R is for Rabbit Creek

There are several fabulous white sand beaches on the Main Salmon, at least in my memory. Rabbit Creek might be the biggest pile of sand that I remember. Rhett Creek is high on the list, Fawn Creek is nice and there are many others as well. In fact, to my memory, a good 30% of the great spots to camp on the Main Salmon are white sand beaches.

But the biggest longest pile was Rabbit Creek. Coming up on it, you would first float by the Creek itself. Springtime runoff and flash floods caused by cloudbursts upstream in its basin had blown out the mouth of Rabbit Creek. There was a large debris fan at the mouth of the creek where it lost the velocity of being entrained in the narrow creek canyon and quickly settled out into the much larger space of the river canyon. The water of the creek was almost lost in this debris fan. You would float by that fan and then tucked in behind it, the white sand beach would begin. The debris fan was big enough to push the current over to one side. The water would then "fall" in behind the debris fan and creating an eddy which was where all the suspended sand in the river water would settle out.

This was an amazing beach in the reality time of when I was a guide out there. It's part of the river trips that Cale and his float trips experience in River and Ranch. Someday I hope to take another trip down that beautiful river and see if it is still there.....