Goodshpeed,
Godshpeed, Godshpell
USA 2000
Trip Dates:
16th to 29th May
Flight:
Heathrow to San Francisco, £350, 11hrs/9hrs retn
£1=£$1.50
Team
Members: Lee, Gary, Steph, Garf, Marco Mick Posner (part time)
“Just one
more gin and tonic” said Marco, 10hrs into the flight Garf agreed, but soon had
to spend some time with his head over the airplane’s toilet bowl. After 1.5l of
G&T miniatures, the 747s supplies were running very low at the end of the
flight.
We had
little trouble collecting our 4 boats (as at Heathrow) picked up our “Mercury
Moutineer 4WD” to be our home for the next 2 weeks ($900 hire). Steph drove us
on our first leg with horrendous hangovers to Coloma for the next mornings warm
up on the Chilli-bar (South fork of the American River). Of course now in
California, we had to breakfast as the Americans do. The immense feast caused
us to feel very sick and out of breath once on the river and is my primary
excuse for my donkey grade 3 swim.
As well as
normal campsites, the Americans have “primitive campsites” which have a minimum
of a parking area and toilet (similar to NZ).
After
paddling the North Fork, we stopped at the REI outdoor shop to buy the shop’s
supply of thermorests. We then drove through down town Sacremento where Marco
probably lost his spray deck due to leaving it on the truck’s roof at REI to
dry Marco made his best on the trip to make up for the missing Bateson.
Lee and I
spotted some nice chicks in the truck next to us in the traffic. Thinking that
we had to act as ambassadors for our country, we started to wave and be
sociable. The hidden boyfriends in the back of the car revealed themselves by
winding down their tinted window and didn’t look very impressed. Remembering
that there’s more guns than people in America we quickly turned off to find the
freeway and our route up to Oregon.
During the
long drive, we explored our vehicles cruise controls and electric seat. Paddled
the North Umpqua near Winchester en route which had lots of good play spots including an excellent wave
that the four of us could surf together.
We drove to
Micks house in Portland, drank his beer and ate his food. Micks house was very
clean and tidy (before we arrived), we think he’ll make someone a good wife one
day. Mick has a cool truck which seats 6 and you can put boats in the back.
Together,
we paddle the Clackamas Gd III+ and played in a stopper called “Bob’s Hole”
which provided excellent puns such as “Bob’s hole is fun to play in, but
there’s a load of shit below it you don’t want to get stuffed in”
The
Americans we bumped into laughed at our boats, to them, the Kendo is old hat
and they don’t recognise the Toppos at all.
American TV
is crap, one morning they had a 10 minute advert on a beauty product called
“Nads”... “Pamper yourself with Nads” they said (whatever that means).
I took a
day off paddling and went into Portland with Steph. We accidentally turned up
in a rough part of town and shat our pants mingling with vagrants, cripples and
all sorts of potential muggers till we managed to escape to the shopping areas.
Monday 22nd
was Lee’s Birthday, Mick insisted on going in to work as he was trying to move
in on a girl in the office (sadly he got blown out). We paddled the West Fork
of the hood River, but got on far too early and had to do a massive grade V
portage around a gorge blocked by a fallen tree.
There’s
lots of beautiful wildlife to be seen, in the states, we saw birds of all sorts
of different colours, giant butterflies that land on your paddles as you bob
down the rivers, loads of eagles, squirrels, big ratty creatures and even a
deer (but no wild beavers).
In the
evening we went out for pizza and beers ending with a drunken rampage home
playing “shove ‘em in the hedge”. Steph showed her true vandalistic colours
stealing and releasing the estate advertisers balloons.
The next
day turned out to be the most epic day. The keen paddlers in the group wanted
to mark up a high grade river for the trip log book and chose the grade IV (V)
section on the Farmlands section of the White Salmon river over the border in
Washington state.
The river
was running quite high and after several sections including the awesome
“Sidewinder” (me and Mick portaged), we found ourselves slowed down and
inspecting drops as we ran the first few stages of the gorge. I was quite
surprised at how the mood had suddenly changed for the first time during the
trip. The others looked quite petrified. I felt quite accustomed to years of
being in danger of my life and was probably the most calm – but I shouldn’t
have been. As we rounded the next corner, I found myself looking straight into
the mouth of Mr Fuck off big-bastard stopper,
with no hope of evasion, I went straight in and spun about in my boat
for quite some time. I was spat out on pulling my deck for a very fast gorge
swim. Thanks to Lee’s boating and Garf’s line throwing. The others then paddled
a short distance before getting out and having a testing climb, only achievable
due to an old fence cable that was dangling into the gorge. I don’t think I’ve
ever been pleased to see Lees face before, but definitely was when I’d been
waiting 2 hrs and eventually saw his face at the top of the cliff armed with a
rope.
That night
we camped out under the stars, re-told, epic tales and reflected on how happy
were to be alive. We also wondered how Mike Leaford would take the news that
the new club Kendo was lost.
Next day we
spent some time looking for the boat, going to the police etc. The others
paddled the lower section of the same river to see if they could see it but
without any luck. We later returned to Portland to watch Mission Impossible II
which had come out that day.
The next
couple of days involved a lot of driving (we covered 3000 miles in 2 weeks). We
paddled on the Rogue river on the way back and were unable to find a campsite
during our journey. The friendly ranger woke us in the morning “here’s your
early morning call folks – did you know you’re camped in a parking lot ?”. Next
me and Gary had a water fight and a grumpy Ginger Tosser kicked me in the nads
when he got squirted with some water.
Lee, Gary
and Garf got on the North Fork Yubba at Siera city to have their last decent
paddle. Garf got caught in a pour-over, swam and lost his paddles. He set off
again armed with his splits, but humorously took another swim when his splits
“split” and entered the next chewy drop with a paddle in each hand. They
decided to call it a day after shooting 2 miles of the 13 mile section and
waked out.
The
paddling over, we transformed into tourists for the last 1 ½ days and looked
forwards to our visit to Alcatraz Island and the streets of San Francisco. We
had been quoting lines from the film “The Rock” all week such as “Welcome to
the rock” and “Goodspeed, Godspeed, Godspell” with appalling Sean Connery
impressions. We were very pissed off to find that all visits to the island were
booked. We were also very pissed off to find that as it was memorial weekend,
the town was extra busy and traffic slow and hot. We did get to see some of San
Fran including Golden Gate bridge, Fisherman’s wharf and the very steep Lombard
street where the others shat themselves incase we might roll back into the car
behind.
The flight
back involved far less alcohol as the lads counted the hours down on TBJ (you
can work out what that means for yourselves).
|
River |
Grade |
Length
(Miles) |
Level
(cfs) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
S.F
American - Chilli Bar |
III |
5.8 |
1500 |
|
N.F
American - Chamberlain Falls |
III+ (IV) |
4.8 |
2 on
gauge |
|
Sacremento
- Box Canyon |
IV-/IV |
7.5 |
~1000 |
|
North
Umpqua - Bogus to Susan creeks |
III |
5 |
2910 |
|
Clackamas
- 3 Lynx to Bob's Hole (Whey hey) |
III(IV) |
9 |
2700 |
|
White -
Keeps Mill to Wamic |
III(III+) |
12 |
750 |
|
W F Hood - 4 miles above white bridge park |
III+(V+) |
4 |
~1000 |
|
W.F. Hood
- white bridge park to E.F. Hood |
IV(V+) |
6.5 |
~1000 |
|
White
Salmon - Warner Rd o Green Truss |
V(V+) |
5 |
1500 |
|
White
Salmon - BZ Corner to Husum |
III+(V) |
5 |
1500 |
|
Rogue -
Nugget Falls to Gold Hill |
IV- |
2 |
3180 |
|
N.F. Yuba
- Sierra City |
IV+(V) |
13 |
~1200 |
|
|
|
|
|
Levels and
river information can be obtained from this website:
http://kayak.physics.orst.edu/~tpw/kayaking/display.cgi/Oregon.html