Blog Archives

Tankard in a Teacup

Posted on by Steve Carr / Leave a comment

‘Tis the season for lines. We stand in line for a Bogus Basin lift.

We queue expectantly at the Christmas craft fair, hopeful to find a unique Idaho gift to send to our New Jersey friends. We sit in doctors’ waiting rooms, full of folks, hands in laps, eyes straight ahead, who have scheduled procedures before their deductibles return to zero in January.

If it’s important to us, we’re willing to wait.

I grew up with a father who stood in line for no one and nothing. Disneyland was out of the question, unless it was a Tuesday in late February and even then, no “Pirates of the Caribbean” for us. It was “Mad Tea Party” and shake Mickey’s hand on the way out to the car. Continue reading →

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Climbing the Waterfall

Posted on by Mark Weber / Leave a comment

The sheer rock walls of the Snake River Canyon are laced with sinewy waterfalls during temperate months, but with the onset of winter and plummeting temperatures, these delicate cascades freeze. Taking on the form of veined curtains of glass and columns of crystal, this transient world becomes a frozen palace where the ice climber reigns.
For more than two decades I have sought out the bizarre adventures of this fragile kingdom, and I’m not alone in pursuit of it. Other climbers also have been visiting these ice formations for years, and these days I often am accompanied by my son Elijah and various friends, such as longtime climber David Weber, to whom I’m not related except in our passion for climbing ice.

“Ice climbing? It looks crazy to me. Too dangerous. No offense, but I think you are truly insane.”

How many times have I heard that argument from casual observers? And on some level I have to agree. Continue reading →

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Bipolar Season

Posted on by G.T. Rees / Leave a comment

I climbed over one last deadfall on the long-neglected trail and pushed myself up the final step to the saddle on a commanding mountain ridge.

It was cold, the temperature dropping as the sun began to break over the Cabinet Mountains in late September and let out a puff of breath to test the wind direction. I’d hiked an hour in the dark to get to this spot overreaching a remote mountain meadow where I was certain elk would be bunched up like cattle with at least a dozen bruiser bulls competing for dominance of the airwaves with their primordial screams. Just then, a bull confirmed my thoughts with a mighty bugle from somewhere across the forest. Ah, it was going to be a good day. Continue reading →

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Drive-by Rescue

Posted on by Francisco Lozano / Leave a comment

The flurries falling on my head made me feel like dancing in the snow. I looked up to feel them on my face, and the sight struck me as surreal.

I was as excited as a kid, because at forty-six years old, I was experiencing my first snowfall. This was in late autumn of 2013, out by Alder Creek in Garden Valley, where winter’s show was being preceded by fall colors. I had stopped the car because two elk were in the middle of the road.

It wasn’t long after this experience that the challenges of driving in winter conditions led to trouble. Continue reading →

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Return of the Mongoose

Posted on by Rob Morris / Leave a comment

The first time Mark Guerry and I met, we got into a fight. It wasn’t outside a tavern or nightclub and there wasn’t a member of the opposite sex involved—none of the standard things young men end up in fisticuffs over. In the fall of 1987, both of us were attending the University of Idaho. Mark was a first-year law student and I was getting a second degree in fisheries resources. We had both joined a boxing class at a local martial arts studio as a way to blow off steam and try to keep in shape.

I quickly learned three things about Mark Guerry: he had a good left hook, a good right hand, and the ability to take a punch. I later learned that he was from Castleford, on the western edge of the Magic Valley, and was of Basque descent. Being a transplant to the Gem State from across the line in Washington, I was quickly learning about both the geography and history of Idaho. I read up on the contributions of the Basques to Idaho, and how many Basque immigrants had taken jobs in the sheep industry, mostly because it was work they could get. Not surprisingly, I learned Mark was from a ranching family. Continue reading →

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The Highland Games

Posted on by Cynthia Anne Johnson / Leave a comment

Hi, Todd. My name is Cynthia Johnson. Fresca is my sister and she gave me your name and number. Even though you and I have not met, I’m wondering if I could ride to Boise for the Highland Games with you? I’m writing an article about the games for IDAHO magazine, and I’d like to pick your brain for information as we drive. Fresca says you and Lyman are a wealth of knowledge! Please let me know. Thanks.

My request was accepted by Todd and Lyman Asay, and I traveled from Pocatello with them and their family to share the Highland Games in Boise, held in conjunction with the Treasure Valley Celtic Festival.

Such games, which are staged around Idaho and the U.S., consist of nine throwing events: heavy and light stones, weights for distance, sheaf toss, heavy and light hammers, clanchneart or stone throw, weight over bar, and caber toss. Todd, who is thirty-three, has been going to Scottish festivals since he was sixteen. After he and Lyman met in college and married, they went to a festival and watched people in kilts throw heavy things around. At the next festival they attended, Lyman signed up to compete and Todd cheered her on. So began a lifelong hobby. Continue reading →

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Bungalow Bears Beware

Posted on by B.J. Campbell / Leave a comment

Back in the 1950s, before I met my husband, he worked as a highway engineer tech with the Bureau of Public Roads. For one road construction job, the BPR crews camped for about seven years at Bungalow, a U.S. Forest Service worksite on the North Fork of the Clearwater River.

Recently, USFS archaeologist and historian Robbin Johnston told me that the agency focused on road building at that time. In earlier years, the work emphasis at administrative sites, such as Bungalow and Kelly Creek, was on trail building, fire protection, and mapping. USFS managers later emphasized maintenance and construction.

In 1964, in an effort to economize within the North Fork District, the Forest Service selected Kelly Forks as the future administrative site. That new location would centralize planned work on roads and bridges. Bungalow lay too far in the other direction, about twenty-five miles, making building maintenance and upgrades costly and impractical, especially in winter. Kelly Forks had space for a helipad, and provided housing for fire fighting crews. As the largest level area on the route, Kelly Forks eventually replaced Kelly Creek and Bungalow. Present- day Bungalow serves as a campground.
Continue reading →

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A Snow Sun

Posted on by Sean Sheehan / Leave a comment

When Sun Valley celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1986, the resort hired my dad to build a snow sculpture of its logo.

The sculpture was such a big hit that he has built one in front of the Sun Valley Lodge every year since then.

My dad, Mark Sheehan, is an architectural metal sculptor. I started hanging out with him as he built the sun in 2002, when I was two years old, playing in the snow and helping to hold the hose. By the time I was eight, I started being really helpful by removing blocks of snow that were cut away from the sculpture by pushing them into the pond, which is still my favorite part of the process. I also mix slush and pack snow onto the face to add detail. Every year, I look forward to making a snow sculpture with him. Continue reading →

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Warren–Spotlight

Posted on by Mahlon Kriebel / Leave a comment

“Swirl, be aggressive. Swirl the pan counter-clockwise, the way a toilet flushes in the Northern Hemisphere. Give me the pan and I’ll show you again.” In calf-deep water of an old dredge pond near Warren, Wayne Schaffer bent over and vigorously rotated the pan underwater, causing a murky slurry of dirt, gravel, and sand to spill over the lip. “Gold particles are heavy and sink to the bottom,” he grunted as he raked the top two inches of gravel and sand from the pan. “Here,” he said, handing the pan back to Oliver Brown.

“Now shake and pull. Shake the pan hard from side to side just under the surface, then pull backwards to spill sand until there’s only about a cup remaining.” We had met Wayne the previous day in front of his summer tent site. He suggested if we wanted to take a break from fishing and pan for gold, he would teach us how.
Continue reading →

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Suffer No Hot Dogs

Posted on by Marylyn Cork / Leave a comment

The boy was sulking. Even sixteen-year-olds do that sometimes. In this case, my grandson Jesse was intent on trying to convince me to drive my truck to Priest Lake so he could take his little fishing boat along on a camping trip.

It’s a rowboat, basically, although he does have a motor for it and takes it out on small lakes and the Pend Oreille River near his home.

“There’s no point in it,” I remonstrated. “Your Uncle Kurt has decided to go along on this camping trip, and he’s taking his fishing boat. You won’t need yours.”

Still, he sulked, until we arrived an hour later and he got his first glimpse of that huge, beautiful lake, one of northern Idaho’s celebrated Big Three. (Priest Lake has 23,000 surface acres and nearly eighty miles of shoreline.) Perhaps Indian Creek Bay, at the campground, looked a bit intimidating for a boy in a rowboat. With a lighter heart, he clambered aboard his uncle’s eighteen-footer and away they went, along with his two teenaged cousins, intent on catching a few of Priest Lake’s celebrated mackinaw trout. We three women stayed behind to set up camp. Continue reading →

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