Joseph Plains

Joseph Plains is an area directly west of Grangeville, Idaho, although the best access (and possibly the only) to the area is down the Graves Creek Road out of Cottonwood, north of Grangeville.  If you look at a road map you will see no roads in this area.  There may be access from the Hammer Creek area near White Bird but I’m not sure.  I know there were settlers in this area in the late 1800’s but for some reason it didn’t grow.  There are now just a few scattered cattle ranches in the area.  The elevation of the plain is about 4,400 feet.

My first trip to Joseph Plains was in October of 2010 when a friend who was experiencing some health problems asked me to accompany him there to his hunting camp to help bring back his camp trailer.  I knew there were two Geocaches up there so naturally I planned to kill two birds with one stone.  Unfortunately my GPS receiver which was new at the time was giving me some problems so I was unable to locate the caches.  However, it was working long enough for me to place one.  It happened to be right at the hunting camp very near the pictured structure.  It was called “Ye Royal Crapper”.  Up until about a week ago no one had found it.

The cachers who found it are a husband and wife team in Lewiston who are friends of mine and also are the owners of the other two caches in the area.  While up there they also checked their caches and put them in good shape.  I had been wanting to get back up there to find those caches so as we were returning to town for a couple of days I decided it would be a good time to make the trip.

Wednesday morning I loaded up the BMW, as a good deal of the travel would be on gravel roads, and set out for Cottonwood.  The Graves Creek road out of Cottonwood is a nice paved road that takes you down to the Salmon River.  At the river the road forks.  The south fork goes for a couple of miles and is part of the Pine Bar Recreation Area.  I went chukar hunting in this area some years back and I remember getting no birds but getting very wet as it rained the whole time.  I turned north instead and went for about a mile to the Rice Creek Bridge across the Salmon River.  There was someone fishing on the bridge and I saw some rafters on the river below.

After crossing the bridge the pavement ends so I stopped to deflate my tires some to better accommodate the twisty gravel roads.  While I was doing this an old timer in a hay truck stopped and asked me to retrieve his mail for him at the nearby mailbox.  He said he was a lifelong resident of the area and asked what I was doing.  He had never heard of Geocaching so we got into quite a discussion.  I showed him a map of where I was going and he warned me to watch out for logging trucks.

If you are familiar with the Lewiston grade at Lewiston, Gilbert grade at Orofino, Greer Grade at Greer or Seven Mile Grade at Kamiah, they are all in the area of 1,800 to 1,900 feet in elevation gain.  In comparison the Rice Creek Grade rises over 3,100 feet and is a twisty gravel road.  You can be sure I was taking those sharp hairpin curves very slowly.  There was a logging truck in front of me so I stopped a couple of times to avoid catching up with his dust trail.  I passed him at the top where he had stopped and I thought that was unusually polite for a logger to worry about my eating his dust.

About three miles from the top I came to the first cache called “Joseph Plains – Boles”.  There were a few old structures here and it had apparently been a small settlement at some distant time.  While I was stopped the logger pulled up to see what I was doing (I guess) and I thanked him for letting me pass.  Turns out, that wasn’t the reason he stopped at all.  I should have known.  He was just getting some water to wash the dust off himself.  After finding the cache nearby I sat in the shade close to where the picture was taken and had my lunch.  At first I thought 8 cows were going to join me but they politely kept their distance.

The other cache was just over six miles further and I passed through a logging operation on the way.  I saw some great firewood opportunities in their slag piles but you would have to live up there to make it worthwhile.  The cache which required a short hike down a sloping meadow was called “Joseph Plains View” and it lived up to its name.  It was a little hazy but it gave a view all the way to the Seven Devils.

Just as I was getting back to my motorcycle I saw a logging truck coming up the road behind me.  I did not want to get in that dust so I quickly jumped on, stuck my gloves in my jacket and blasted off.  In less than a mile I couldn’t see him any more so either he was going quite a bit slower or turned off.

I made it back down the Rice Creek Grade with only one minor slip on one of the hairpins.  It was a really hot day and you could feel the temperature rise as you descended the grade.  After crossing the Salmon River bridge I found some shade on the Graves Creek road and stopped to inflate my tires for the pavement.  I made it back home around 4:00 pm having covered a little less than 200 miles.  As far as I know I didn’t lose or break anything. (The second picture is going down Graves Creek) M/W