On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
TheOtherHank
Here are some more photos from a 5 day trip down the Rogue River my family and took in July 2014
Here’s a shot of a gear boat and a couple of the inflatable kayaks heading downstream. In the foreground you can see that it can get quite shallow when the water is moving quickly.
This is actually one of the bigger dangers of running whitewater. If you get dumped out and are floating downstream supported by your life vest, you can think that you should stand up because the water is so shallow. Then you can wait for a boat to come pick you up. The problem with this is that the water can be moving pretty fast and it’s really powerful. It’s possible to put your feet down and immediately get pushed over. If one of your feet gets trapped between a couple of rocks that don’t fell like moving, you can end up face down in the water held in place by your now broken leg with it’s entrapped foot. Moral of the story, if you’re swimming a rapid wait until you’re through it and floating in slow moving deep water.
Snake!
One evening in camp I played around with propping my camera on a rock and messing with the shutter speed. Motion blur is fun.
The Rogue has a trail that runs along river right the whole length of the whitewater section. This a shot looking back upstream while we were doing a side hike one afternoon.
This shows the Class IV rapid at the downstream end of the Wild and Scenic section: Blossom Bar. It doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as Rainy Falls, but the run requires you to float down on river left, pass a rock and then move right as hard as you can to avoid going onto a bunch of rocks called the picket fence. The rest of the run rock dodging down the middle, but that dog leg at the top is what makes it a class IV.
You can see a rock that looks a bit like a curling wave. To it’s left is a round rock. The round rock is partially obscuring another rock downstream of it. The move is to pass between the round rock and the one it’s obscuring. That zooms you past the wave rock and you’re golden.
One of the highlights of the stretch of river below Blossom Bar is hiking up Tate Creek to the Tate Creek Slide. Out of the shot to the right is a rope that lets you climb up the big boulder, once you’re up there you sit in the creek, block the flow a bit to build up some water behind you, lift your butt to get the water moving then push off and lay back. The exciting part is that groove that you slide down has undercut the rock above it, so if you don’t have your head far enough back, you can bang it on the rock. Another difference between the modern OARS and the one I worked for back in the day is that we bring helmets along now, and you have to wear your helmet if you want to do the slide. In the 80s, telling people not to raise your head was considered sufficient for safety.
This shot shows Tate Creek closer to where it enters the Rogue.
One last shot of the river from the trail. As I said in a comment on the Green River OTR, the Rogue is my favorite river trip. 5 days is a good length of time to be out in wilderness, the scenery and wildlife are great, and the whitewater is well distributed with no days of all flatwater.
eclare
Beautiful scenery!
JPL
The scenery is amazing. For some reason, I kept thinking of The River Wild with Meryl Streep, and I’m glad that you didn’t come across fugitives during your trip.
Laura Too
Beautiful, thanks! Youtube loaded a clip of how not to run the picket fence right after your clip from Rouge River part 1. They got hung up on rocks and in order to get off of it someone jumped out and rode the boat out on the front of it. There was some narration on what a really bad idea it was. OTR is such a great respite feature, taking me on adventures that I didn’t even know I could go on. I appreciate your giving such great descriptions and stories, such fun!
cintibud
Lovely! I hope to kayak that someday
WaterGirl
Gorgeous photos this morning! Except for the one that was possibly a snake but I didn’t want to look closely enough to find out.
TheOtherHank
@WaterGirl: I felt bad after my Green River OTR that I didn’t include any animal pictures. For this pair of posts I got in 3 out of 16 pictures, so I’m pretty pleased with myself.
JanieM
The first one is special ’cause it makes me feel like I’m right on the river with you. I also like the Tate Creek one, I think it’s the 7th, because it has a whole different feel to it.
The slide reminds me of a place in New Hampshire…….ah, the memories OTR triggers.
TheOtherHank
@JanieM: The fun thing about the slide is that the pool you land in and where you wait your turn has a bunch of newts swimming around in it. They’re slow enough to catch, which makes standing in cold water waiting your turn a bit more fun.
StringOnAStick
I remember the picket fence rocks at Blossom Bar; I was a passenger in a pro’s boat and I used to white water kayak, and that bit had my full, sideways look to see what the guide is feeling, attention.
TheOtherHank
@StringOnAStick:
It was always fun watching a trainee run it the first time (and I’m pretty sure I was amusing the first time I did it). “Listen up Bob, that pull to miss the picket fence isn’t that hard. But the consequences of screwing it up are huge. Don’t screw it up.”
Doing a rescue was a hassle since the only good place to stand and pull on a rope is river right, so you have to stretch a rope across the place where boats want to go. This means that every trip behind you has to wait until you’re done. This does not do much to ease one’s mind in an already stressful situation.
Kelly
I discovered the secret to running Blossom Bar on my third run. I was 25. I had a ridiculous pile of gear for 6 kayakers plus myself and girlfriend in a 13 foot raft. I was standing on the scouting rock anxiously considering how to maneuver my overloaded craft thru. A guy floats by in an immaculate, varnished, wooden drift boat. No PFD or shirt. Deep tan, battered straw hat. He’s standing up fishing. Keeps fishing until he’s about 30 feet from the entrance. Sits down, puts his fishing gear away, dons PFD finally sticks his oars out with his bow nearly over the entrance wave. Let’s the boat drift in a little ways takes ONE STROKE and stops in the key eddy just above and to the right of the Picket Fence. Pauses there for a moment, takes one push stroke out into the current drifts through the slot takes one stroke and eddies out below and left of the Picket Fence. Eddy hopped the whole thing, never took more than one gentle stroke at a time. Absolutely the best boatmanship I’ve ever seen. Realized the value of technique and timing over the brute force I’d applied to the problem up to then.
way2blue
Love your first photo where we can see into the stream in the foreground. Very cool. And the shot with the blurred water. Thanks for sharing.
Many years ago, I did an overnight float trip down the East Fork of the Carson River. Just a few grad students, friends & their children. Surplus rafts, old watertight ammo cases… Loved every minute, except when we got plastered up against a cliff face…
JanieM
@Kelly: I’m sure there’s a life lesson in there somewhere….at least for me.
TheOtherHank
@Kelly: Timing is everything. It was hard to explain that eddy to first-timers, though. “OK, you see the wave rock, right?. Now there’s the round one to it’s left. Just below it and the wave rock there’s an eddy. If you just miss the round rock, you can hit that eddy and it will do most of the work of missing the picket fence. Of course, if you hit the round rock, you’re going into the fence. I’m sure you’ll do the right thing. Good luck, off you go.”
WaterGirl
@TheOtherHank: Excellent!
TheOtherHank
This thread may already be mostly dead, but I have to throw this in. One of my favorite parts of running big rapids happens before you run the rapid: you’ve pulled over and scouted it. You’ve talked with the other guides about what the run looks like today. You’re back in your boat, floating down to the rapid. You can still, if you try really hard make it back to shore. But then you cross a certain point where no matter how hard you try you can’t get to shore before being in the rapid; you are going to run the rapid. I love that moment. You’re committed and nothing you can do will change it.