Best 4 days of 2020 so far.

We’ve been sheltering in place pretty hardcore since March 11th. All of us were aching to get out of the house for a bit. We recently got a very old but still very usable 16-ft white water raft with an oar frame. I spent a bit of time cleaning it up modifying it slightly.

We decided to take it up to The Klamath River in northern California. Almost Oregon really. Although I have kayaked extensively, I don’t really have a ton of experience rowing a raft, maybe 7 days total and mostly on pretty easy white water. I chose to run the section from Rocky Point down to Happy Camp because it seemed like it would be appropriate difficulty. Since we were going solo, I wanted to be conservative. The idea of dumping the boat with Kim and the girls and having no one to help pick up was pretty unappealing. Various reports listed this stretch as Class II+, and others called out Class III rapids. I’d say there were at least 3 class III rapids, maybe 4, and many class II rapids. I was pretty happy to find my lines for everything.

This was Hazel and Margot’s first time on whitewater, and they both loved it.

We had a great great time. The river was warm, we spotted all kinds of wildlife, like a bear, deer, bats and numerous bald eagles. We started paddling Thursday afternoon, paddled and camped Thursday until Sunday. We ate well, with fresh food from our garden, and fresh peas, beans and berries from Paige and Mike. Honestly, it was just awesome and a great break.

Sometime late Saturday in a shallow rock bar area I did put a hole in the raft, but I was able to patch it well enough to paddle out Sunday morning and get to our takeout.

We carefully socially distanced, and literally had basically zero contact with anyone the entire trip. Even for the drive we didn’t stop for food and for restroom breaks we used our portable toilet system. All the campsites were remote and shared with no one.