shootdicker too(part the first)
Dickshooter Walkout; September 18 - 22, 1978
Part way into one of my then semi-annual trips to and beyond the northern reaches of the Great Basin I collected my friend Dave at the Boise Airport, took Poison Creek out of the Basin and then Mud Meadows Road down through various ranch holdings - navigating by instinct and the USGS Jordan Valley quad by flashlight - to end on what might have been Dickshooter Ridge in the dark. At the time I was campaigning a sweet '64 4x4 Willys panel truck in an ongoing reconnaissance of possible as well as historic crossings of the Owyhee River canyons, of which this trip was, in part, a part. Snow flurries greeted us on the plateau the next morning as, after some rudimentary breakfasting, we loaded the Jeep and continued along the track towards, probably, the rim of the main canyon. After a hundred feet or so a rear wheel seized up, ending that idea. Following various machinations and imprecations, all unsuccessful, we set out afoot south and east towards, vaguely, Owyhee, Nevada, which, though some fifty miles overland and not the way we'd come, seemed to have more potential than north and east 100 + miles towards Mountain Home, Idaho. By mid-afternoon we were staring down at what I'd expected to be Battle Creek but which was in fact the main river canyon, accessible via 400' of clinking lava scree followed by wading waist-deep and freezing to the far shore to reach a pretty little meadow with a corral and two trapper's cabins, the cabins stocked and open, as was the custom in that country at the time. Taking nothing beyond a brief rest, we hiked up a steep trail to the south rim [drier, dustier and somewhat lower than the north], and walked gently rising ridges until dark, camping in occasional [depending on wind direction] earshot of a natural gas pumping station not on our map but known to be on the road to Owyhee, the town. Next morning, in clear light, up at dawn, we reached the station in time to fortuitously intersect the monthly maintenance crew, who gave us peanut butter sandwiches, a paperback copy of The Book of Mormon and rides into Mountain Home...two all-night trips later, the first in a Bronco with a borrowed wheel puller, the second in an F-250 with two beer-swilling kids to reinstall the axle with its new bearing, the Jeep and I were off Dickshooter and into Jordan Valley to meet Dave for coffee and the run back to the Bay Area.
Two weeks later I was in London on my way to Kathmandu, but that’s another story.
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© michael s. moore 2009