July 2, 1999

Portland-Astoria: Columbia River, OR

George Bergeron and I used the last six days of June to paddle the ninety miles from Portland, OR to Astoria, OR. We were assisted by 1- to 2-knot down river currents and resisted by an unseasonably consistent westerly flow of marine air in our faces. Light rain and mist were our constant companions; warm sunshine, a fleeting visitor.

George had been pestering me to make this trip for a month or two, and I finally relented, budgeting a chunk of time between forays to BC. He and I car-shuttled to Portland, launching just after a heavy downpour at a mongo boat ramp just downstream of the St. Johns Bridge in western Portland. This is at the outer edge of heavy marine development on the Willamette River, Oregon's major tributary to the Columbia. Diked and straightened, the Willamette here is not the pastoral link between smaller communities it is above Portland.

Dodging the odd steelheader boat and occasional barge, George and I were happy to be on the water, following the right shore past tanker piers and paper mill docks for offloading barges. After five miles, we reached the Columbia at Kelley Point, a popular summer swimming beach. Turning left, the current picked up and wisked us along the shore of Sauvie Island, a once-marsh now diked and converted to farmland. Another hour or two of this found us poking around on the banks of the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge on the WA shore, hoping the keep out signs applied only above campable beach. They did not, so we swapped sides of the river and popped tents up near summertime volleyball supports and the shambles of windbreaks for nude bathers. Nobody naked happened by, so we felt appropriately clad, and were glad for a rest. Sixteen miles and a spicy stir fry -- good companions.

Saturday morning brought slight drizzle and upriver-bound freighters galore, some we were to see three days later as they slid toward the Columbia's mouth. Hop in the boat and paddle north, following the OR shore past the Multnomah channel and the once-prosperous river town of St. Helens, now oriented toward the land. A brand-new marine park with fancy composting toilets and million-dollar access walkways contrasted with the February '96 high water mark (some fifteen feet over our heads), and comfy wood cruisers at the float. A Portland couple and their friendly dog hot-footed it across the float to the river shore to view the USCG Eagle, a four-masted sailing ship on its way to sea. We ate lunch, peed, and headed down river past cows and pile dike after pile dike. Shushing, shushing, gurgling and thumping.

Early afternoon and we hit Sandy Island, across from Kalama, WA, decorated at the best camp site with a Lewis and Clark River Trail sign. The pre-teen with a hurt finger accepted a bandaid and urged us to camp on a muddy place downstream. We opted for a noisy but drier (and sandier) site facing the bustle and groan of I-5, the railroad, and river traffic. Dodging the beer-can debris remnants of the party crowd, George made the best of a Ragu sauce, pasta, and summer sausage -- way better than it sounds. Fifteen miles.

Campsite on Walker Island

By midday of Sunday, we had managed a lazy eight miles past the defunct Trojan Nuclear Power Plant (major turbulence on the upstream end of its rocky ramparts) and rounded the cliffs leading to Rainier, OR. There awaited the northern pikeminnow-lady bounty counter, who awarded chits worth four bucks a fish to anglers surrendering their catch. Save a smolt, get a buck! My sweet SO Becky joined us at the ramp with a hot lunch -- her picnic and our fuel. Later, we bade her goodby and drifted with the current, swifter here, under the Longview Bridge, past log dumps and pulp mills to snake around behind Walker Island to a camp on its vanishing downstream tip. Five years ago there was shelf to hold twenty tents. Now, room only for a handful. No matter, the river traffic is still as reliable and fun to watch. Seven more miles.

A "relaxed" 11 am launch the next day saw us off past old net sheds at Mayger and a flag-anointed skiff with a dad and two boys on shore, lunching and lounging. More miles past Stella and its vacated mill site, sliding around the Beaver Power Generating plant, steaming away in the cool air, to the upper end of Dead Wild Pig Island. Lunch was interrupted by a monster freighter wake, which tossed boats and moved us ten feet higher up the bank. The dad and his kids zipped by, taking up a muddy site half way down the island, querying us about the tide height. At last, we reached the lower end, hit the sand, and reconfigured the old cooking table and benches to our liking. George did the carpentry. I did the design work and the supervision. (Well, somebody had to do it!) Many fat burritos later, we toppled off to our tents, hoping for sleep. Ospreys circled overhead. Only twelve miles today.

Early, early. Eighteen miles to Jim Crow Point from here. Gotta catch that hot ebb. We did, adding our own push and joshing the steel headers in their fishing shacks (average age over 70) this fine Tuesday morning. No success yet, just a couple lost fish. Cataracts and sinewy waterfalls off the cliffs leading to Cathlamet, and a lonely doe dodging boulders. Lunch opposite the marina, as the water drops quickly, stranding our boats. A muddy return as we hit the trail, exiting the Cathlamet Channel and rejoining the main stem some five miles above Skamokawa ("Venice of the Columbia" in the '20's). Piercing the flats leading into Skamokawa, we rolled out of our cockpits onto the float at the Skamokawa Paddle Center, ahead of the lunch crowd. Pie and coffee in a sit-down atmosphere, shed of our neoprene. Felt pretty civilized, as George flirted with Michelle the cook/waitron, and the PO lady ate her lunch, goggle-eyed.

George grabs a nap

Off to the float to root for the drake chasing off another's hen. Ducklings cheep and peep, looking for Mom. We hit the River, riding the eddies and sliding past remnants of old fishwheels. George curses a failing seat support and effects crude surgery on a rocky shore opposite Dredge Oregon, just winding up an annual silt extraction from the channel here. The current slacks and around Jim Crow Point to the only camping-legal sandy beach on the lower River. Eighteen miles, for sure, and we bask in our only full-on sunshine. George falls dead asleep, and I grab a snapshot to document the moment. His Mom will want this. Beer and Doritos, another hit of pasta/Ragu/sausage, and a handful of evening steelheaders appears on the spit. None is successful, but the leader, a defrocked tree-planter, gives us an earful of opinion on population control, attended by his 10-year-old daughter, who listens but does not contribute.

Overnight, it rains seriously, and more steelheaders hit the sand before it is light. They are quiet, and I am surprised to see them tied off to our shelter-shack, one of two here. A guy from Minnesota lands and keeps a hatchery six-pounder. Another lands a wild fish, but returns it. George wishes both fish had been returned. By eight we are on the water, working against the steady ten knot headwind, dodging behind sand piles from dredging. We take a short cut I used in '92, and find it has shoaled, so we get out and drag boats a short mile. The herons are not impressed. They knew we should not have tried this side! Molting geese skitter and swim away. Off the downstream end of Miller Sands (site of major three-day gillnetter parties before this became a wildlife refuge), the wind picks up and we hit more sand, skirting it deftly. On to Tongue Point, where a confluence of tide and wind gives us a hammering short-period chop to punch through. Wildest ride of the trip, but wearying!

Tongue Point past us, we pull through the last mile under the railroad trestle into a backwater off Alderbrook, former mill-community and currently one of the tastiest neghborhoods in Astoria. We find a large-cobble beach and haul gear up to the bank-road. Eight people I know howdy us and are not impressed with our strange rubber garb. George's truck is where we left it, twelve miles from Jim Crow Point.

It's good to get the rubber off, but several dogs suffer coughing fits, and a cat snubs us from a distance. Flowers wilt, but we don't care. We made it!

The River is wild and wooly the last thirty-forty miles, and an elaborate ditch the previous fifty. We liked it all, nonetheless. Huck and Jim could not have had more fun.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1999 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Paddlewise mailing list on 7/2/1999.
Republished here with permission.