Young's Creek is one of two creeks which come together in the central part of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex to form the South Fork of the Flathead River. It's floatable at some water levels by some types of small boats, like one person rafts and kayaks. But "floatable" does not mean "floatable without hard work," and it has numerous logjams and other obstacles requiring hard work in the form of portages.
Wayne and I had hiked in to near where Babcock Creek joins Young's, giving it enough water to be marginally floatable. It's also the point at which Young's Creek flattens out enough to be floatable; it exits a constricted canyon with boatloads of downfall just a ways upstream. Most of our gear had been packed in by Jack Rich of Rich Ranch.
We arose the next morning after a good night's sleep. Amazingly, for a couple of getting-on-in-years geezers like us, we felt pretty well rested and weren't sore all over. My shins didn't hurt and Wayne's knee seemed just fine. After breakfast we rigged up our flyrods; Wayne headed down the creek and I headed up.
We caught some fish, nice fat Westslope Cutthroats, scrappy but not real big. Mostly we just enjoyed bumping around in the woods on a creek a long way from the sounds of infernal combustion engines.
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| Young's Creek |
The following day we rigged up our boats, loaded up, and headed down the creek. We already knew our first logjam was just around the corner, as Wayne had run into it while fishing the day before.
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| Starting Down Young's Creek | |
It was only the first of many logjams and trees across the river. It wasn't a difficult portage, but as I unloaded my boat and moved my gear to the relaunching spot downstream I mentally adjusted to getting used to it -- it was all part of the adventure.
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| First Logjam |
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| First Logjam Portage | |
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| Wayne Reloaded below the Logjam |
We fished our way on down the creek, leap-frogging around each other until we got to the next obstacle. Some were easy, like this log across the creek we could just slide the boats under with some care.
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| Log Underpass | |
It was a hot, sunny day, and we enjoyed the leisurely fishing and the scenery. We had no schedule, were in no hurry, and the fish kept us busy.
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| Wayne Fishing Young's Creek | |
There was downed timber in the creek everywhere, and numerous places we either couldn't get a fly or where if we hooked a fish we had zero chances of playing it, so we didn't even try. But there were others where with a little care you could catch something.
The creek was pretty low. At places like the one in the pictures below, we had to get out and scootch the boats over the gravel bar; a tree in the creek makes what channel there is in the other braid unuseable.
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By the end of the day we had gone a whopping three miles. We set up camp in a pleasant open park where others had camped before.
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| Young's Creek Camp | |
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| Waders Drying |
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| Dutch Oven | Moonrise |
The next day we loaded up and headed on down the river, fishing and floating and working our way around more logjams.
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| Loading Up | Fishing Young's Creek |
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| Fishing Young's Cr | |
The fishing was not spectacular, but it was good. We caught a lot of fish. We don't keep track, but we do take note of the larger ones. Most of them were smallish, in the 9" - 13" range, but we caught a few around 16". No monsters, but they were all scrappy and well fed -- almost plump. This is not a place you go for spectacular fishing where there are lots of big fish. There are far more accessible rivers with far more and far bigger fish.
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| Young's Creek Cutthroat |
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| Young's Creek | Fishing Young's Creek |
There were places where a tree had fallen across the creek recently. Almost as an afterthought we had brought along a folding sven saw which fit neatly into my rod case which I carried lashed to one of the handles on my boat. We ended up using it more than we had anticipated. On some of the trees, it was easier to cut out a passageway than portage around.
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| Young's Creek Tree |
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| Cutting Branches | Slot Cut under Tree |
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| Guiding Boat Under Tree | |
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| Gary Guiding Boat Under Tree |
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Then it was on to the next logjam. We lost count of the number of obstructions we had to get out of our boats to deal with within the first few hours of the first day. But we weren't in a hurry, and they added variety to the fishing. But this is not a trip one should undertake if one is averse to work; or if you are on a tight schedule. It would soon get old and your anxiety level would keep ratcheting up.
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| Logjam |
A few portages were in two parts; it wasn't even worth reloading the boats properly. We'd just dump in the gear and float the boat twenty yards downstream and finish the portage.
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| Logjam Portage | |
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| Logjam Portage | |
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| Reloaded and off again |
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| Underscoot | |
We had heard vague mention of the "Young's Creek Canyon" and "some rapids". Since they were vague, casual, offhand references, I had not worried about them too much. They were from people who weren't river runners, and needed to be viewed in perspective. I knew there was some more difficult water ahead somewhere in the lower reaches of the creek, but it wasn't something that would make the journey too unpleasant and be too formidable.
The streambanks started closing in and the creek picked up a bit. Wayne was paddling in front and suddenly perked up and worked hard to get his boat eddied out. He indicated I should pull out. I did so as the noise of water cascading over rocks increased. Just around the corner, a log completely blocked the creek as the gradient increased and we came to a proper rapid.
Wayne lined his boat back across the creek, having some difficulty wading in the strong current. As we stood there he suddenly said, "Where's my rod?"
He carries it facing forward in his boat, and it was no-where to be found. We spied it on the other side of the creek, tip caught in some small branches and the reel down in the water. By good fortune it had not been swept downstream. Some careful wading retrieved the rod.
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| Wayne's Lost Rod |
We found a portage trail on river left which got us to just below the log. It wasn't clear if the log was new this year or had been there for some time. It was an effort to schlep our gear around.
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| Log Across Canyon, looking upstream |
The photos below left and above were taken with a pretty wide-angle lens, so "things may appear smaller than they are." The pool below the log is deep; four feet out I would be in over the top of my waders.
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| Wayne Portaging Gear | |
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| Gary Portaging his Water-Master Raft | |
We were about to load up to continue, but I looked downstream and decided to investigate further. It wasn't unrunnable, but there were a lot of boulders tightly spaced and a lot of current for the small space. At the very bottom was a hole that could cause trouble if you hit it wrong, and the route above required bouncing back and forth from one side of the creek to the other in quick succession. Wayne's boat is twelve feet long and that maneuvering would be difficult fully loaded as we were. I decided to portage that section also. We found the portage trail continued on to just below that last difficulty. But the trail was 50 feet or so up the side of the canyon; it was a chore horsing our gear up, around, and back down.
As above, these photos were taken with a wide-angle lens, so the rapids look somewhat innocuous and relatively easy to navigate, not counting the issue of the log. I'm a fairly proficient white-water kayaker and have no troubles maneuvering my small raft around. But the current was relatively strong -- Wayne had used a wading stick as a third leg when retrieving his rod, and he's spent a lot of time chest deep fishing -- and loaded down as we were picking our way through the rapid below the log seemed unwise. Also note that we were running the creek at about the lowest level possible. Double the water and it would be formidable for most people.
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| Looking downstream from the log |
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| Reloaded at the Bottom |
It was getting late in the day and we decided to start looking for a place to camp. But while we were past the worst of the rapids, we weren't out of the canyon-like topography. We floated on for several miles through less intimidating rapids, keeping an eye out for a flat spot on shore that wasn't in a tangle of burned timber. The wind had blown, not too hard, the past couple of nights and we had heard trees falling.
We had about an hour of light left when we decided to give up looking for a good camp and just find a passable one. We ended up stomping out a flat spot among the dogwoods, thimble-berries, salmon-berries, horsetails and downed timber. We didn't bother with a fire, and I cooked up a quick, less-than-gormet meal. But we were in good spirits, our gear was dry, and tomorrow was a new day.
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| Camp in the Bushes along Lower Young's Creek | |
The next day we fished and floated our way on down to the confluence of Young's and Danaher creeks, the official start of the South Fork of the Flathead. There were more obstructions to deal with along the way, but that was something we expected.
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| Young's Creek Fishing | Log Across Young's Creek |
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| Flatiron Mountain near the Confluence | Looking Up the Danaher Valley |
Both my boat and my waders had sprung leaks, so we decided we needed a layover day for patching. We floated down the South Fork a few miles and camped, looking forward to fishing the South Fork at a leisurely pace.
This page last updated on 2015-07-16.
