals as a possible place to camp, but after being in the mountains for a few days, the flat ground was not of much interest and we continued down to Preston to get fuel once again, then proceeding over the mountain ridge and over Bear Lake. I had never flown over Bear lake and was amazed at how beautiful it was, with blues rivaling that of the ocean. Our plan was to spend one last night, stopping at Kastler Compressor in northern Utah, but the strip was well overgrown. We instead landed at Dutch John, a nice place other than all the trash and unkempt appearance of the county storage and workshop. Storms were visible to the west and southwest, with what looked like heavy rain and perhaps some snow. In the morning the clouds were low, shrouding the hills to the south, we took off and followed the Green River to the east, the storms in the area made for some pretty rough flying, rough enough to pop open my door a couple of times. As we got closer to the town of Maybell, we turned south east and followed the roads toward Meeker and then Rifle. We passed over Glenwood Springs and dropped into Eagle where we shared all our pictures and her trip ended.

Deadwood Reservoir

Buttercup and her yoga mat

Deadwood is a really cool airstrip, that shot of the Green River has a now closed strip in the far right of the photo (Taylor Flats) No clue why it was shut down. Dutch John is a great place to fly in and fish. We have done a lot of day trips from Heber City to fish the Green.

Sounds like a damn cool trip, thanks for the story and sharing photos

Sounds like a great trip. This is why we have airplanes. I too grew up in the UK and the entire west of Canada and the USA blow my mind. So many beautiful places to visit.

Looks like you had a good time!

That’s awesome! I hear ya on those dang ticks! I plucked 48 of them off me in one day last spring on a bear hunt out of Johnson Creek! They’re horrible this time of year!

Yeah, May is a bit early, the month, not the "town." anything can happen. Some spooky looking weather, for that area anyway, glad it worked out.

A while back, there were T -shirts with "WELCOME TO IDAHO, THE TICK FEVER STATE", some kind of misguided attempt to ward off the continuing influx of people moving here. I prefer to warn out of staters about the Hobo spider's bite.