Kayaking the Yamhill

Ten Thousand Years ago

 The glaciers creeping down from Canada had formed a huge ice dam in Missoula Montana. As the ice receded at the end of the ice age, the dam catastrophically ruptured and a great lake worth of water and rock poured out of ancient lake Missoula, scoured the scab lands of Eastern Washington, Gouge out the gorge or the Columbia river, and then backed up into the Willamette and Tualatin valleys to a depth of some 200 feet. At the Height of the flood waters, the Tualatin valley topped out and water came plunging down the Yamhill valley to meet the rising flood from the Willamette. Washboard plains and deposited gravel beds can be found in the area to attest to this.

150 years ago

By Unknown - Salem, Oregon Public Library digital collection image 5834, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5204859

Steamboats supplied all of the freight transportation in the Willamette River Valley. The Yamhill river  was navigable up to Wilsonville and included a dam and locks for keeping the river navigable during dry months. The kayak put in at Dayton is also called "Dayton Landing" and is pictured in that old library shot that I linked in.  There are still many remains of the Steamboat era. You can see them as you paddle down the river. Be on the look out for old Docks, Piers, Ferry Crossings, and wing dams. Some of these things are occasional boating hazards for kayakers as they may be either just submerged enough to hide from you or may occasion dangerous currents and eddies.

Last Week

The Kayak Portland Meetup did a down river paddle down the Yamhill river from Dayton to Newberg (via the Willamette river).  Since this is a one way paddle (down river) we did a shuttle over to the take out at Rogers Landing public park.

The Yamhil is about 50 feet wide, deeper than my paddle, and really sluggish this time of year. So sluggish that you can see any current at all running through the frequent tree stumps and snags. This meant that our paddle was also very sluggish. But that was fine, the 20 of us were just out enjoying a fine sunny Saturday (perhaps our last one of the season) and a viewing of the fall colors and the lovely reflections off of the water.

We did not see much wildlife out on the river. It could be because we were a rather large and noisy group. We did have a king fisher fly through with his usual laughing call, and a Great Blue Heron did her usual thing of flying a couple hundred yards further down the river every time we got close enough to take a good picture.

We were doing some talking about safety and such and what to do if you fell out of your boat (those kayaks can be tippy. One person (and experienced paddler) said that they would just swim to shore (presumably with their boat). Not sure I would recommend that. Lots of stuff in the water to get hung on, and then once you got to the shore, not sure what you would do. The shore is very steep to on both sides, Unclear that you could stand up close to shore and it would be very hard to try and get out. Would be pretty easy to impale yourself on something, however. No, I think you would be better off having someone to a T-rescue on you. Of course, if you were by yourself you might not have much of a choice. That may be a good reason not to paddle alone.

I have seen some examples on You Tube of people putting electric pumps in their boats that they can activate should they flip over. Then they can do a wet roll with their paddle float and just wait for the boat to pump itself out. I have tried to make one of those before, it worked pretty good but I never got quite the nerve up to drill the through hole in my boat that you would really need to do the thing right.

We stopped right at the confluence of the Willamette to eat our lunch. There was a little rock bank there that gave us a landing spot. But we were on the south side of the river and the steep bank behind us meant we were in the shade. Not ideal for this fall day, especially when we could see all of that sunshine right there out on the river.



It turns out that the thing to do is paddle out of the Yamhill and turn right and got a little bit up the Willamette. There you will find some nice sunny rocks to sit on and eat your lunch (next time).

Now we are paddling down the Willamette, so we finally have a little bit of current assist. Not much, however, since we are just getting to the wide slow moving part of the river that many paddlers refer to as the Newberg Pool. Newberg is the little town in this area.

But this stretch does give us a good view of some nice fall colors and we had a Bald Eagle make an appearance.

We made a turn off of the main channel at Ash Island. We had to negotiate the wing dams that are set up there. Here is a piece of Steam Boat era engineering. The Corp of Engineers would erect these rows of wood pylons that would form dams against the current. The idea was to keep the majority of the river current moving through the main channel and so keep that channel deep and navigable for the steamboat traffic.  The Corp was also responsible for other river maintenance, like removing snags and keeping the locks working.

There was a old and large landing or wharf back on the back side of the island. Not sure what that used to be, though it may have been tied in with the mill that is a bit more down river. We were approaching our take out now and we started to paddle over some large mossy objects. I thought they were pylons close to the surface and covered in moss, but I pushed my paddle down into one and found that it was mossy all the way down. So this was some sort of plant that was growing up all by itself. I have not seen anything like it in the river before.  See the pictures. (I looked around the net bout couldn't find a match).

And so our paddle ended. The small boat take out at Rodgers landing is just down river from the motor boat launch and an easy walk up hill to our cars.