Paddle Oregon 2017. Part 1 of N

Paddle Oregon 2017

The paddle has been over for a few days and I am still sore and tired. I am trying to figure out if this was an adventure or a vacation.

Something in between, I am thinking. I mean, it is the rare adventure that has huge delicious catered meals every lunch and dinner, but it is also the rare vacation that has you sleeping on the hard ground, getting up when you still need a flashlight in order to pack up your tent and be on the river by 8:00. So. Something between.

Perhaps a little background.

Paddle Oregon is a 90 some mile canoe and kayak trip down the Willamette river in Oregon. It has been put on every year (I think this was the 18th year) by the Willamette Riverkeeper organization as a sort of outreach and awareness operation. Oh, they probably make a few bucks too, but that isn’t the main push of the event.

They normally have around 120 paddlers. They divide up into pods of 12 paddlers and 2 leaders (staff, guides, safety personnel , whatever) and go from campground to campground doing 15-21 miles a day down the river.

They have had different routes over the years, covering different stretches of the river, but they have decided that most of the paddling down near Portland is too boring (big slow river), has too many motor boats, and the camping isn’t very good (you really need a big grassy park that will let you invade) and so they have been further south for the last few years. This year we started just North of Eugene and paddled through to downtown Salem. And most of that was farmland and forest. One of the things that has historically limited the size of the trip is the size of one of the camp grounds (The Rogue Brewery near Independence). But this year the camping area was all torn up with construction and besides, no one wanted to listen to the Hops Trucks running all night, so they moved it down the river a couple of miles to a piece of privately owned river bottom land that the local farmer was gracious enough to let us use (more on him later).

So, now that the limited size camping was gone, and we could have more people on the trip, there was that other little side show, the 2017 total eclipse of the sun. Which was going to be on day 2 of the paddle at around 10:00 in the morning. So, suddenly, they are selling tickets (at $900 a pop) for an entirely different event and people sign up. I think there were 230 paddlers (that probably counts leaders). That is a lot of pods. A lot of paddles. A lot of porta-potties. (editor's note:  I have had emails up to the last few weeks that there were still openings for paddlers for Paddle Oregon in previous years, so I don't think they usually fill all the spots they have available, or maybe they fill at the last minute).

Willamette Riverkeepers has been doing this shindig for a while and they seem to have most of the bumps worked out. They have a superb caterer (Dalton’s Northwest Catering) who takes care of food and water and seating and entertainment, and they have a team delivering clean porta-potties and hand washing stations to each campsite. The entire support staff is extremely helpful. They say that they will help you with anything you need and they pretty much mean it. For instance, my sister was traveling with my partner and I and she had a shoe blow out. We needed some duct tape or something like that to hold it together. She approached a staff member about it and she said no problem and took the shoe and brought it back To Her Tent later on in the evening all fixed up.

They did have a few issues with the larger than normal crowd. For one thing, it took a while longer at the launch to get kayaks to the boat ramp and get people into the water. I mean, you have 230 people, call it 230/14= 16 pods and each pod takes…. 10 minutes? to get to the water and launched. That is over 2 hours. That is much too long. But they sort of figured it out after the first hour and things got moving faster.

Before we launched we had a big, group-wide safety and orientation talk. Where we heard about who was there from which states (a bunch of people from Montana, some newlyweds) and then we were told some of the more important things:

1) You must wear your Personal Flotation Device.

2) Even though there are leaders/safety people in your pod and additional rescue/safety people spread out on the river, it is YOU that are responsible for you own safety. YOU have to take the necessary actions to keep yourself safe and YOU cannot be depending on anyone else. Keep your eyes open and don’t do anything stupid.

3) Above all, this is your VACATION. So relax, take your time, and enjoy yourself.

So, Number (1) and (2) above are absolutely true and absolutely essential.

Number (3) I think is a bit of a stretch. What they probably meant was;

3) Above all, this is your VACATION. But you have 21 miles of paddling to do today and you can only travel as fast as your slowest pod member, so you had better not dawdle or take a bunch of breaks hunting rocks or whatnot and get your ass down the river or you will miss hors d'oeuvre, massage sign-up, and the best tent pitching places. And the Total Solar Eclipse. (Editor's note: And don't arrive a minute early, because we have a lot of set up to do, and all you people running around asking 'when do we get shower trucks?' and 'where is the beer?' make it difficult for us to set up).

Ok, we only had two 21 mile days.

Well. How about we walk through the days and hit the highlights and lowlights and Eclipsed Lights?

Saturday.  Day 0

If you were anywhere in Oregon (or probably the US) over the last 6 months, you have heard the rather dire predictions for traffic that would ensue with hundreds of thousand visitors descending on Oregon for front row seats for the 2017 Solar Eclipse. I mean, some of the predictions were down right scary. For instance:

Scenario 1:

• Madras Oregon. A little town in the Totality. Has a 4 lane highway running through it. 2 lanes in many places. Expecting something like 40,000 additional cars on the morning of the eclipse. Diners are gearing up to serve 10X the number of people they usually serve. We stopped in there a few weeks before and everyone was all about eclipse readiness. Did they have their eclipse memorabilia ordered and ready? Did they have all of the food they needed? Did they need extra sanitation facilities? People were renting out their yards as camping areas for $400 a tent slot. But now, imagine that there are the 40,000 additions cars driving through at 9:00am (an hour before totality), traffic is bumper to bumper but now it is time. IT IS TIME. everyone pulls over to the side of the road. If they can. Or else they just park in the middle of the street. Traffic stops. The temperature is high. People keep their engines running to use the AC. Some people didn’t bring drinking water. They can’t get to a place where there is some. People are starting to have heat exhaustion. Emergency services can’t get through because the roads are blocked. But that is OK because you can’t call them because the CELL phone system is completely overwhelmed. 15 minutes before totality, the first big fight breaks out. A lot of shoving. The old guy that won’t move his RV has a heart attack. It takes 10 hours to clear the traffic. By then 20 people have died and 100 would be hospitalized except the hospitals are already full.

Scenario 2:

• 60,000 extra people are expected in Lincoln City (a little place on the beach). The traffic jam on the 2 lane road that comes in from Portland runs from the coast 50 miles out to Interstate 5.

So. We are worried about all of this. How much is real? How early should we go? What is crazy and what isn’t? We decide to drive to the put-in the night before the event starts and camp in the little park there with some other paddlers and some of the volunteers for the event who are going to be there to begin early setup.

No water. Pit Toilets. Camp in the mowed stickle burr reed grass. But…. no Traffic.

Special Note:

• The joke was on us. The Scenarios above never happened. There was some obnoxious traffic on I-5 but Armageddon was avoided, perhaps due to everyone being scared away by the dire warnings on NPR.

Sunday. Day 1

We got up early expecting to be sitting around with nothing to do for a while. But, to our surprise, the Caterer had already shown up and there was…. COFFEE !!!

Yippee. That is a reason to get out of bed. It was also pleasantly cool in the morning. I wasn’t too well rested. I haven’t slept all that often on the ground in the last 40 years and it is hard to sleep on your side on a little hiking foam mattress. Luckily my partner and I had splurged (space wise) and brought REAL pillows. Oh my.

Organizing by Pod

The safety talk

In line on the ramp

So, we are up and having coffee. We are at the Marshal Island Access boat ramp just outside of Junction City. I figure it is called Junction City because, as far as I can tell from the Train Whistles during the night, it is the Junction of like 1000 extremely active railroad lines. The registration opens and we get our T-shirts and pod assignments and such and then just laze around and drink coffee and eat a pleasant breakfast from the caterer. Oh, I guess we also went back out in that dang field and folded up all of our stuff and stuffed it into the 2 duffels per person that we were allowed to put on the Ryder truck that would be shadowing the event by hauling our gear from site to site.

Many of the other paddlers were meeting at 6:00AM at the take-out in Salem. They left their cars at the Wallace Marine park and put their boats on trailers and their butts into a couple of big buses and road out to where we were, where they got to stand in line again to register.

(Other folks just got dropped off at the put in park. It was like some grade school drop offs, keep the cars moving, no one parks, lots of helpers to haul your boat off your car and your bags out of the back.  Our son helped us the day before and was so efficient we were left with a step stool we didn't intent to take, found under the pile of our 4 duffle bags and 5 Ikea bags of paddle gear).

There were signs out in the field with the pod names on them and the idea was to put your boats there and meet your pod mates. My kayak partner and I pull our 3 boats over the Jasper pod sign. We have an extra boat because our sister is meeting us here this morning. (She spent the night at another sister's house that is like 15 minutes away from here and is getting a ride over. Hey, there she is!!)

This was my first chance to get a look at our fellow paddlers. What sort of people would they be?Well, of course, they were a lot of sorts of people. A lot of Doctors and Teachers. A lot of people that were retired and now taught paddling. My overall take was they were people that were…. retired. They were old. They were also in ridiculously good shape. This is where all of the skinny, healthy, retired, white people are going for an Adventure Vacation. Seriously, my partner was probably the youngest person in our Pod. I may have been the second youngest. I am 60. (I figured I should tell you that cause if you have seen pictures of me you probably think I am 37).

The other thing that is different about the Pods is the boats that are in them. In my Pod, we have mainly kayaks, but one of our Leaders (Marilyn) is in a single person canoe and one other couple is in a two person canoe. But there is another Pod that is mainly tandem Kayaks and another that is mainly 2 person canoes. Hard to tell how the pods are picked. Some of them do have young people who appear to be related to the event organizers, and some pods are made of friends who have done the trip before and asked to be together. And evidently there is one Pod that is expected to be slower than the rest and is called the Poke Pod. Not sure I liked that.

My pod seemed to be all people that had never done Paddle Oregon before (I may be wrong about that) but 3 or 4 of the paddlers had a LOT of paddling experience. One gentlemen had been white water kayaking for decades and was well known by our guides. He also told good jokes. EVERYONE was very excited, and very friendly.

Ok, Time to launch. Lets go.

Ok, so, the pods in front of us have to go first. Ok.

(By now we've been standing in the hot sun for more than an hour.  I had to sunscreen the backs of my knees during our pod talk because I was getting burned back there.  There were a few trees, maybe 20 of us could stand in the shade (out of the 200).  We wandered down to the river to watch some other launches and lingered in the shade there.)

Lets Go.

Ok.

Get going.

Get in the water already.

Hmmm. Let’s walk over and watch people launch.

Man, They are slow. They are launching 2 boats at a time and each boat is taking over a minute. We need a bigger beach here, instead of a boat ramp.

Some of the event leaders have figured out the problem, however, and they start us staging better. That is doing it. Now we are moving about as fast as we can move all of our boats (cause, it takes 2 or more people to move each boat and you have to go back a few times).

At last, into the water.

Our pod actually launched pretty fast when it was our turn. Everyone was helping out and we went down and hung out in a little back eddy just below the boat ramp.

Don’t know back Eddy?

Hanging out in the Eddy

And Eddy usually happens when something sticks out into the main current and diverts it out a bit. Usually a log or an island or a wall or something. In this case, it is the pile of rocks just above the boat ramp. The rapid current shoots down around the obstacle and makes a sort of suction happen against the still water on the other side of the obstacle. The water gets sucked up toward the fast moving current which makes a new current moving in the opposite direction. A current moving UPSTREAM. Sometimes these currents can be pretty strong, making the line between up stream and down stream be very obvious, and difficult to cross.

But today, in this case, the boat ramp is making a rather slow moving eddy, and we just sort of hang out there where we get our directions on how to proceed. We are going to peel out across the eddyline and then try to Ferry across the river to the other side. A Ferry, in paddle talk, is where you point your boat up stream at around a 45 degree angle to the current and try to cross the stream without going down river very much. We tried this, but it was a bit too much of a first try operation and a few boats ended up going sideways in the current. which means going down stream. So we all ended up heading that way to keep the pod together. Generally, you have one of the 2 leaders out in front scouting the river. Looking for things to stay away from (like rocks and snags) and pointing which side of the river we want to head for. Then you have the other leader running sweep. Their job is to make sure everyone is keeping up and (probably) to do a rescue if you happen to go all bottoms up on them. 

So, the river is high. The water is fast. We are going fast and there are a lot of ripples in the water, and rocks and trees and such. This isn’t white water. This is all Class 1 stuff. So doing it in a kayak or a canoe (instead of a white water kayak or raft) is a reasonable thing. As long as you stay away from the obviously dangerous stuff. The problem is that obviously dangerous stuff is also the interesting and exciting stuff. And people want to go over and play in it. We had one guy that was a VERY gifted kayaker. He could do amazing things with his boat. I was very impressed with him. He liked to zoom over and look at all of the dangerous and exciting stuff. But he did this in a very careful and controlled manner and I never thought he was actually DOING anything dangerous. That, evidently, wasn’t true for other pods.

We are going down the river. We are going fast. It is a good ride. We are all getting used to our boats and to the river. Our leaders are doing a good job of keeping us together and off of the snags. Then we round a turn and there are a couple of boats in the overhanging trees on the right bank. One of the boats in upside down against the bank. Our leader goes over to help out. Our pod groups up down stream to wait. 

A couple of boats hung up on a snag

Around the next bend and the river opens up. It goes around a big tree that is in the middle of the river, on its side with its roots sticking way up in the air on the upstream leg. That is how trees usually present them selves in the river. They are laying down with the root ball upstream. The tree itself may be underwater 100 feet down stream. These can be BIG trees. However as big as this tree is, it is not blocking the river. There is still a good 60 feet of clearance on River Right, and though I can’t see it, probably 40 foot on river left. Plenty of room to stay clear and be safe.

So why are there 2 kayaks trapped in the tree roots and completely underwater on the heavy current right side of the tree and 3 people actually out of the water up on the tree? Doesn’t appear to be anyone in the water or trapped underwater, that is good. The people on the tree appear to be trying to figure out what is going on. There is an entire pod of people beached on a little rock bar (probably the same one the tree is sort of hung up on, just downstream.

We float on by. Plenty of people to either help out or get in the way already present. We find out later that one of the three people on the tree was a leader from a different pod, with a lot of swift water experience, that went back to help. We also find out that one person had a rough time getting out of the boat when it got hung up in the roots and broke a few ribs on the exit.

Jasper Pod lunch stop. See any agates?

Some baby Mergansers on the river.

That was the last incident that we saw, but it turns out there were all sorts of more minor dumps and exits on that stretch of the river. The ranger in the power boat doing rescues said that he had made 8 assists that day, more than any other Paddle Oregon day he had done. One group of canoes said they had one boat go over 4 times. Usually when you go over, by the way, it just means that you get wet. You probably get wet and then stand up and take care of your boat yourself. It is very rare that you would be in a situation where getting wet was dangerous. Why? Because you stay away from dangerous things.

But still. Why all of the upside down boats? Why was this year so much worse than previous years? Well, the river was a little higher and faster than usual, but I don’t think that was the reason. I think it was because of the Eclipse. I think there were more people on the paddle that didn’t read the experience requirements in the Paddle Oregon web page. It lists 3 requirements there.

From the Paddle Oregon Website:

• In addition to basic skills, we recommend practicing rescue techniques prior to the trip, and encourage that participants have recent experience paddling 10 to 20 miles per day to assure one’s stamina is adequate to enjoy the trip. Your pod will take regular breaks as needed. The upper river has slightly more gradient, resulting in a decent current that will assist us as we paddle down river (although there is always the possibility of a headwind!). 

• All participants are required to meet two of the following: 
• Paddling experience on moving water (strong river currents, eddies, etc.) within the last two (2) years. 
• Moving water paddling instruction within the last four (4) years. 
• Previous participation in Paddle Oregon. 

But it was clear that some people on the paddle had never been in a boat on the river before. That is not a good thing. Also not something that Paddle Oregon can really regulate. I mean, they can post warnings, perhaps they could require you to attest to your skill, but if you don’t pay attention or just out and out deceive, not sure what they could do. There are some certification bodies, I think, but they are not very active and many people with years of experience on the river may not have ever had a certification class. Perhaps a larger font on the website.

Here is what it feels like to be out in the current. The river is running probably between 2-5mph, depending on where you are in the river and what section of the river. Some parts are shallow and fast and others are deeper or wider and slower. Let's say we are in a 4mph section. Now that doesn't sound to fast, but about as fast as you can paddle is 3mph (perhaps 4 or even 5 for short bursts). Now, ahead of me I can see a disturbance in the water. It is rather high but small. A tree branch or a stone or something just below the water. I am off to the right of it, but I realize the current here is drifting left and taking me toward it. It seems like I have a lot of time to dodge and so I decide to pass just to the left of it. But as I paddle I realize that my angle of approach is not changing and I am advancing on the object faster than I had been expecting. Now my point of reference changes. Instead of me moving toward the thing, I find the thing moving, rapidly, toward me. it is like a torpedo coming right at me and I can't avoid it. I paddle hard but to no avail, it targets me and ZAP, I pass right over it. It was a pretty big rock but the water carried me over with minimum bumping. But it was scary. And I couldn't avoid it. I had not stayed far enough away from it. I could be one of those people trapped in the tree roots. Food for thought.

Anyway, the good news is that the rapid current sped us right on our way and we got into the location of our first camp only a tad bit late for hors d'oeuvres.

Where we pulled up was a typical sort of landing you can see on the river. There was a steep (8 foot) embankment of rounded stone and sand and a little bit of slow moving shallow water at the bank. We paddled over to shore, put our noses a little up current and got out of our boats. (TBD: say more about getting out of boats later). But when I went to pull my plastic 17 foot Tempest up on the nice smooth rocks I found that the shoreline was too steep. No matter what I did, my boat would just slide back into the water. Since I almost had my boat escape from me a few weeks ago in a similar situation on this very river (albeit closer to Portland) I knew that this just wasn’t a tenable overnight solution. So….. up that 8 foot embankment we went with our boats. It wasn’t that bad. The top was sand and we could slide it. My point here was that it was rather physical. It wasn’t real hard, but it was a bit of a slug. And we had to do it for 5 or 6 of the more slidy boats. Lots of activity is my point. Don’t feel bad about an extra slide of roast beef and desert is my point. You are not going to be gaining weight on this Vacation, is my point.

Oh my, I was too hot, and sooo tired (we just paddled 15 miles after standing in the hot sun for 2 1/2 hours and sleeping on the ground).  So hauling the 65 lb boats up the hill with wet feet in the mucky sand and dried hay was not on my agenda AT ALL. Nor was arriving in the middle of a party of people who looked like they spent the night in a hotel, clean clothes, fancy sun hats, and us slogging wet and dirty right through the middle of them.

Our boat wouldn't stay down there.

So, up the hill we go. Plop our boats in the dry grass, and there we are. Right at the party part of the event. The caterer had arrived some time ago, along with the porta-potties and beer truck (yes, there is a beer truck). The Ryder truck with our duffles of gear is also there and the duffles are all spread out where we can make an easy ID of our stuff. So we grab it and walk off to find a decent place to pitch a tent. There is plenty of space available (this is someone's private property) but we were warned to stay away from the orange cones (there be Yellow Jacket nests). The ground, it turned out, was pretty much identical to what we slept on last night. That means a dry grass with a lot of little stalks cut low by some big bush hog machine. The little stalks were a pain. They are basically little natural bungie sticks ready to get the unwary barefoot person or sleeper. We rolled out our tent only to find one of these bunnies trying to stickup through the bottom of our tent. I had to lift up the tent and go under it and cut the thing off with my trusty pocket knife.

We don't have any running water or showers or anything tonight. There is plenty of ice water for drinking and filling your water bottles, but not for washing, per se. And we are hot and dirty so we go down to the river for a swim. The water is cold and a little swift. We sit down in it at about thigh depth and it floats us downstream a way. Just 50 feet around the corner and we find the place that we were really supposed to land our kayaks. A little more protected and a ramp of sorts to make it easier to pull boats out. And a pile of pod signs to direct us where to put our boats. Who knew? But at least now we are clean(er) and cool.

However, we changed into some dry clothes and made it over to the common area for the last of the appetizers and the Free Beer.

Free Beer from Ninkasi Brewery.

The Ninkasi Boys

I seem to keep running into things to talk about. That is because there is a lot going on and much of it is new. For instance: Free Beer From Ninkasi. I get in the (not very long) line to get a glass of beer before I start socializing. The beer is under a pop-up sun screen and real taps off of real kegs are evident. The 2 guys doing the severing are…. impressive. They are sculpted, tanned, impressively bearded, and shirtless. And very happy. All of the women around me seem to be very happy also. In fact, one (unknown) woman beside me gives me a nudge and a wink and whispers, “Wow, pretty impressive, huh”. I just laughed and said, “Well, not my usual choice in viewing, but I agree they are impressive so I will just stand here and enjoy the show with you.” I heard a lot of women during the trip commenting on the “eye candy” available that night. Got me wondering, should I have been worried about those guys being exploited? Is there a double standard going on here? Would eyebrows have been raised if they had been hot young women in bikinis? Hmmm. Yeah. Probably. Did I mention that the beer was very good? They had an IPA and a Pilsner and both were wonderful.

I was not one of the women around him in the beer line, nor the others talking about the eye candy.  In fact, there was special beer and wine service every night on the trip, which wasn't much fun if you don't drink alcohol.  I felt a little left out, both from the drinking aspect and the entertainment conversations around the beer and wine. It was a big, special deal to see the brewery of the night and the wine offerings...

Part of Day1 campsite. Looks like some people haven't gotten off the river and picked up their bags.

Yes Please, Salmon AND Steak

Always had lots of fruit and good for you stuff.

And then dinner was served. Oh my. This was my first real sit down meal with the caterers. I mean, breakfast was just a continental affair and we sort of missed appetizers. This was the real thing. And you could tell it was real just heading in. There were real plates (big ones) and real cloth napkins (the classy places give you cloth, you know). It was served buffet style and there were a LOT of things to choose from. The main things on the menu tonight were Salmon and Roast Beef. Big pieces of Salmon. Huge hand cut chunks of Roast Beef. Great spinach salad and potatoes and fresh bread and lots of other things going on. We were even lucky enough to be early in line. The food was Delicious and there was a lot of it. Suddenly I am feeling like I am on vacation again. Lots of tables set up. Sit down where you might and perhaps meet some new people and talk about your day and your life in general. Perhaps don’t talk about what Trump is doing this week. That would not be very Vacation-like. Do talk about what we are going to do in the morning. Because Tomorrow is……

Monday. Day 2. The day of the Eclipse. (To be Continued)

A picture of camp 1 from the Willamette Riverkeepers Facebook page site:

Link to map location of first night camp