John Day river trip, 2nd day on the river.
In the last post I described the mile long rapid called Clarno, including the most consequential portion called lower Clarno. I’ve run this once in a (specially-designed) skin on frame kayak at 4000 CFS, which was fairly uneventful, and once at 2000 CFS in skin on frame pack canoes which was a near disaster. Liz plugged the main hole (which is the runnable tongue at higher flows) got ejected to the right and ended up with the canoe wrapped around a rock, meanwhile I dodged the main hole but swamped and was swept about 3/4 of a mile in the swift water section below and just barely caught a small eddy before being swept into another mile of swift water. Watching my footing and keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes I hiked back up to Liz and together we wrenched her canoe off of the rock which it miraculously survived without damage. So yeah not my proudest day on the river, but I felt a little better when the experienced whitewater canoeists behind us suffered a similar fate!
This time we planned to line or sneak lower Clarno from the beginning and I was pretty concerned when we arrived there at 3000 CFS and saw that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. I live with some not so great health issues and was already feeling pretty weak from the scout so portaging was out of the question. Instead we undertook a fairly sketchy lining on the left bank.
There were multiple large boulders that forced me to stand in the current with my footing in between rocks in the river bed, meanwhile Liz managed the other end of the line on equally sketchy shoreside footing, in a forest of poison ivy. Thank goodness for dry suits!
We had a few dicey moments but it worked out fine. I’m not sure how doable this would be at a higher or lower flow though. At these flows the runnable line here is narrow but straightforward, but the 150 yard swift water lead in and the 2 mile long swift water exit warrant consideration before committing. The portage here is burly, but doable for strong people who pack light.
We camped a few miles below and had a nice evening.
___
This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
