Bruneau Canyon Mishaps

By Diana Hooley

The view at the Bruneau Canyon overlook is jaw-dropping. That’s what I thought when I first saw the canyon several years ago. My family lives just an hour from the canyon, and I wondered why we hadn’t visited this scenic area earlier. Hells Canyon is deep, although you often don’t feel how deep it is, because there aren’t many steep vertical drops.

The Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls is steep, but it has a golf course at the bottom. Bruneau Canyon, though, is entirely uninhabited and has sheer drops of more than twelve hundred feet. Plus its grass-covered basalt and rhyolite ledges are beautiful. 

Many Idahoans don’t know about Bruneau Canyon because it’s in the remote Bruneau–Jarbidge Rivers Wilderness of the state’s southwest. Ever since our family’s first visit, we’ve returned and hiked there several times in late spring, before it gets too hot. The most notable trail in Bruneau Canyon is the Roberson Trail, which spans the canyon seven miles, rim-to-rim. Hiking in Bruneau Canyon is always an adventure, but it can also be hazardous.

Some years ago, when my sister-in-law-to-be was still a teenager, she drove with a friend to the canyon overlook. They enjoyed the view and threw rocks over the rim, listening to the ping-ping sound of their descent to the canyon floor. When they were ready to leave, my sister-in-law threw one last rock. Unfortunately, her cars keys were in her hand and they went sailing over the canyon edge along with the rock.

The remoteness of the canyon meant the two were stranded for nail-biting hours, waiting for family to rescue them. The young man who was to become my brother-in-law was then a limber teen. He arrived, climbed down, and, incredibly, found the car keys on a ledge.

Another time, my husband and I took our children on New Year’s Day to slide on the ice-covered Bruneau River that runs through the bottom of the canyon. The river is shallow in the winter and often freezes over. My daughter brought along her friend from junior high school. The kids had a great time until my daughter’s friend broke through the ice. The water was only a few feet deep, but even so, she got thoroughly soaked.

Not a good thing when the temperatures are hovering around ten degrees and a change of clothing is several miles away. My husband saved the day when he offered to let my daughter’s friend borrow his pants. She practically floated in Dale’s jeans, but it was worth it. We avoided hypothermia and as a bonus, I got to watch Dale climb out of the canyon in his red long johns.

Though there are all kinds of potential dangers in Bruneau Canyon, including falling boulders, venomous snakes, and the poison ivy that lines the Bruneau River, few people know the peril of getting there. Reaching the overlook is easy enough along a gravel road but other roads are little more than rough tracks. You need a high-clearance vehicle to traverse them.

When I took some Boise friends to hike the canyon, I rented an SUV. The sky was grey and threatened rain, but my friends were excited to see the wilderness area. We made our way over rocks and sagebrush to the bottom of the canyon and were eating our sack lunches when it began to drizzle.

By the time we climbed back up to our car, it was raining steadily and the road had turned slick and snotty. We barely drove a half mile before the SUV got stuck. With no cell service to call for help, our only alternative was to push the car out of the muck ourselves.

I manned the steering wheel and my Boise friends got a mouthful of Bruneau Canyon sludge as they tried to shove the car out of its hole. When we finally got it unstuck, my friends were covered in mud and the white SUV had turned brown. Later, we laughed about the experience, but my friends came away with a new appreciation for what the “wild” in wilderness means.