Goldbug Hot Springs and the Death of Dugout Dick (Part 1)

Goldbug: a springtime hotspring with a view. Photo © Greg Stahl.

Hot water and sunny-cool spring weather. Photo © Greg Stahl.

Music from the FM radio turns fuzzy as the rocky precipices of the Salmon River canyon close in, and my truck works south along a ribbon of asphalt that follows the river’s meandering goosenecks. The last view of the snow-capped Bitterroot Mountains disappears in the rear-view mirror. The morning sun shimmers through riverside cottonwood trees, little buds and leaves glowing with the first faint hint of spring’s pastel-hued color palette.

The fuzzy music fades further as the canyon walls grow, and the sky’s horizons close in above. A spoken voice begins to crackle through the vanishing radio signal.

“Brought to you by Jones and Casey Funeral Home, Salmon, the following services are pending under the care of Jones and Casey Funeral Home: Dugout Dick, who died yesterday, April 21, will be honored with a memorial service on Saturday.” Then the list of pending funerals and memorials continues. My attention drifts from the announcements, and I wonder what gives with the name, Dugout Dick. Whose funeral is announced using such a bizarre nickname? And what a charming radio station. I’ve never heard auditory obituaries before, but it reminds of days long passed.

I arrive after a while at a place where the river curves in a big horseshoe, a location on the map called Elk Bend. With a four-mile, 920-vertical-foot hike pending, I need water before I begin, and I pull into the dirt parking lot at a cafe surrounded by a cluster of single-wide trailers. As I peek through the cafe’s dark front window, a CJ7 with its top down and music blaring rolls alongside my truck. The guy behind the steering wheel takes a drag from his cigarette, and the girl shouts across the parking lot: “They don’t open ’till noon.”

I walk over to the Jeep. “You guys have any water?” I ask. “I’m going for a hike, and I’m not gonna do too well without water.”

“You can come on over to my house,” says the girl. “Follow us. It’s just around back.”

I return to the truck and follow the jeep about fifty feet to one of the trailers.

“Come on in,” calls the girl. “We’ve got good tap water around here. No need for that bottled crap.”

I follow her into the trailer, which is well-kept and boasts a stylish ’70s-era royal blue kitchen table with chrome trim. She leads me to the kitchen sink, where I fill a one liter Nalgene bottle full of tap water.

“That’s good water,” she says again. “No need for a filter.”

“Thanks,” I return. “I like good water.”

“You going to the hot spring?” she asks.

“Yep.”

“That’s a bitch of a hike, but a great soak. We were up there a couple weeks ago.”

“I’ve heard good things about it,” I say.

“Well, the restaurant’s open at noon. Come on back when you get down. We’ve got good food.

Warm Springs Creek cascades from Goldbug Hot Springs toward the Salmon River. Photo © Greg Stahl.

The trail to Goldbug. Photo © Greg Stahl.

“OK,” I say. “I will.” And I climb back into the truck and return to the highway, drive another half mile south and turn onto an unmarked dirt road, which parallels a creek called Warm Springs Creek, and bump about a mile to where the road dead-ends in a tight side canyon where Warm Springs Creek tumbles among dense cottonwoods, aspens and willows. I stuff a pack with a pair of shorts and a camera, slip a pair of flip-flops on my feet and begin trudging up a trail that criss-crosses in steep switchbacks up the southern canyon wall.

Despite the cool of the morning, sweat beads at the corners of my eyes, and I pause to take a breath and examine my destination. High to the east I can see it, a steep notch in a rocky desert mountainside where the creek descends. With about 1,000 feet to climb, I guess Goldbug Hot Springs will be near the top of the notch.

The first steep switchbacks completed, I saunter across a sagebrush-coated bench before the trail returns to the creek bottom, and a small bridge affords easy passage to the northern canyon wall. I stop at the bridge for a while and stare at the creek, about seven feet wide and burbling with subtle cloudy swirls, the first signs of spring snowmelt. I remain and probe the water for some minutes before realizing the miracle being missed. Five sleek and silvery shadows work the bottom of a nearby pool, each about two feet long, and I marvel at the journey being completed.

Steelhead are massive fish, but it’s not their size that matters; it’s the circle of life they represent. These fish, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1997, are born in these waters and spawn in these waters, but they very well may have traveled as far away as Japan or Alaska before returning to this place. Warm Springs Creek, only twenty-three miles south of Salmon, is more than eight-hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, and these fish have somehow evolved in sync with the Rocky Mountain ecosystem. Unlike salmon, steelhead don’t always die after laying their eggs, but this far from the Pacific there’s little chance they’ll complete a second trip. Between here and the ocean, there are eight massive dams that plug Mother Nature’s natural instincts, and wild steelhead numbers have been plummeting since their construction. Apparently a bit heartier, they’ve fared better than chinook and sockeye salmon, but that hasn’t spared their endangered species listing. These steelhead have returned here to make love to the bones of the earth*, to spawn, die and spread the ocean’s nutrients among the Rocky Mountains’ stony spines. As a matter of course, they overcome more than many people ever dream, and, yet, humans are the cause of their decline. I wonder at ideas about sustainability and survival, how none of us can live without consuming. But somewhere, somehow, the balance has been lost. We make baby fish in glorified factories called hatcheries and then flood the rivers with them in the hope that enough can endure the gauntlet of hydroelectric dams downstream, enough to return, enough to perpetuate the marvel a little while longer. Enough, maybe, for the miracle to survive.

The trail works farther up the canyon, gradually for a while past vibrant aspen tree buds and a decrepit, half-fallen cabin, a spider clinging to its web, but the thundering sounds of waterfalls soon begin to fill the morning, and the trail transforms into steep stone steps that zig-zag as they ascend. I pass a few cascades, wondering how a hot spring could be formed in such a ravine, and my legs and lungs burn with the effort of the climb, a good revitalizing sting.

(Click here to read Part 2., including my return to the cafe and the death of Dugout Dick.)

© Greg Stahl

_______________________

* I’m not sure why this particular phrase is in my head, but it occurred to me that I may have picked it up in conversation (and is unique enough to receive attribution). A David James Duncan quote, perhaps? Anyone know?