 My Backyard: Outdoor Lifestyle There are wild native trout, howling wolves and deep secrets up the roadless creeks of the Idaho Panhandle. You could spend days hiking in to find them or just load up your mountain bike, ride along deadly cliffs and fish all day long.
For nearly two decades, I have been fishing Kelly Creek, a gorgeous westslope cutthroat catch and release stream in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. I’ve approached it from all the traditional angles: I’ve car camped and worked the road-access sections downstream. I’ve camped at the trailhead and day-hiked the roadless upstream section until I stumble back to camp in near darkness. I’ve even done solo overnights way upstream from the trailhead, once making it up about 10 miles and sleeping out under the stars on a bed of tundra and native grass. I came to prefer the roadless stretch of Kelly Creek for the obvious reasons—fewer folks, more adventure, the perception of better fishing. Then one time, during the deviously long slog out, as I tripped over rocks, my knees and hips ailing, I had an epiphany: I could get out of here a lot faster on a mountain bike. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.
I've been an avid fly fisherman since my youth, and over the past 10 years I’ve become an avid mountain biker. There’s a good reason why many people don’t combine the two. It creates a gear nightmare. When you hike in to fish, at any given time you can simply stroll down to the stream, wade in, and start casting—add a bike and you have to ride with rod broken down, and then stop, dismount, and set it up every time you want to fish, and change out of cycling shoes and into wading boots. But I just had to try it. I had always dreamed of getting high upriver and spending whole days fishing this remote, roadless stretch of Kelly Creek. I called my longtime fishing buddy Dave Scott. We would use the mountain bikes for the approach, getting as far up stream as we wanted and agreeing not to fish any of the lower sections, no matter how enticing, until we'd found our campsite, ditched our bikes, and then made the transition from mountain bikers to fly anglers. Dave and I planed to arrive at the trailhead at night on a Thursday, camp, then get an early start the next morning on the bikes, bringing only enough food for one night and two full days. We set as our goal a plateau along the river about five miles upstream. If we made good time on the ascent, we'd have a full day of fishing Friday and Saturday. The planned mountain bike descent would (barring mechanical failure or death) dramatically reduce the normal 3-4 hour slog out. Despite the quick trip, we will need to carry a lot of stuff. I decide to load my bike with two Ortlieb panniers, and Dave will haul a B.O.B. trailer with our rod cases strapped on top.
Kelly Creek is a long way from nowhere, part of the historic Great Burn, a 250,000-acre roadless area on the Bitterroot Divide that has fortunately remained untrammeled because most of the valuable timber was torched in the devastating forest fires of 1910. The upper reaches of the watershed are sublime, with diverse water, including long riffle sections interspersed with boulder-strewn pools. Mountains erupt from the stream and the higher you climb, the steeper the approaches to the river become. Kelly Creek was among the first rivers in Idaho, in the mid-1970's, to go catch and release, in the mid 70s and the fishery has benefited from the stewardship. No stream in the state holds more allure to me. The place is truly wild, with moose wading the high marshes and elk, deer and bear tracing ancient trails. It’s a stellar, well-managed, fishery, yes—but for me Kelly Creek is simply a sanctuary.
It's a perfect summer morning when we start on our journey—cloudless, sun gleaming off the river, osprey perching in high cedar snags then soaring, screeching above the water. From the start, I try not to think about a section of trail that I remember well from hikes in, a quarter-mile of severe hillside. "Cliff" is probably the most apt description for it, but I’m careful not to use that phrase around Dave, who has considerably less mountain biking experience than I do. Another cycling friend who does not fly fish, but comes here specifically to ride this singletrack describes the trail as having a “significant pucker-factor.” I figure Dave will l have the good sense to dismount and push if things get too sketchy.
The trail rolls gently along at first, with a few fun stream crossings and technical little climbs riddled with stair-stepping stones that are tricky to negotiate, but I make excellent time on the flats and slight descents, and stop in shadowed tree glades to let Dave catch up. It's lovely, challenging riding, with long sweeping turns in places and straight-aways through dense and overgrown foliage that whips at my face and neck.
After a couple of miles the trail swings right down to streamside at a sweet hole and I have the urge to stop and fish. Through my sweat-streaked polarizing glasses I see considerable trout holding in the bottom and I suck long on my hydration bite valve, antsy as I see a few fish beginning to rise. Then I remember that one of the reasons we have chosen to bike is to avoid the temptation to fish on the way up, which in the past has kept us from actually getting very far. I hydrate more, hear Dave clambering up the grade, give him a yell and press onward.
I can see the sketchy section up ahead of us, a long exposed scar of dirt slicing across the mountain—yes, the cliff. I try to slow my breathing, but my heart races as the trail narrows, rises and then disappears into an abyss to the right. My legs churn. Suddenly, I’m a good two-hundred feet above the river. There’s no room for error. A single thought runs through my head over and over: “Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.” Then trail turns away from the cliff. The terror subsides. I've ridden it.
I stop and wait for Dave. I have to know, so I ask him if he rode it too. He grins and nods, affirming the unthinkable, and I gasp when he adds: "It's the first singletrack I've ever ridden!"
We make camp on a lovely, flat section on the river, next to a giant downed cedar we use for a backrest and to hang gear. There is a decent hole right in front of our camp, and as soon as we are unpacked, I tie on a small elk hair caddis and toss it up against a wet black rock. I mend quickly, trying to will a fish to hit, but all is quiet. Again. Nothing. Then I work upstream to the tail end of the hole and slap, zing, gotcha. My first fish is a nice one, and I coax her in gently, marveling at the pebbly, speckled back, the blood-red belly and flame-slashed underjaw as I release her. Native Cuts. This is what we came for.
After lunch, we move upstream along the river, but the canyon narrows, the walls begin to sheer off, and we tire of scaling huge downed trees. We scramble up to the trail and move into the cool, dark shadows of the afternoon forest, stopping to eat thimbleberries, their flavor tart and earthen. We want to reach a group of big boulders, a massive natural staircase of treacherous, slick-bottomed pools which are hard to hike down to and difficult to fish. The trail climbs, and we pad along in the cooling afternoon, our felt-bottomed soles quiet on the duff and dust. We find a game trail and poke through, rod tips snagging here and there on cedar and alder branches, until we pop out and stand at the boulders.
Standing thigh deep in the rushing snowmelt, my legs are tired from the ride and the hike—but it's worth it. Here wild native cutthroat trout still live and breed and survive and thrive, high above the Northwest’s dams, safe for now. I scan the water. Fish begin to rise in above a few slate-grey boulders, ancient and rounded smooth from eons of runoff. I cast to them, and they take my offerings graciously, hungrily. I see Dave's silhouette around the upstream bend, watch the arc of his cast in the late light. And then there is only the sound of the river, the mesmerizing wash of water over rocks and the gear-zing singing of the reel when the fish flee downstream.
We limp back to camp under headlight beams, boil water, belt down whiskey as a bracer and sip long on red wine from metal cups. Linguica sausage sizzles in the fry pan and we talk about fish landed and lost, about the deer we saw drinking at the river's edge, about our kids and how we ought to do this more often. We clink metallic toasts, warming ourselves by the imaginary bonfire of the propane stove glow.
Later, nestled in my bag, I think I hear a faint howling. It’s like a coyote but deeper and longer, and less yippish, and I remember that offspring of the original pair of a reintroduced wolf pack, the Kelly Creek Pack, still roams areas adjacent to the Great Burn, where we are now sleeping. The possibility comforts me, and I lie still and peaceful, listening to the easy roil of the river.
We rise with the sun, pull on cold wet wading boots and hike to the boulders and tie on humpys and Hemingway caddis and stimulators, casting again and again to likely water, to rising trout, to stubborn trout, and sometimes casting to hope alone. Time distends and we move up the river in tandem without speaking. We catch more fish than we can count, or care to, some as long and thick as our forearms, and we lose some even bigger (always do).
Mountain biking in to fish Kelly creek had seemed like a good idea and it was, if exhausting and just a little bit dangerous. At the end of another perfect day, we load the bikes and ride down.This time, when we arrive at the cliffs I stop and survey the sweep of earth and air below, the death drop, and I laugh at how ludicrous it seems. I should probably walk the bike because I'm tired. I've ridden it once, uphill, so there is nothing left to prove to myself.
But we need to ride. We push off tentatively and I clench the handlebars, tap-dance my fingers on the brake levers, click into the pedals—and let it roll. I can hear Dave's primordial hooting behind me, echoing off the mountainside and careening into the still mountain air, simultaneously yipping and high-pitched like a coyote and mournful and plaintive as a wolf-howl. I know exactly what he means.
If You Go: Fishing Kelly Creek in North Idaho is a multi-day commitment no matter how you go, given its remote location (fifty-plus miles of curving gravel road from Pierce, Idaho, or seventy-eight from St. Regis, Montana). If coming from Washington or Idaho, stop by Joe Roope’s Castaway Fly Fishing Shop (800-410-3133) in Coeur d' Alene. If coming from Montana, stop at Clark Fork Trout and Tackle in St. Regis (8888-658-1105; www.clarkforktrout.com ). For information about the Clearwater National Forest call 208-476-4541 or visit www.fs.fed.us/r1/clearwater/VisitorInfo/visinfo.htm © Copyright 1999-2006 by Hooked on the Outdoors www.ruhooked.com |