Mike and Pat Martin take the Canyon Wren through a wet line in Upset.

There is nothing quite like leaving all forms of civilization for a month, stowing your belongings (and a healthy store of beer) in the hatches of a dory, and pushing off onto 280 miles of gently descending river. The river reinforced everything that I already knew: I love dories, whitewater, taking pictures, hiking, playing music, friends, beer, and most of all, rivers. After that month away, there is nothing quite like 632 unread email messages, a crashed online registration system the day before registration opens, and planning for the massive logistical nightmare of a writer’s conference, to make you miss the river. Luckily, little bits of it hang on; in the sand I found in my drysuit when I went paddling on the Imnaha yesterday, in the still unpacked gear sitting in the carport, and also in these pictures.

LINK to gallery

Ben Hayes. April 2012

Cameron Scott looking for steelhead in deep dark places. Imnaha River, OR

Winter seems to have missed Wallowa County, or perhaps just waiting for later, and instead we’ve been blessed with blue skies and 60 degree days. The light lends itself to a polarizing filter, and the warm weather urges a day of steelheading on the Lower Imnaha. See the products of such a combination here…

And, as Tom McCall was noted as saying, “We want you to visit our state often. Come again and again. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t move here to live. Or if you do have to move in to live, don’t tell any of your neighbors where you are going.”

It seems like just yesterday that summer was over and the trees were beginning to turn gold. I was looking forward to cool evening, long runs and steelhead fishing. I guess I blinked, and now the tamarack have dropped their needles in a tawny coating over the snow.

Click here for a small gallery of images. More to come soon as the snow continue to fall and the ponds freeze over.

The Lakes Basin: A good long hoof from the Two Pan trailhead.

Wallowa Lake looking East. 

I guess the change of seasons brings a change of lifestyle. Graduation is done, school is complete, it’s still snowing, and the hills below my new home are turning green. I’ve recently taken a job as the Program Coordinator for Fishtrap, a literary non-profit based in Enterprise, Oregon. I’m living in a passive-solar home on the flanks of Mt. Joseph, and the view envelops the moraines of Wallowa Lake, the Zumwalt Prarie, and beyond that, Idaho’s Seven Devil Mountains. Pretty tough life!Due to all this transition, my camera has spent more time than I would like stuffed in a pelican box in the closet, and not nearly enough time out and about taking pictures. Sophie and I got out for a wonderful row on the Lower Columbia, and I’ve had the time to do a few walks from this new home. Perhaps as I become more settled I’ll have slightly more time to take pictures, rather than the haphazard lens toting that I’ve been prone to these last month. Click HERE to enjoy, and there will be more to come.

Leaving Marble Canyon, about to enter Grand Canyon. 

Despite months with very little access to internet, I have finally sorted through my pictures from our June trip down the Colorado, and you can now find pictures HERE.  Look for another update soon.

This last week the run came up to just over 1,000 CFS on the Oregon Levels gauge (http://www.wkcc.org/levels/?P=Oregon.html), so we headed out for a quick friday morning run. To reach the put-in, take 17th St.  (by the hospital), from Court Ave (the main st.). Go north to at T intersection. Take a right at the T, pass the baseball fields, and you’ll find a dead-end with parking right by a paved walking trail. If you walk upstream to the end of the paved trail, you’ll find a nice spot to access the river. The put-in has some wood near it, so be careful, probably not the best spot to practice eddy-turns. There is a major hazard of wood throughout the entire run, so be very careful, especially around the bridges. As you head downstream you’ll find lots of nice waves. Right after the first bridge there will be a trailer park on the right bank, and some of the best waves are in this section. Just downstream is a broken down weir. Run on the left (don’t try to run over the weir, it’s got rebar in it). You can eddy out safely behind the weir and play on a great wave that is just off the end of the weir where it has fallen down. The next stretch has a lot of fun waves and eddies, and the river is flowing adjacent to downtown. The biggest rapids are just below downtown. You’ll be able to see the roofs of the rodeo-stadium and there is a gauging station of the left in the biggest rapid. Run down the middle and punch some holes. Not a great place to play as there is lots of rip-rap in the river (a grocery cart spend most of last winter in this rapid). Continue downstream to the take-out which is a park on river left under two really big overpasses.To reach the takeout from the put-in continue down Court Ave through downtown, until it takes a gradual right onto Westgate. Just before the road heads up onto a bridge, take a right into the Sears parking lot. If you stay to the left, you’ll end up at a dead-end with a city park and bathroom with river-access. Another option is to use the paved trail that runs the length of the run to either walk, run, or bike the shuttle.

This is a fun, and quite short run (just under 3 miles). Watch for wood and crap that people have thrown in the river, and have fun on all the fast little waves!

There are a few issues with this run, such as the fact that it is dead center in the middle of nowhere, and the shuttle alone takes over an hour. But to make up for that, it’s got 3 fun waterfalls (not counting the really big one at the takeout). We finally got on the water, to see that the irrigators were already pumping the meager amount of water that was flowing down the channel. After about a mile of flatwater, from the put-in at the bridge in Hooper, we came to an area where the river channeled out and there was a dilapidated farmhouse on the left bank surrounded by dead poplar trees. There are two channels on the first falls. The left channel seems really shallow, so we’ve always stuck to the far river right bank. This time, however, the water was low enough that the furthest right chute was too shallow. We opted instead for the furthest left chute, still in the right channel. It’s easily scouted from the island in the middle of the river, and after a few folks went pretty deep, we decided that hitting the bottom isn’t too much of a concern, although penciling in is still a bit sketchy.

After the first falls its a bit over a mile to the slide. At this water level (the gauge was broken, so somewhere around 600), there was a semi-runnable spot right in the middle, but it looked pretty shallow so none of us opted to run it. There’s an easy portage line down the left bank. If you decide to portage on the right, bring a long throwrope or be ready to huck your boat off of a cliff.

A few more miles of flatwater through a beautiful canyon, under a bridge, and past a ranch, and you get to the last rapid. You’ll be able to hear it, and there is grafitti on the some rocks on the right when you want to take out and scout. This one is easy to walk, as the takeout is right there, but it’s runnable at higher water. Just be careful of the 185′ waterfall about 1/4 mile downstream. The hike out goes from the last rapid through a level area, up an enormous embankment to the railroad tracks, left along the tracks for about 100 yards, then up a trail to the left to a road that leads to the parking lot.

This is a great run for someone who is stuck in Eastern Washington without much else to do. 800 cfs is definitely on the low side, I think it would be most fun over 1500. To get there, drive E from Walla Walla on highway 12 to the left turn for “Starbuck”. Take this road NE, cross the Snake River at Lyons Ferry, go up the hill, and turn right into Palouse Falls State Park, the takeout. To reach the put-in, take a right out of Palouse Falls State Park, drive until you go through a town. At the end of the town is a big intersection. Take a right and drive for about 5 miles. There will be a right turn for “Hooper”. Take this turn, cross the bridge over the river, turn right on a dirt road immediately after the bridge, and voila, your at the put-in.

-Ben

Dave, Mike, Josh and I headed over to the East Fork of the Lewis River this morning for a quick run. We shot some photos at Sunset Falls, Screaming Left, and Horseshoe Falls, check them out. More of an update coming soon (along with more pictures).