John Day River
Page 1
Journal entry; Friday May 19, 2006, John Day River at Clarno, Eastern Oregon. This is a quick set-up shot out of the van window as we drive down the valley to the take out to pick up our shuttle. Why do people get so nervous when I drive and take pictures at the same time?
Here's the van parked behind our shuttle vehicle as we transfer gear after driving out from Portland. The weather was partly cloudy and in the high 60s and low 70s almost the whole 4 days we were out. Our first look at the river at Clarno was deceiving. This was to be our take out at the end of the trip and here the John Day river backs up behind the Clarno drop. It's very calm and deep. We did not drop the Clarno rapid, it's below the take out, but Travis pointed out that the rapid is made exceptionaly large by the big pool that forms at the Clarno take-out.
We stuff in Russ' gear and now the van is holding 4 people and all our gear for 4 days of river travel; including the 2 canoes on the top and Jen's catamaran raft and frame, stuffed somewhere inside.
An hours drive down to the Service Creek put-in and here we are loading out for the trip. To the left of the picture, Russ and Jen assemble the raft.
I'm outfitting the tandem canoe with thigh straps and sorting gear. I gained a new found respect for rafts on this trip. We left no luxuries behind on thanks to the huge capacity of this 16 foot raft. With a river current speed of 3 to 6 mph the raft made excellent time too.
We're off! Here's Jen experimenting with her raft controls as we launch into the swift current. None of this trip was really a problem for her water craft. It was an easy jaunt.
Here we're getting settled into the canoe. Russ (yes, we both have the same name) and I had never paddled together before. Russ is very experienced however and we were soon in a pretty good grove. Good thing too, as we were instantly in pretty fast moving water.
This looks icky, take me back to Home