This is a video of an August run of these two sections, one right after the other–190 miles total. Paddlers on the Middle were John Murphy, Bets Stover, Denny Egner, Michael Allender, Doug Chisholm, Trisha VanHeltebrake, Audrey Bergsma, Carl Poston, and myself. Four paddlers joined us at Corn Creek to continue down the Main. They were David Janney, Casey Granbois, and Brent and Tyrae Mahan. Level on the Middle Fork was a generous 2.1 feet.
Ten of us headed for the White Salmon on the Saturday before Labor Day for a beautiful day of paddling. Hopefully Denny won’t mind me showing a rare miss on his line on Husum. He did an amazing self rescue at the base of the falls and paddled out under his own power. Russ does an amazing plunge himself. Not caught on film (I was racing for a throw rope for Denny–ultimately unnecessary) was Teresa Gryder’s perfect line on Husum.
A short look at some of the fun the solo canoe class had as we headed downriver after the last day of drills.
Okay, we’re going back in time here a little. This is a final run of the Narrows in June.
This is the classic early summer run on the Clackamas and a strong tribe of 11 paddlers ran it recently. This is the video. This is their story.
While this wasn’t exactly a club trip, five out of our seven paddlers were club members and the other two are former members (Brent and Tyrae Mahan). It was Leland Scantlebury’s first trip on the Owyhee. Ditto for Bob and Karen Williams. Weather was cloudy, but not too much of that liquid sunshine stuff.
Last weekend we had Bob Bryant in an old Whitesell and Murray Johnson in a new Esquif Raven. Check out the footage of people running Troll’s Teeth. There was also some good surfing that day and a little bit of carnage and excitement on the last major rapid. Someone was asleep at the camera though when Alan Douglass was giving his demonstration on how to surf a kayak. Sorry, Alan, I just caught the pedestrian stuff.
A few of us headed to the Nehalem River on the Brownsmead weekend to get some Class 2 action before the festiviities. I had never done this section before and there is a cool falls near the beginning of the run that you can choose to sneak or not. There are also some other cool features toward the end of the run that unfortunately I was too busy playing on to video. Once the Salmonberry bridge is repaired (rumored to be done this summer), there are more rapids apparently downriver that will make this run even more worthwhile.
This is a continuous run like the Salmon River and has a little more gradient (70 fpm). Plenty of action and surf waves if you can catch them. There were 14 of us, but the river is so fast and constant that after the first rapid, I didn’t see many of the others until lunch and then it was the same thing. I’d get out of the boat to shoot some pictures and video and be left far behind. So the video ends up being the Chad Price and Doug Chisholm Show for the most part and both those guys were pulling out some of their best moves.
Twelve of us started this run and ten of us finished it. What this tells you is that it’s harder than advertised. In Soggy Sneakers they call it a 2+(3) continuous run of about 7 miles. Paddling Oregon is closer to the mark calling it Class 3 (3+) continuous. The gradient is considerable: 64 fpm. That’s similar to the Ollalie to Paradise run on the McKenzie or Dee to Tucker on the Hood.
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