North Umpqua 7/20/11 Oregon

The first section we ran was from Boulder Flats to Horseshoe Bend. We are camped at a site just upstream from the Horseshoe Bend campground on the other side of the river so essentially, take-out is camp. The river is flowing at about 1600 cfs.

Since we only have one vehicle Pat is going to hitchhike the shuttle. After unloading all of our stuff and the put-in Pat drove back down to the take-out and then tried to hitch his way back upstream to Boulder Flats which is about 6 miles by road. It took TWO hours! No one would stop to pick him up. Finally, a guy who is unemployed and camping in various spots in the park and on BLM land offered him a ride and we are very appreciative! Thank you!

This section of the North Umpqua is milder than the sections below it that we will run later this weekend. Mostly class II with a couple of class III. The first class III rapid is maybe a mile from the put-in. We had stopped and looked at it from the road on the way up and it didn't look too bad. Enter the rapid just to the left of the big rock then follow the green tongue of water through the middle and to the right, avoid the hole, then the boulders at the bottom. Well, I never found the green tongue! The hole flipped me over and I swam to the bottom. This rapid is called Boulder Hole and the hole got me! This swim didn't affect my confidence like the one I had on the Clackamas. I felt okay at the bottom, one reason would be that this was a clean swim, meaning I didn't hit, scrape, bump or bash any part of me. One rapid in and already I can sense that the character of the Umpqua is much different than that of the Clackamas. I felt that the Clackamas was out to get me, intimidating, but I feel comfortable on the Umpqua. I'm not sure yet why.

I had trouble at another rapid on this stretch of the N. Umpqua as well. I'm not sure if it was at Snag Rock or The Wall; both are rapids and they are fairly close together. The run I had decided on was to go down the right channel around a small gravel bar, catch the eddy on the left at the bottom of the gravel bar then ferry across some pretty fast moving, pushy current to another eddy on river left. The reason to catch the first eddy is to avoid smashing into a rock wall that comes out into the river from the right. This part I did just fine on, it was the next part that I messed up. I didn't ferry across the current. I had to much angle to the current when I put the bow out into the water and it just spun me around and sent me downstream towards the wall! I didn't hit the wall but I came really close! I did really well on the last three class III rapids: Dog Wave, Cardiac Arrest, and Weird Weir.

Weird Weir was fun, I took the right side run, next to the bank. It has lots of splashy water, some diagonal waves coming from shore, and Kiss Off Rock at the bottom. A quick angle change and some forward power and I just floated on by it. Tomorrow I am going to do the left run and go over the weir!