Reed Island State Park

Reed Island State Park

Reed Island State Park, in Washougal Washington, is only accessible by water (or, perhaps, skydiving). My partner and I joined up with a group of Kayak Portland Meetup persons and paddled around the island starting at Steamboat Landing, Washougal.

Steamboat landing is a little fishing and boat dock. There is no launch there, but there is parking for 20 cars and a bathroom. Lots of people use this to access the bike and walking trail that heads on along the levee and around the local park. We just wheeled our kayaks down onto the floating dock and launched from there.

The big comment at the start of the trip was "Wow, the river is high. Never seen it so high. Where is the beach? There is usually a sandpit here!" etc. I take it the water level was above that which was expected. I don't particularly like launching from a dock. The likelihood of ending up in the water is much higher than other launch situations and once you fall in, it can be hard to get back onto the dock or into you boat. Be that as it may, it is probably a good thing to practice since sooner or later, a dock entry is going to be you only choice. In this case, we launched pretty much without incident, though that was because everyone was helping everyone out. KP is a good group of people that way.

That is the Levee (or Dike?) up there

This area was originally settled when pioneers coming down the last bit of the Oregon Trail floated in on the Columbia and just decided to stay. There was an active Steam Boat landing here for a number of years (as you might have guessed). For a while the landing was used primarily by the local Pendleton Woolen Mills. (That mill appears to still be operational and recently celebrated its 100th Anniversary).

The Paddle up the river was not very difficult. We had very little wind and if you stayed in close to the shore, the current wasn't that bad (probably less than a knot). The group leaders had expected us to pass a number of big sand bars and beaches, though these turned out to be mostly underwater.

We went up Reed Island on the North side. The water was very calm. We saw some eagles and osprey and some sign of beaver.

A popular swimming beach, when the water isn't so high.

I wonder what those signs say.

Oh

These appear to be cement statues of indigenous peoples kayaks. This is at the Levee beach park.

The east end (upstream) of the island is a lot of sand embankments and dunes. Much of it pretty muddy and with intermittent vegetation. There were a couple of larger (12 or so) parties of campers with their tents set up in some of the choice areas. We ate lunch  and stretched our legs out on the tip where we had a good view up the Gorge. We could clearly see Vista House sitting up on the top of the gorge wall over on the Oregon Side.

Vist House

Lunch at the Sand Bar Restaurant

After lunch, since the sun was shining and the wind was not blowing, we continued our circumnavigation of the island. As you get over onto the Columbia river side, you run into a vast stretch of fallen trees and logs. Many of these are the islands own Cottonwood that have been undercut by the current and then fallen over, but many others are captured visitors from up river. We ran in a nice clutch of Merganser chicks and their mom swimming at the point.

Mergansers

Another One !!

We road the current down the Columbia side. The river was so high that all of the massive amounts of drift and downed trees were afloat, making the shore look like a huge haphazard floating dock. Not a good camping area. We did see a couple of Skidoo riders that had gone in close with ropes and such and were apparently trying to salvage a power boat that was upside down on the shore, entangled in the trees. Good luck to them on that.

There was like a mile of this sort of thing. All afloat.

The return trip to the landing was very quick. A few people misjudged the drift speed and ended up a little too far down current and had to paddle back a bit. Not a big deal, but easier if you come closer to shore up current of the landing.



I want to go up and do this paddle again when the water is low. Perhaps do some swimming.