From the Pacific to the Inland Northwest

This is a story of sea captains, a car ferry in an unexpected place, and true love.

Driving north from Wilbur over the rolling wheat fields along the northern edge of the Columbia Plateau, one will suddenly find the highway taking a steep plug over the ragged basalt cliffs of the Columbia River gorge to wind like a coiled snake around sharp, serpentine curves toward the river basin below.

Continue along the highway at the bottom and drivers will meet an unexpected sight in this rocky, arid country: the 116 foot car ferry M/V Sanpoil — better known as the Keller Ferry — bobbing up against a car ramp on the calm waters of the Lake Roosevelt that backs up 152 miles behind the mighty Grand Coulee dam.

Arching over the car deck like a giant, metal-legged spider is the pilothouse.

And inside, dressed casually in a red plaid shirt and jeans is a slightly balding, gray-haired man with small ponytail and a long, wildish beard.

Personable and engaging, Ferry Operator Martin Clutter moves from one end of the small pilothouse to the other and pushes the boats throttle forward slightly. The thrum of one of the Sanpoil’s twin 425 horsepower diesel engines increases and the ferry moves slowly outward toward another ramp a mile and a quarter away across the lake.

Lake Roosevelt and the Sanpoil are a far cry from other vessels Clutter piloted for over 30 years between Seattle and Alaska’s Bristol Bay and the Bearing Sea, where he caught everything from salmon and crab to glimpses of glaciers and whales for tourists on the 120-foot catamaran tour boat M/V Klondike Express. The largest vessel the Medical Lake resident captained was 185 long.

How Clutter, now 62, came to be at the helm of the Sanpoil is a Shakespearian tale of love and loss, community — and hope.

Originally from Kansas, Clutter moved to Kodiak, Alaska with his family as a teenager. He made his first trip onto the Bearing Sea with his father, a cook on a crab processing ship, in 1974.

He’s seen plenty in the intervening years. He watched as the Augustine volcano, a cinder cone island 116 miles north of Kodiak, had a major eruption in 1976. He was up Alaska’s Naknek River when killer whales attacked Beluga whales and “the river ran red.” The northern lights were a regular show.

Today, with the ocean some 260 nautical miles away, he regularly sees deer, bear and entire elk herds swim the mile and a quarter distance across the lake near the ferry.

But it was in a remote Alaskan port that he spotted the only catch that mattered: his future wife.

Love at first sight

Clutter came to be a Medical Lake resident when he followed “the love of my life,” Cheryl Closterman there when she was transferred to the area by her employer.

Cheryl wanted to live in a small town, Clutter said, but not Spokane, Airway Heights or Cheney.

‘That pretty much left Medical Lake,” he said.

The couple met in Petersburg, a small fishing village in Alaska’s southern panhandle. Cheryl was visiting her mother; Clutter was in port buying fish. He immediately spotted Cheryl, sitting with her mother, when he walked into a bar to grab a soft drink.

“It was one of those love at first sight things,” he recalled with a smile. “We made eye contact, and I thought, I could live with this woman the rest of my life.”

Clutter bought the two women a drink and told Cheryl he’d come back after work if she was interested in getting to know one another.

He returned as promised; Cheryl was still there.

They were married in 2002, two years after they moved to Medical Lake. Clutter continued piloting ships, commuting between Medical Lake, Seattle and the Bearing Sea.

As boats and sailors go, Clutter was pretty salty when, in 2007, he landed a job as a deck hand on the 80 foot M/V Martha S, the ferry in service at the Keller Ferry at the time.

The fact that a ferry even existed in the middle of such arid country was a bit of a surprise when it was suggested by a friend that he apply for the job.

“A ferry in Eastern Washington?” Clutter recalled thinking.

Three years later after being hired as a deck hand he was in the pilothouse.

He’s been plying the waters of Lake Roosevelt ever since.

Keller Ferry

Since the late 1800s, when the Columbia was still a free-flowing river, the Keller Ferry has been serving as an umbilical connecting Lincoln County to the south with Ferry County and the 2.8 million acre Colville Indian Reservation north of Lake Roosevelt.

The then Department of Highways took over ferry operations in 1930, before the original ferry landing was inundated nine years later by water building-up behind the new Grand Coulee dam.

The Sanpoil was commissioned in 2013, replacing the 80-foot-long M/V Martha S after more than 60 years of service, according to historylink.org.

The on-demand ferry is free, operates seven days a week, and carries approximately 60,000 vehicles annually, according to WSDOT.

The crossing is a vital link for the 234 residents of Keller and others living on the north side of the river. It’s a short, 26-mile drive from Keller to Wilbur, the next nearest town across the river to the south, via the ferry. Without the ferry that same trip is a 226-mile slog through Republic and Omak via the 4,310-foot Wauconda Pass. Spokane is 167 miles away over the 5,575-foot Sherman Pass.

Vehicles using the ferry include school buses, ranchers who haul cattle to Davenport weekly, and various sportsman and commercial vehicles, according to Clutter.

M/V Sanpoil gets its name from the Sanpoil’s, a sub-tribe of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. The Colville’s contributed $2 million of the approximately $12 million cost to build the Sanpoil.

The Medical Lake embrace

Clutter has been intermittently involved in the Medical Lake community since he and Cheryl arrived in 2000.

“It’s a great community,” Clutter said of Medical Lake, a place that would one day embrace him when, 10 years after their marriage, Cheryl learned that her body — pancreas, ovaries, brain — was riddled with cancer. The doctor stopped counting tumors at 15.

“And he said there were at least that many more,” Clutter recalled, his eyes watering at the memory even today.

He took a leave of absence from work to care for his wife and daily trips for radiation and other treatments.

The Medical Lake community took the couple under its collective wing, Clutter recalled, bringing meals and flowers, and just coming over to visit and lift their spirits.

“The support group was unbelievable,” Clutter said.

Cheryl died four months and 10 days after her diagnosis, on Dec. 22, 2012. She had turned 53 during treatment.

“I had the best day of my life with her, and the worst,” Clutter said with a cracked voice as he piloted the Sanpoil.

Clutter was away from work for over five months during Cheryl’s treatment, nearly two of those after she had passed. It was the Medical Lake community that helped him get back on his feet.

“It was the help dealing with it,” he said of his own recovery and the community.

“I love Medical Lake,” Clutter said. “It’s a good place with good people.”

Although they never had children together, Cheryl left behind her two children and four grandchildren, including Dayle Bartlett and her two kids, Chloe and Jamie of Medical Lake.

“No one calls me dad,” Clutter said, “But my grandkids call me Papa. I love that.”

Life goes on for those left behind, and Clutter said he’d be open to another relationship.

“I loved being married,” he said as he once again carefully guided the Sanpoil into the ramp.

Lee Hughes can be reached at lee@cheneyfreepress.com