Coho Photography

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth, last week I did come pretty close though. Perched down in the bottom right hand corner of Oregon is a small river that flows out of Nevada, through Oregon, and into the Snake in Idaho, the Owyhee. The closest major town to the river is Burns, over 100 miles away, the feeling or remoteness is unrivaled by any other river I’ve been on in the US. The river was named for two Hawaiians who were part of Peter Skene Ogden’s expedition to explore the region. The story varies, but most agree on the fact that the duo either ran away or were killed by local Indians. Apparantly Hawaii was at the time nicknamed “Owyhee”, and the river got its name. After many hours of driving we finally made it the river in the midst of one of the strangest windstorms; the entire landscape was visually on the move as thousands of tumbleweeds bounced and rolled over the heavily grazed hillsides. Four days of floating and two days of sun later and we found ourselves at the takeout; the Birch Creek Ranch, with a road that somehow carved its way up a near vertical ravine, to the top of a plateau about 30 miles from the nearest pavement. More hours of driving, and back I went to school, ready to drop back off of the face of the earth.  More of an update will come soon, along with a river description on the American Whitewater site, but in the meantime, here are some pictures! Enjoy,

-Ben