Everett Spaulding
By Dave Helfrich
Everett Spaulding
Everett Spaulding was an original McKenzie River fishing guide, and later, a Salmon and Middle Fork River fishing and hunting guide. He spent most of his time in a drift boat. In the mid-1940s, it was Everett who convinced Woodie Hindman to replace the upriver end of the McKenzie double-ender with a small transom, so he could hang a motor on it and push through slower river water. He was an ambitious, hard-working, no-nonsense guide who had a personality and drive that drew high end clients, especially out of the timber industry. More than anyone else, Dave credits Everett for getting him started in the guiding business in 1960. Editor Roger Fletcher
I was just a kid when I met Everett Spaulding the first time. He guided the McKenzie and he belonged to the McKenzie River Guides Association. He was a friend of Prince’s, but I don’t think they made any trips together by that time. That came later. I was about thirteen-years old when Everett dropped in one day. He asked me to ferry his rig for him. He planned to put in at Finn Rock, and he wanted me to drive his truck down to Silver Creek, or somewhere in there where I’d spot the rig for him. I said, sure, I can do that. He paid me fifty cents. There’s no way I had a driver’s license, but I knew how to drive by then. I helped-out over on the Deschutes driving the camp van during our camping trips over there. I’m sure Everett and others took advantage of me because I’d spot their rigs for little or nothing. I usually ended up walking home. Everett and I became good friends.
My folks supported my interest in guiding. I worked a lot with my Dad. As a young boy, I was getting some business through Prince, and I depended on my folks to drive me because I didn’t have my own rig. I was making $8 a day. I paid my folks $4 for use of the rig and the boat. I also ran baggage for Prince on several Rogue trips when I was in high school. I’d be gone for three or four days and make a $125, and figured I didn’t miss that much of school. So Prince involved me in the business, but not anywhere near full time. I learned that the real money was in logging, something that Prince was doing in the off-season, and something I spent a lot of time at until 1960. I had been guiding part-time through that period, and it was in 1960 that Everett provided the push for me to guide full time.
In the fall of 1960, Everett asked me to help him on the Rogue River. He took me in as a partner, and he cut me in for the profit and the whole works. Everett and I became partners, and we stayed partners for a long time. We worked for each other on the Middle Fork. If I needed another boatman, I’d get him to help me, and if he needed help, I’d help him.
Middle Fork Crew. Including Prince Helfrich (right) Everett Spaulding (middle) and Kenny King (left)
We became well connected on my first Middle Fork trip in 1948. (Read more about Dave’s first Middle Fork trip) He was on that trip, and he had two Middle Fork trips under his belt by that time. He was one of the lead boatmen, and a good one. That was my start on the Middle Fork and we ran trips for several years together. Later, along in the mid-1960s, I decided I’d get my own Idaho outfitter license. So I sent in the $50 and got an outfitter license, which was probably one of the best investments I ever made. An outfitter is responsible for all his guides, and to that point Everett was the outfitter. We had to bring our guide license to Everett, and he would endorse ‘em. He’d sign us off. Well, that got to be kind of a nuisance because at that time he was living in Lewiston, Idaho and we were all scattered around the country. So I got my own outfitter license.
In the 1950s I had occasionally worked for Everett in between my logging jobs. Late that summer or early fall of 1960, right at the end of fishing season, his Idaho partner, Ralph Smothers quit on him. Ralph outfitted on the Middle Fork and Salmon, and he and Everett worked together in the 1950s, especially on the hunting part. Everett was a real promoter, and he had a lot of good customers around Eugene, in the sawmill business and the logging business. He could recruit a lot of good clients.
So he and Ralph started a business together on the Main Salmon. Ralph had the horses and the territory, and they had these two powerboats to transport their guests up there, and hunt ‘em. Ralph had his horses and horse feed, and the partnership went on for several years. I got hired that fall because Ralph and Everett had a big blowup, and they broke up their partnership.
Everett had two parties booked for elk hunting on the main Salmon at the time of the breakup. He needed a second guide, and he needed a second boat. I had this power boat that I had bought earlier in 1960. I had been doing a lot of powerboating, running up and down the McKenzie, when you could still legally do that. I also power boated on the Rogue. So Everett hired me. He had two trips lined up, and he wanted me there for a month. I was to furnish my truck and trailer and power boat, and stuff. He would pay me five hundred bucks, and I would furnish my boat, motor and gas. Everything. So that’s what I did.
Main Salmon 1961 Trip
Well, I wasn’t checked out for guiding in Idaho, as far as a hunting guide goes, nor was I checked out for power boating the rivers. Back in those days we didn’t have any regulations you had to meet in order to run the river. On the Salmon we are talking about some really big water. I had not had powerboat experience with big curl-backs. There was more volume in that river than I was accustomed to on the Rogue or the McKenzie, probably four times the volume of the Rogue. So this was going to be an experience for me.
I met Everett in Salmon, Idaho. The first thing we did was to run supplies down the river to camp before we picked up the Dudes. We took his big boat. He was running twin 40-horse Evinrudes with propellers on ‘em. One other guy came along to help, a friend of Everett’s from down in Grangeville. We headed down the river with this load of groceries, and a lot of fuel. Everett bought every five-gallon can he could find, and we stashed this fuel in different places along the way. We were going through there a long way, and this fuel was important to keep the boats going.
Being as Ralph had the horses and the territory, Everett had booked these hunters, had taken their deposits, but because of the partnership breakup Everett didn’t have any horses. So after hauling all this freight down the river to the old ranch house, we continued on to Riggins. We’d drop ten gallons of gas here, and twenty-five here, and fifty there. We had gas cans scattered all up and down that river in five-gallon jerry cans. Once at Riggins, we started the drive back to Salmon.
That’s a long trail from Riggins to Salmon, down through Boise, and then through Craters of the Moon, Arco and Mackey to Salmon. Everett still didn’t have horses lined up for packing. We were gonna have six guests on the river, and we didn’t have any horses. As we were driving up the road we came by a sign that said, Horses for Sale. Spaulding wheeled over, stops and says, I’m going to go in and talk to those people. He went in there, and was probably in there for thirty or forty-five minutes. He comes out and says, Come on in, I want you to meet these folks.
We went in, and met the rancher. He had agreed to let one of his wranglers take five of his horses to help Spaulding out. The rancher didn’t tell us, but we found out later, that the horse wrangler had a real attraction to booze.
We went on into Salmon and gathered up our first group. They were six men from Bakersfield. We had too much baggage and too much food for our two power boats, and six guys. So Everett hired a fella by the name of Lee Backus. Lee was an outfitter on the Middle Fork and on the main Salmon, a power boater, as well as a sweep boatman. He hired Lee to run a ten-man with sweeps on it. It was one of those military type boats. We loaded up our stuff and headed downriver.
Well, Everett and I were running power boats. It was about sixty miles down to the “lodge,” and we got down there in pretty good shape. We made it into camp that night. Camp was an old abandoned ranch house. It was pretty comfortable. We got everything organized, and the guests got to lookin’ around. They realized they didn’t have any sleeping bags. The sleeping bags were on Lee Backus’s sweep boat. We sat around and had dinner and cocktails that night, and come dark, Lee still didn’t show up. Of course, the sweep boat isn’t going to float any faster than the current. We figured Old Lee was upriver somewhere, hold up for the night.
We gathered up all the life jackets we had, and things like that for them to cuddle up in. They had an extra-long cocktail hour, we built a big fire in the stove, and the guests survived that night. Everett and I had our sleeping bags, but we didn’t have room enough to put six guys in there. Fortunately, they had enough whiskey stashed in their personal gear that their discomfort was reduced by a liberal amount of booze. Lee showed up the next day, and we got our beds, and everything was alright. Lee floated on out to Riggins. That’s the last we saw him.
The wrangler Everett hired didn’t make it to our hunting camp for several days, well past his time to arrive there. So with that first group of hunters we borrowed a couple of work horses from a ranch down there, White Water Ranch. We made a few kills and used those workhorses to pack the meat. They’d pack a lot of meat. You’d put 400-pounds on them and they’d carry it just fine.
We finished that trip and headed out of there down to Riggins, and got rid of those guests.
At Riggins, we prepared for the next trip. We had only four men coming on the that trip, and they were coming into Riggins. We were going to run from Riggins back upstream to the “lodge.” That’s close to a hundred miles upriver.
I hadn’t had that much experience running water that big, but I could follow Spaulding. He’d take off in that big power boat, and he’d go roaring up through there, and I could follow him. I didn’t have a problem following him, or reading the river, or staying out of trouble.
When we started upriver it turned very cold. The river was freezing up in the quiet spots, and we were breakin’ ice. We made it as far as James Ranch the first night. That wasn’t very far, maybe fifteen miles that first day. The next night we made it to Mackey Bar, and we stayed there. And the following day we were due to run on into our “lodge.”
This is where it got interesting. The river’s dropping and getting lower, and we’re hitting rocks with the props as we go up and over the gravel bars. Rocks were just a flyin’. We’d have to pull in to take the props off, take a peen hammer, straighten ‘em out as best we could, and put them back on, and away we’d go again. It was on that last day into the lodge that Everett sheared a pin in the lower unit. He had a spare lower unit, but he didn’t know how to put it on.
We had a helper, Marshal Leeper, our guests and Spaulding’s wife, Annie. So Everett decided that he and Marshal Leeper would stay there and put that motor together. He told me to take the four dudes and Annie, and the 400 pounds of food, and run on into the lodge. Now mind you, I’ve been down through this section a couple of times, but never back up through it in a powerboat. So we started up through there. We were overloaded. A time or two I’d just run up into a rapid, and I’d run out of power. I’d have to back out of there and make another run at it. I finally got up there to a rapid called the Growler. It was such a complicated lookin’ rapid that I was afraid to run up through it. I was afraid I’d break somethin’, and then we’d really be screwed. So I got out my long lining rope and I had those guys pull me up. I was using oars and motor and whatever I could to stay off the rocks, and they pulled me around there. We actually portaged up stream around the Growler.
When we got up there to Big Narrows it was dark. At this point we were about two miles from the lodge. It was gettin’ dark. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground. I had Annie and the Dudes get out, and walk up along the river bank in that snow. I said, when you guys get to the top, find me a spot where I have enough depth, and shine the flashlight. Don’t shine the light in my eyes. Just shine the light so I can see the light, and I’ll navigate over to the light, which I did. I picked them up and we made it on up to the lodge. It was well after dark. We made it in without banging anything up. I got ‘em in safe. Now they had their beds, they had their booze, and all the comforts of a wilderness lodge.
The next morning I got up and Spaulding wasn’t there yet. I waited around for a couple of hours. He didn’t show up so I jumped in my power boat and ran up to Yellow Pine Bar, which had a Forest Service phone, and I called Francis. Francis was one of the old timers living down there at Campbell’s Ferry, and he was in on everything. He was listening on the radio all the time, and he knew all the gossip in the country. I asked Francis, has Spaulding come by yet? He said, No, I haven’t seen a soul this morning. His cabin is just right up on the bank above the river.
So I took Spaulding’s spare motor, a heavy bugger that weighed over a hundred pounds, carried it down, put it in my power boat and took off downriver with it. When I got down to the Growler, Everett wasn’t in sight. I didn’t want to power down through the Growler, so I ran the Growler using my oars. I could row that boat with oars fairly well. I no more than got through there and here came Spaulding. That was a relief. And now I had somebody to follow. I followed him back upriver, and we made it in by dark.
That was a real experience for me as far as power boatin’ in that big water, and I don’t know how I ever did it.
This hunt was around Thanksgiving time. The Dudes weren’t doing well with their elk hunting, so Everett says to me, Go out and kill some elk for us. I want to send these people home with elk meat. I said, what do you want? He said, Oh, kill three or four cows. I said, okay.
I went down to Little Mallard, and walked up that canyon a ways. There was a whole herd of ‘em up there. I killed three cows, and I had to gut them out, skin ‘em and cut them up. It was snowing a little bit, dripping off the trees and everything. I finally got them down to the river. I pulled in just in time for Thanksgiving dinner.
So I washed my hands right quick and sat down to eat. I happened to look into the kitchen, and I saw a little wood rat run across the floor and underneath the stove. It’s an old cast iron stove and it sits up a ways. The rat was back under that stove. I’d been wanting to get him because he was getting into our stuff. So I pulled out my 38-special. It was hanging in my holster there on the wall, and I got down there, and I could see him back under there, so I shot him. I shot him right there under that stove.
I was just going to leave him there for the time being. I put the gun back in my holster, and was ready to eat. The horse wrangler, who was a part of our group now, had shown up with the pack horses just before we arrived. He went in there and drug that rat out by the tail. The dang thing was just drippin blood, and he said, Guys, look what Dave did to our pet rat. Well, that called for another drink. In the meantime the food is gettin’ cold, and Annie is pissed off because the food’s gettin’ cold. Thanksgiving dinner is supposed to be warm, and it wasn’t. And she finally got ‘em seated down and fed. But that was the end of the rat. We didn’t have to worry about him anymore.
As a part of this story, I gotta talk a bit about Annie. Annie was Ralph Smothers’ sister. A few years before my powerboat work with Everett on the Salmon, Everett had partnered up with Ralph. Ralph was a Middle Fork and Salmon River outfitter. He had hunting territory, horses and land to pasture the horses. Everett was a real wheeler and dealer, and he had a lot of customers around Eugene. These guys were lumbermen, loggers, mill owners. He was a pretty persuasive guy who could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.
Dave running his motor boat through Grave Creek Falls
So Everett had a knack for lining up parties, which was something Ralph lacked. Ralph had his good reputation to go on, but he didn’t have a client base, and he wasn’t good at writing letters. So Everett and Ralph formed an Idaho partnership. It was then that Everett met Annie.
Annie was Ralph’s younger sister. Everett, was twenty years older than me, and Annie was probably just a few years older than me, probably in her mid-30s. The two of ‘em hit it off. Annie, being raised in that backcountry, was a real woodswoman. She knew how to do things. She knew how to saddle and pack horses, how to cut up elk meat, and she was a heck of a good cook. Everett and Annie teamed up. It wasn’t long ‘til Everett divorced his wife in Eugene. He walked away from that marriage with his boat and trailer, his rig and the clothes on his back. That’s about all he had. He had a few tools, and he had some stuff that he gave to me.
So Everett took off with Annie. They got married and lived in Lewiston, Idaho for a while, and then they came back to Eugene. Everett bought a new home; new to him anyway, in the southwest part of Eugene which was kind of the upper crust of Eugene. Annie wasn’t satisfied with the furniture in it, so she went down to Maury Jacob’s who owned Jacob’s furniture. Maury was a good customer of Everett’s. He had a good credit line there, and Annie went down and re-furnished the whole house with new stuff.
Everett was working the McKenzie hard in those days. This was along in May or June, and he was out there every day at 4:00 in the morning, at the crack of dawn taking Salmon fishermen out. He’d fish those salmon fisherman for about three hours until the sun came up, and then he’d come into the landing drop them off, and pick up another party of trout fisherman, and he’d take trout fishermen for the rest of the day. So he was double-doin’. A real go-getter.
Everett came home one night, and the place was empty. Annie had been plotting this for quite some time. She had a freight truck lined up, and they came in there just after Everett left in the morning. They loaded up all that stuff and headed for Lewiston, Idaho. When Everett got home that night, all that was left was a spare bed, and not a very good one. There were some chairs and a dresser, just meager stuff, including his clothes.
Everett called me up on the phone, and said, Dave, I can’t explain very much now, but Annie just left me, and she cleaned out the house, and she headed to Lewiston. I’m gonna chase her. I’m gonna run her down. And I’m gonna turn my business over to you. This was the Rogue River business. He said, Come on in. I’m gonna write you out a check for the deposits. Everett was smart enough in his business that he didn’t spend those deposits from clients. Ya know, a lot of outfitters will get those deposits and it will burn a hole in their pockets, and they’ll spend it. But Everett had that money in the bank for all those deposits and said, The business is yours.
So I inherited his Rogue River business. I had some of my own customers, and now I had Everett’s customers. So I went on ahead full-bore as a Rogue River outfitter. I tried to keep track of Spaulding. He tried to track Annie down, but never did.
Everett quit river guiding in 1970. The Middle Fork was running real high that Spring due to rain and heavy snow melt. Everett lost two people on that trip; one of his guides and a passenger in Weber Rapid. That just took the wind out of his sail, and he quit the river.
About this time, Everett started dating another woman, Effie. They got married. She had some money, so they started that lodge up there on the Main Salmon. He worked on the lodge as he could afford to build. This was at Horseshoe Bend. Between the two of them, they acquired a big piece of land.
Everett built an air strip by digging into the bank and side casting what he excavated. Everett called me one time and said, you need to come over and take a look at my new air strip. I told him I was in the middle of the Rogue season but I would fire up my plane and fly over later. He died before I could get there.
Dave Helfrich with his airplane in Stanley
The amount of runway Everett had was limited because you had to worry about the wing tip on the left, and you didn’t want to get too far to the side because you’d get stuck in that soft dirt. Anyway, the first plane that came into Everett’s new airstrip taxied to the end of the strip and got off into the soft stuff. The pilot couldn’t turn the plane around. Well Everett was like a bull in a china shop. He grabbed that left hand strut and with brute force he jerked that tire out of the soft stuff and got it up where it was rolling okay. He let go of that strut and ran around to the front of the airplane. Right into the prop. End of story. That was it. He died before he could be airlifted out of there.
A few years later I got ramp checked by the FAA on the Middle Fork. I had never been checked in there before, and I haven’t been checked in there since. It turned out that it was this FAA man’s prop that killed Everett Spaulding. It’s a small world, even in the wilderness.
To order a copy of Dave Helfrich’s book Around the Campfire with David Prince Helfrich, CLICK HERE
Read Tom Brokaw’s article in Men’s Journal about the infamous 1970 high water Middle Fork trip: https://www.mensjournal.com/travel/the-middle-fork-revisited-20120831