A short edit from a second trip to the upper John Day River. With the water draining out fast this was actually too low to run. It was bump and scrape the whole time, which is pretty hard on my standard lay up cloth and coating combo. I could always go with heavier cloth and more coating but I really love a light boat so I just accept the punishment and re-skin more often.
I’m still brand new to moving water in a solo canoe so I was hoping to improve my skills a little more on this run but I discovered that it’s pretty hard to practice your strokes in 5 inches of water. Beautiful place to be though. The nature sounds here are kind of nice if you feel like hitting the sound button.
As always, thanks to Liz for climbing what her phone says what is the equivalent of 20 flights of stairs up and down from the road through wet brush to get the shots!
I’m a little bummed to miss the shot on a long technical Class III boulder garden that was hidden in a corner we couldn’t see from the road. I swung around a swift water bend without my helmet on expecting the same class I to II rock dodging as the rest of this 9 mile stretch, only to be like: “Uh oh, it’s ON!” Not the smartest move, but I always seem to perform well in these situations so it was a highly engaging 90 seconds. I just wish the GoPro had been running because it would have made me look like a Canoe Boss on camera when the reality is that I probably just got lucky on the line! I wouldn’t have run it if I had seen it in time.
Coming from a kayaking background I’m pretty freaked out about running anything where capsize is a possibility in a watercraft I can’t roll. Just seems like a recipe for fiasco and a lot of bruises. Maybe that’s why white water canoeists have a reputation for being a little nuts?
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