John Day River Trip, 3rd day on the river. There’s music here.
If you’re wondering why I spent two posts describing a single rapid, it’s because there are four separate articles in travel magazines right now that make the John Day sound like something you can do with zero experience after a quick trip to the sporting good store. It is true that in general the river is pretty mellow but I doubt that anyone who swims the entirety of Clarno at 4000 CFS and loses their boat and all their gear is going to feel that way.
Anyway, below Clarno the river mellows with lots of fun swift water chutes and the occasional rock that anyone with basic river skills should have no problem avoiding.
The only exception is Basalt Rapid. This short class II-III drop is kind of weird because it’s the kind of rapid where when you first see it your immediate thought is “Oh this is dead easy I’m getting back in my boat”. But then the longer you look at it the more you realize that the line here is thinner than it looks and the consequences a little bit worse. In a kayak I didn’t even bother to scout this rapid, but with two overloaded flat water canoes we decided that caution was the better part of valor, and it was back to the walk of shame down the left bank.
The cool thing about lining or walking catamaraned canoes is that the configuration acts kind of like a walker, so super stable with more reliable footing. There used to be a sneak line on the left here at the bottom but it has filled in with rocks. We didn’t do our backs any favors by picking up the loaded boats and carrying them over the obstruction.
Downstream from here there are some fun and interesting class I boulder gardens, and one enormous terrifying hole backed by a giant rock that I guess you could hit if you were literally sleeping in your boat. I would love to see this section at extreme high and low water.
The desert scenery is of course magnificent and something strange that I don’t remember from previous trips is that the crickets here sing in the day but not at night.
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