Lower Salmon River
Whitewater boaters will find exciting rapids and spectacular beauty on this 112-mile stretch of the longest completely free-flowing river in the lower 48 states. The area’s diverse landscape and geology features a narrow basalt gorge and provides habitat for bighorn sheep, deer, elk, and a variety of raptors.
This area not only offers visitors vistas of unsurpassed beauty, but provides a snapshot of the area’s diverse history of human occupation. While traveling this river, visitors can see fragile evidence of Native American occupation of this environment for the past 10,000 years including prehistoric homesteads, Chinese mining claims, Nez Perce Indian sites, rock structures, pictographs, stone artifacts, graves, mines, picks, shovels, ditches, and trails. This stretch of the river has also been recommended for “National Wild and Scenic River” designation.
Directions: North Central Idaho; South of Grangeville, Idaho
Facilities/Fees:
Required self-issue permits available at launch location
No fees
Boating season: July through October
Craft types: raft, kayak, canoe, drift boat, powerboat, jet boat.
Rapids: Class III-IV
Portages: Slide Rapids ranges from 10,000 cfs-20,000 cfs
Ideal flows: 2,500 cfs-15,000 cfs
Floating not recommended above 20,000 cfs
Personal watercraft prohibited
Maximum group size: 30 people/trip
Pack out, what you pack in
Fire pans are required for all camp and cooking fires.
- Carry out all ashes and collect only driftwood for fires!
- Carry out all human waste with a system that can be emptied into an appropriate treatment facility such as a trailer dump station, home toilet, or a Sanitizing Containers with Advanced Technology (SCAT) machine. Plastic bags may not be used to store or transport waste!
Please Note: Check the Salmon River Road construction website for schedule updates and closure information.
>