Tom Grundy's Owens Packraft 2017 Page

In case you have been avoiding the news (or reading this years later), there is a lot of snow in the mountains this spring, and it is melting. This means lots of runoff. They have drained or lowered the water levels in a number of reservoirs to prepare, but there is still a lot more water than normal. There is water running through ditches and channels and into low spots making new lakes I have never seen before. This means more water flowing in the Owens River too which called for a float trip. On June 6 I finally got my act together and decided to go minimal carbon and loaded my boat into a pack and bicycled to the take out at the Warm Springs road bridge. Then I did the old man shuffle jog to the put in at the East Line street bridge (this took about an hour). On the way I stopped to jump into one of the artesian warm pools and dunked my hat and wetted my shirt in a few more. It was quite hot so this was very appreciated (it was over 90 with mostly full sun).

the sign suggested a lot more excitement and danger with my plan

this sign doubled down on the danger and excitement

this is the artesian spring pool I went onto twice to cool off

I inflated my boat and cast off. The water was high and moving fairly quickly but it would have taken some effort to put myself into any danger along this stretch. There were some fairly powerful boils and eddys, but even if I did flip I would have been fine. There were also a few places where the water was running through the willows and reeds to bypass meanders. There was only one that looked clear enough for me to boat it. There were quite a few birds, including a lot of redwing blackbirds and swallows. I wore my Chaco sandals both for the jog to the put in and to boat in but I should have gone barefoot (I wore the sandals as a safety measure in case I had to jump out into a spiky tree strainer or onto rocks, but it was not needed at all. It took about 2.5 hours to float down to the bridge where I took out and packed up. On the bike ride back home I stopped for another dip in the pool. I was nearly dry by the time I got home.

I inflated my packraft and got ready to cast off down the river

typical view over the dry bag on the bow

All in all it was a good mission, although next time I think I'd try to SUP it for a change of pace and better visibility although that might require stashing the boat or using a truck for part of the shuttle.

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