Tom Grundy's Deschutes River Trip Page

For Jason's 40th birthday a trip on the Deschutes River was planned. I had to cut my Sierra Challenge one day short to pack and begin driving, but since I also missed the first days I wasn't so committed. The plan was to run the lower Deschutes from Buckhollow to the takout by the Columbia River over 4 days. This would be a very relaxed pace for a trip with YogaSlackers and friends with plenty of time for good food and river shenanigans.

There were various additions and subtractions to the crew going, but it ended up with up to 18 people at the most and 14 at the take out (and a little dog too). The night before there was a lot of gear checking and packing, especially for the people that were borrowing packrafts. Admiral Magness was to be in command of a mixed fleet. We had 8 different Alpacka rafts with various options including the newer sprayskirt version of the standard rafts with internal gear storage, older sprayskirted rafts, and the gnu inflatable canoe. We also had an Aire inflatable kayak, a self bailing Kokopelli packraft, a 2 person Kokopelli packraft "canoe", and Patches - the mothership - a 12 foot oar raft that was able to carry lots of gear, food, people, and beverages. It was a strange mix of ultralight and deluxe camping.

the crew minus Dana who took the pic (and I stole it)

Day 1

The first day we loaded up early and drove to Maupin. There we planned the car shuttle and then drove to the put in at Buckhollow. It took quite a while to get all the rafts inflated and rigged and packed. I think we departed a little before noon with our flotilla. This day we had a few class II rapids and one class III. It seemed like the main difference was the class II rapids had easily avoidable waves and holes and the class III (Train Wreck Rapid) forced you into the thick of things. Glenn got ambushed by a side wave and taken down and bounced on the bottom a bit. He thought he dislocated his finger, but later it was determined that the knuckle was shattered requiring surgery. Yikes.

Erik was thrown into the deep end on this trip. He flipped a bunch the first day...

... but soon got the hang of the Kokopelli self bailing Nirvana raft

Patches heads down through the rapids. The umbrella was taken down for bigger water though.

Chip and Laura (and Gus cowering somewhere) in the Kokopelli double

this was mostly a relaxed pace trip - perfect for me after the 100k trail race and Sierra Challenge

We passed the first campsite we were going to consider so we ended up at a site with less space (but still enough for everyone). With our relaxed pace we had plenty of time to swim in the river and dry our stuff before it got dark (and somewhat cooler). In fact we mostly just hid in the shade or the river at first. Everyone was sort of on their own for food on this trip with a variety on display from ramen to freeze dried self heating backpacker foods to steak. There was a lot of sharing, especially of snacks and leftovers. Each evening there was at least one semi-organized game. This involved trying to get team-mates to guess a word or phrase without saying it, then going through the list again but you could only say one word, and finally the same list but only doing charades. This was highly amusing, especially with the longer answers. Of course making the teams could be controversial - men vs women, Bendites vs others, odd and even birth years, winners and losers of other games (we were all winners, but some were better at carrying sticks with their butts and then dropping them into buckets than others). Some people had tents, but I just slept out on and then later in my sleeping bag.

Day 2

There was no rush to get up and onto the river in the morning, we had bacon and coffee to be consumed. When we finally did get moving it was mostly floating with a few class II rapids. We were only on the river for a few hours before we found a nice beach for camp. This time things got a little weirder with swimming, acro (with a unicorn head), river haircuts, juggling, naked mountain climbing, races... As they say in Vegas, what happens on the river stays on the river. That night Dana was able to join us (there was a road across the river), bringing a birthday cake. We stayed up later playing games and talking.

Becky paddling

river haircut time

Kathryn and Paul

Kyle bases Chelsey in hand to hand - the Leki chairs are plenty strong

but they were better for relaxing

things got a little weird with the unicorn head

post haircut juggling show

a bunch of people ran up the hill across the river

Kadee in hand to hand

Jason gets his birthday cake

Day 3

After another relaxed morning we continued floating on down the river. Dana and Glenn were ferried across the river and then before long we got to where we dropped off Becky and Jessica who couldn't make the entire trip and thus slightly decreased our flotilla. This day we went through a number of class II rapids, but once again it was fairly easy to sneak by to the side of the bigger waves if you wanted to. We stopped at one spot to possibly set up a slackline over the water, but the large poison oak clumps dissuaded us. There were some nice basalt columns rising out of the water, so I soloed up one hand crack to the top. The water was deeper than a kayak paddle right below me, so falling probably would have been ok. I decided to downclimb most of the way before I jumped though.

our flotilla from the top of the cliff

Chip paddling an Alpacka Yak in the rapids

This day was also Kyle's birthday - so somehow one of the birthday guys convinced the other he needed to swim one of the rapids naked - well, he did have a pfd and hat on... That afternoon we stopped at a bit more of a deluxe campground with more shade, an outhouse, and a place to rig a hammock and a slackline. While some people went for a bushwhack up the hill behind us the rest set in for more river games. This time there was a choreographed dance routine (for the birthday boys), and then Chelsey and Stephanie started making up games, and somehow the seemingly large supply of beer was drastically depleted. There was also some interpretive dance with juggling clubs. Of course when the people returned from the hike they were pressed into playing too. Somewhere in there was a lot of very sandy acro and some sandy dinner (the wind was picking up pretty fiercely). In fact I set up my tent body so that I could dry out my sleeping pad and put various things in it so they wouldn't blow away. We also had another birthday cake - this time a carrot cake.

trying to balance the chairs on the slackline was not successful

choreographed dance routine for the birthday boys

Kathryn got spun around a lot - amazingly nobody dropped her

a very sandy Curly - Kyle post acro basing

Day 4

This was the last day on the river, and the one with the most whitewater. Unfortunately it was also the coldest. A front came through and dropped the temperature nearly 20 degrees (from a high of close to 100 to close to 80) accompanied by a strong and gusty wind. I don't know what the highest wind gusts were, but I am guessing up to 50 or 60 mph. Certainly whole trees on the shore were shaking about like a dinosaur was savaging them. It was mostly blowing up the river. This meant that if you stopped paddling you went up the river. It made paddling weird also because even when paddling you were still moving backwards compared to the water - so that your strokes were very slow even when paddling hard (which was required to move downriver). In one rapid a particularly strong gust hit (you could see it coming because it raised waves and then whipped spray off the top of them) and blew me sideways about 6 feet. That was ok for me, but it blew someone else sideways into a hole. It was also a lot harder to pick your line and stick with it when the wind was blowing you around. I also managed to flip in a hole at the bottom of a rapid. I can blame it on the wind or something, but I think I just was leaning the wrong way when a wave caught me from the side. I swam for quite a while though because my pack shifted forward off my bow and the first few times I flipped the boat over it did a nose-dive and flipped back. It would have been nice to have a quick way to fasten my paddle on to deal with the raft with both hands. Finally I got back in and paddled to shore to dump it out and re-set my pack. The last rapid had a different character - it featured channels eroded into the basalt bedrock. I got caught in a weird boil-eddy for a bit but managed to paddle free without flipping.

the crew ready to start the last morning. an Alpacka Gnu 2 person canoe is in the middle front

All too soon (except for our tired arms and backs from paddling into the wind) we were at the takeout. It took a bit of time to unload and pack up the rafts (especially Patches), but soon we were on our way back with a stop in Maupin for milkshakes and lunch. That afternoon we spread out and washed and dried the rafts and began packing things up. All in all it was a highly successful trip. It turned out Glenn's last knuckle was shattered and required surgery though. As Toad said in the Wind in the Willows, “There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.” and Chelsey said something about how much better the world would be if everyone went on a multi-day river trip at least once a year. I agree, it was a wonderful trip and great to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. In fact it was so good we did another overnight trip a few weeks later, but it will be a while before I get that trip report out...

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