Getting the Best Campsites When Rafting on the Middle Fork and Main Salmon

How to Get the Best Campsites for your rafting trips on the Middle Fork and Main Salmon

If you're lucky enough to win a permit for a white water rafting trip on either of these premier rivers, one of your chores as trip leader is to obtain reservations for the campsites that you want to stay at. Both the Middle Fork of the Salmon and the Main Salmon have campsite reservation systems. Leaders of each rafting party apply for campsite reservations when they check in on the morning of their launch day. These rivers have well over 200 campsites between them. 100% of the campsites on the Middle Fork are reservation sites so you must reserve your site for each and every night that you will be on the river. As of this writing, the Main Salmon has a partial campsite reservation system in which you can reserve campsites for some of your nights on the river. I'll have more to say about the Main Salmon's system at the end of this page.

When I first heard about campsite reservations it didn't sound like such a good thing. After all, it's a wilderness, for crying out loud. Well, it's not 1805 any more and we're not Lewis and Clark. The reality we're stuck with is that 10,000 people converge on each of these two rivers every year. I've come to really appreciate campsite reservations as a way to lower the stress once we're on the river. It's a good system administered by good and caring people.

With the caveat that any campsite on either of these wonderful rivers is one of the better places you can possibly be, some campsites are nicer than others. Some are just OK, lots of them are good to very good, and a few are simply spectacular. It's natural that you want to camp at the best sites on your white water rafting vacations. It's not my goal to give you a top-10 list of the greatest, or list the best sites for small groups, or the best campsites for groups who like to swim, or fish, or hike. I'll leave it to you to figure out the best campsites for your purposes. But once you have that list, the quality of the sites you do receive reservations for can influence the enjoyment of your river trip. I'll tell you how I think you can stack the odds in your favor.

First of all, in administering the campsite reservation system, the goals of the rangers at Boundary Creek and Corn Creek are to basically honor your requests, ensure campsites are not double-booked, and resolve conflicts when multiple parties request the same campsite. Most conflicts are resolved by flipping coins, and the rest by negotiation. The rangers don't have an agenda, other than moving groups through the process, applying some common-sense rules, and keeping everyone safe. They are not in cahoots with the commercial rafting companies. They are fair to all parties. The commercial guides know the system and so should you. It's up to you to understand and work within the system to obtain the best campsites for your group. If you just blunder into the situation, you'll probably be disappointed and frustrated with the results.

Have a plan before you get to the put-in

Those who plan ahead are rewarded. So, first of all, do your research. Talk to other boaters, ask questions on the Internet forums devoted to white water rafting, look at pictures and read the comments on www.whitewatercampsites.com. Before each trip, I make a list of a few outstanding campsites that I want to try for. This little list of anchor sites shapes the overall plan for our river trip.

Buy a copy of the USFS Floaters Guide for that river. Yes, if you're the trip leader, you will receive a 'free' copy of the river guide when you check in. But that's way too late to help you plan the campsites and the daily mileages you'll need to travel. Call the Forest Service, and have them mail the latest edition to you well in advance of your trip. And read the published guides for your particular river to learn about hiking trails and other attractions within the river corridor. But don't expect that any of the guide books will contain a list of the best campsites to stay at. You'll learn about the best ones only by exerting effort and gaining experience. It's sort of a built-in system of natural protection.

Make your list of those few ideal sites and the river features like hot springs that you want to be sure to stop at, or camp near. Then consider the pace you want to travel. An obvious first step is to divide the total river mileage by the days you plan to spend on the river to determine the average daily mileage required. Decide if and where you want to deviate from average. Should you go fast at the beginning and slow at the end? Or start slow and make up the miles toward the end of the trip? Or just stay balanced, trying to keep to the average each day? By necessity, your first and last days on the river will probably be half-days so factor them in as such.

In planning your travel pace, consider your group's experience and composition. Are they efficient at breaking down camp and packing the boats? Or do they need a couple days of practice before you can expect them to break camp early and make the big miles? And how many big-mileage days do you want to have? It's to be a rafting vacation, after all, so don't force it. Do you have a bunch of teenagers who need to be dragged out of bed every morning and who are basically non-functional until noon?

Also consider the time of year and flow rate. Making 25 mile days is no problem in May and early June, but 25 miles on a 100-degree July day when the flow is low can be a real drag. A those times, you must get an early start on big mileage days. And stopping for a two-hour hot springs break or to visit an old homestead on a big mileage day can have you cooking dinner in the dark. Carefully examine the river features to decide where to put the big mileage days. And be sure to factor in the afternoon upstream winds too.

River campsites change dramatically from year to year. Falling trees, forest fire damage, insect infestations, changes to beaches or debris piles due to high water, etc. etc. Even if you've been down the river many times before, you'll need to redo your research each year.

Your pace plan will drive your selection of the rest of the campsites that fill out your itinerary. After picking your full campsite list, then choose at least 2 alternates for each night and pre-calculate the mileages for each alternate. I used to use an Excel spreadsheet which listed my ideal site and 6 alternates for each night and calculated all daily mileages for all combinations! My friends just rolled their eyes! Since then, I've gotten lazy and more experienced and now make my ideal list with a couple alternates for each night and use the approach described here with confidence that I'll get my sites.

It also helps to be contrary. The commercial river trips spend fewer nights on the river and tend to travel faster than private groups. If you travel at their speed, you will need to compete with them for campsites. If you start out slow and let the commercials and more aggressive private groups get out to a fast start, you may not even see them for the rest of the trip and won't have to compete against them for the campsites. These are two nice benefits of a slow start.

Also, launch day can be a real circus. Another advantage of a slow start is that the ramps at Boundary and Corn are much easier if you just sit back and let everyone else clear out ahead of you. Grab a cold beer, pick a nice log or rock in the shade, and enjoy the show. There's a certain satisfaction that comes with getting onto 'river time' earlier than the rest of the crazies! The downside of starting slow is that you may be the last group down the river that night. If you encounter any problems, no one will come along to help. So consider your groups capabilities.

And finally, size matters. Pick campsites that are the appropriate size for your group. If you're a small group, don't fill your wish list with big sites. Big groups get preference over small groups for the large campsites and you'll get bumped. That's just the way it is, and that's the way it needs to be. If none of the big groups take one, you might, repeat might, be able to get it for that first night. But maybe not. River rangers will leave big sites open on your second night for big fast groups that will be launching a day after you. So, if you're a small group, don't go into the campsite selection process expecting to get a big site. If you really want to stay at that site, bring more friends next time! See your permit packet for campsite capacities.

The night before launch

Rangers allow rafting parties to post their campsite 'wish-lists' on the bulletin board the night before launch. It's not first-come, first-served, but posting your choices early is good. You can learn a lot and avoid conflict and be better prepared to make the best of your second choices at the campsite assignment meeting in the morning. Other, less experienced leaders, or those who don't care so much about choices, or those who wish to avoid conflict, may see your list and just pick sites other than the ones you've posted. Watch the board until all groups have posted. You can then see where you stand and you may find that competition has disappeared! Or you'll know what you'll be up against in the meeting.

If the board doesn't look so good, you've got all evening to reconsider your alternates. You might even try to talk to other groups the night before launch. If you each want the same campsites, you can do a little give and take and leave less to chance at the meeting.

A second critical piece of information is also available to you the night before you launch. That is the list of campsites reserved by the parties that launched today, and yesterday, and the day before that. If some of those parties are moving slowly, and you are hoping to move fast, they may already have received reservations for the sites you were hoping to get. There's nothing you can do about those. Just move on to 'plan B'. Tip: If you want to know which campsites are considered to be the very best, it is obvious from this list. The best sites are the ones occupied virtually every night. Of course, small groups may take exception to this statement as there are some tiny un-noticed gems out there, too.

If you're the permit holder for your group and you can't get to Boundary or Corn Creek the afternoon before launch, give your list to someone else in your party who can be there. They can post the list and analyze the situation as discussed above. You will need to be there for the meeting in the morning, but anyone can fill in for you in posting your list and gathering information about your competition.

Launch day

Whatever you do, don't be late to the campsite meeting! Launch morning is pretty stressful. If you're the permit holder, you are the only person the rangers want to talk to, at least as far as the campsite reservation meeting goes. You can bring an experienced friend and you can appoint someone else to be your group's leader on the river, but as permit-holder, you're the key person in all matters related to the permit and campsite reservations. Delegate chores to others so that you can get to the meeting early and work your plan.

At the meeting, be flexible, do right by others, be opportunistic, and stay alert. Stories abound of white water rafting trip leaders discovering at the last minute that they forgot some piece of required gear and having to trade away a prime campsite to another group for a bucket or a strainer!

Keep in mind that the meeting might turn out to be a 'non-event'. If groups posting the night before managed to avoid conflicts with one another, there may be nothing more for the rangers to do about the campsite assignments. It's a done-deal. Everybody gets what they requested. Of course, if you're a small group and are trying to reserve big sites, you may not be able to dodge conflicts with big groups that are due to launch tomorrow. Its just the way it is. Big sites go to big groups.

If the campsite meeting evaporates, just go on about your preparations for launch and check back with the rangers from time to time to arrange the three other areas of ranger involvement with your group: inspection of required equipment, conducting the safety and citizenship lecture, and issuance of the actual permit.

You're on your way

Once you get your permit, you can be on your way with the comfort of knowing where you're going to camp each night. But be gracious - share your campsites with groups who have problems. Remember, doing a good turn has a way of coming back to you. They call it 'river karma'. I've got some great memories of nights made better by sharing our site with other groups who came into some bad luck.

Use a GPS to help navigate if you tend to have problems keeping precise track of your location. Yes, a GPS takes some of the mystery out of a wilderness river trip, but it also helps you locate the many hard-to-find features such as some of the lesser-known hot springs, and historical or geological features. Our GPS enhances our rafting trips.

Special Considerations for the Main Salmon

The Main Salmon with its partial reservation system offers some unique challenges. Chances are, you'll need to spend at least one night in a non-reservation campsite and probably several. On the Main Salmon, the better sites tend to be the reservation sites. Plan your trip pace to make sure that you'll have plenty of choices on the night or nights that you will not have a reserved site. You do so by arranging your campsite selections so that you're on a section of the river with a good number of non-reservable sites or, if in July or August, a section of the river that has lots of beaches to camp on. The Main Salmon has a number of wonderful beaches that are not on the formal campsite list. Especially if you're a small group.

I strongly recommend that you reserve the sites for the first and last nights of your rafting trip. The first night's site prevents additional stress on launch day. And you can run out of places to camp toward the end of the trip and find yourself on the ramp at Carey Creek, which is not a good campsite!

The penalty for messing up on this count is that your daily mileage plan can get really screwed up. It's a drag to hunt for a campsite for hour after hour and find you've nearly reached the site you've got reserved for tomorrow night! Breaking camp the next morning to move just one or two miles downstream and set up again tends to bring the needle on the fun meter down.

Another note is that layover days are not allowed on reservable sites. So you'll need to take that fact into consideration as you plan your Main Salmon rafting trip. And of course, if the weather forecast is not the best, you should consider the shelter and exposure to wind and sun offered by certain campsites. Tip: When floating the Main Salmon in the heat of the summer, campsites on the left tend to get shade earlier and can be a welcome relief.

And if you choose, you can avoid the campsite reservation system altogether when floating the Main Salmon. This approach should only be attempted by small groups. Just expect to find the sites you need each afternoon. And you can take a reservation site if it is not occupied by 7pm. Be sure to confirm such loopholes with the ranger before you launch.

If using this opportunistic approach it's best to bring a GPS. Books like 'Idaho's Salmon River - A River Runner's Guide to the River of No Return' by Eric & Allison Newell has GPS coordinates for every feature on the river and can greatly aid in precisely finding certain beaches.