John Day River Trip, 2nd day on the river. FYI, there’s music.
The Clarno to Cottonwood stretch of the John Day river is guarded by a mile long rapid called Clarno. Like most rapids, it’s fast with powerful holes at high water and bony with numerous pin spots at low water. I haven’t run it above 4000 or below 2000 yet. At those flow upper Clarno (class III holes) can be snuck or lined. This leads into 3/4 of a mile of swift water class I-II, with the flow splitting around an island halfway down committing you to a left or right side run of the bigger drop at the bottom.
This middle part of the rapid is boisterous continuous class II at higher flows, and requires continuous rock dodging at lower flows. The book says you can line boats down the right side but I don’t like it medium flows because there are no eddies and an accidental swim on that side would push you into the most dangerous part Lower Clarno. 3/4 of the way down there is an eddy you can catch as long as you are still in your boat and in control, and a steep scouting and portage trail.
At higher flows Lower Clarno is an 8 foot wide swift water tongue flanked by meaty river wide holes on either side. A sneak line emerges on the far right if you’re willing to risk it, and another closes on the left. At medium flows the tongue gets a little narrower, the left side hole turns into a pour over with a sneak line on the far left, and the right side holes start to show that they are actually backed up by rocks down stream making them more retentive and consequential than they look at first.
The line here is fairly straightforward but missing the tongue in a canoe and hitting the hole or the pourover probably wouldn’t be a lot of fun. Somewhere around 2000 CFS the pourover uncovers, The right side holes become growlers, and the tongue becomes a deep but non-retentive hole. I don’t know what happens at really low flows.
With poor maneuverability flat water canoes and minimal flotation we decided to line down the left which I will talk about in the next post.
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