Five Day's of River Fun

Tonight's blog post comes from Mr. Lunde....

Thanks for the introduction Mrs. Lunde...  My five day adventure down the wild and scenic section of the Rogue River began last Friday at 7:00am, when my dear, dear wife dropped me off on the side of the road in Galice, OR.  This small hamlet is approx. 30 minutes from Grant's Pass, OR and just outside of cell service!

 

After three hours hanging out at the Galice Resort, getting to know the staff, remembering what a pay phone is and enjoying a tasty breakfast, my group finally remembered that we were meeting there and came and picked me up - this is what I found when I was transported to the launch point...

 After another two hours of packing the four boats (ours are the first 4 picture above), we started our adventure.  A view from the front of my boat...

 This is Stephen in the front and Kelly at the oars - just settling in for the long journey.  Kelly invited me on the trip and I was glad he did!

 

Not even an hour into our trip, John's purple catamaran got a hole in the tube and quickly deflated, mid-river.  Chris and John made it to shore safely, after which we needed to float the rest of the boat to the next launch point.  Below is a picture of the purple catamaran strapped to the red boat as it was towed to shore.

 

Amazingly John was able to get back to Sotar in Merlin and pick-up another set of catamaran tubes, this time black ones.  Within an hour and a half we were back on our way!  

 After a long day in hours (5hrs), but short in miles (less then 5miles) on the river, we arrived at Whisky Creek Campground - this is my tent in the middle.

 This is our kitchen area.

 

Three of our Four rafts parked at the campsite.

 It was very hot on Friday and Saturday, so Chris set his chair up in the shade.

 Several people were wondering why it was taking us "so long" to float the Rogue - the reason was that we took what the river regulars call a "layover day" or just an extra day at a campsite to play around; fish, swim, hike, explore, etc. 

 Turns out, it was a lot of fun to take that extra day, slow down and just relax.  We did several things of note, my favorite was hiking back on the Rogue River Trail to Rainy Falls then jumping in with just our life jackets and floating the mile or so back to camp!  We also took a short hike to an old homesteader site, which the forest service had wrapped in foil to protect it from the forest fires that were happening in the area.

 This is Mark at right, who was a river veteran, and also the captain on my boat, Kent, who is Kelly's Dad and also a seasoned Deschutes area river regular and Kelly on the right, making his first trip on the Rogue. 

We saw a lot of this all along the trip (poison oak, for those forest novices) - remember leaves of three, leave them be! 

 Eating was a big deal and we had quite the set-up.  This is John making french toast and bacon for breakfast.

 This is the group enjoying the morning meal.

 Our layover day was over so we hit the river for a long day of rafting.  

 Along the way we floated through one of the areas affected by the wild fires in Southern Oregon.  It was pretty smoky and we saw several helicopters and DC-9s flying overhead with water buckets.  When we arrived at camp that night, we had passed by the most affected spots.

  On day three we stayed at the Rogue River Ranch, which is a huge campsite, just a few river miles north of Paradise Lodge.  Chris and Kelly making hours d'vours of black tail deer salami at camp.

 Mark preparing the drinks, and Kent cooking the tacos!

 Day four started out good, here is Kelly and Stephen going through "coffee pot" - this is the most narrow part of the wild and scenic section of the Rogue River

 Very narrow...

 This is a little late in the post, but here are all four boats with the riders - boat 1, the "blue barge" had Kent, Kelly's dad as captain and Ryan, his son-in-law as the passenger and head fisherman.  These two caught over 12 fish, but through them all back!

 Here is Captain Kelly and chief navigator Stephen in the "red raider"

 This is Captain John of the "black cat", another seasoned river regular and Chris, in the splash mountain seat.  Chris is a friend of mine from Brookings and agreed to go on the trip with less then two weeks notice - AMAZING!

 And here is Captain Mark and me in the "SS Gilligan".  I did get to row for about a day and a half while on the trip (I have the blisters to prove it too), but Mark was on the oars for the tough rapids - which was a great idea!

 Here are three of the boats congregated in front of a water fall.

 a better picture of the waterfall.  We are actually all just waiting for a few groups ahead of us to head over Blossom Bar and the Pickett Fence...

 Blossom Bar - so Mark and I were the first to go through Blossom, while the other three boats scouted this infamous class IV rapid.  We made it through, thanks to Mark, with no problems.  However, Kelly and Stephen did not...

 Their boat got wedged on this rock in the main chute of the rapid.  You can see in this picture the guys standing on the rock in the middle of the rapid, unloading the gear from their boat, while a fishing guide trys to through a rope to help them free up their boat.

 a close up of the boat, submerged and the guys on the rock.  We spent three hours here, and luckily another guide company Ozak Outfitters helped us get these two off the rock.  After they threw their gear in the water and watched it float safely down stream, they leaped into a raft that had to stall in the middle of this crazy rapid.  Before they jumped into the boat, we through a line to them to try to free the boat from the shore, but that did not work.  So, this is how the boat was left.  You can see Kent, John and Chris sitting on the rocks on the other side.

 Kent still had to get through the rapid and did a great job - even with the new obstacle!

 John also powered through like a champ.  One of the challenges of this rapid is that you have to squeeze through that narrow chute - obviously very tough.  Kelly's boat was the 16th one to wrap that same rock this year, according to one of the river guides.

 Thankfully, we all made it through safely - and even though we were missing a boat and some gear, we had the same eight people with us when we finished up at Foster Bar, over 50 miles and five days later.  It was a great trip - but I was super excited to see Alicia and the boys today and almost as excited to finally take a shower!