The jet boats headed up the Snake River past Lewiston and Clarkston into almost inaccessible Hells Canyon. As canyons go it’s a young one, only two million years or so, yet its deepest reach is deeper than Grand Canyon. We pushed further and further into older and older basalt rocks, the view at every turn a spectacle. A bald eagle lifted off and circled overhead. We passed blue herons, mergansers, and coots. Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and mule deer grazed among the cliffs. We powered up rapids past the mouth of Salmon River to Eureka Bar and remnants of copper mining of a century ago. The run down through the crooked rapids was like a bobsled run.
Approaching Lewiston, we could see on the Idaho side a big gravel bar. Its bedding dipped steeply down valley—evidence of the great ice-age Bonneville flood that had run down the Snake from Salt Lake basin. On top of it lay many horizontal beds from the huge ice-age Missoula floods that had flooded far upstream on the Snake from the distant Palouse River.
Other of our shipmates travelled by motor coach along the Clearwater River to visit Lewis and Clark sites along the trail. The story of the Nez Perce people was told. The natives had helped the Corps of Discovery through their ancestral homeland on the way west to the Columbia River.
