Cold Weather Paddle on Willapa Bay, WA

Rick's terrific story reminds me of another cold water paddle, but one with an entirely different flavor. It's burned into my memory, and an experience which surfaces regularly in bull sessions about paddling. Those who have camped on Long Island in Willapa Bay (SW Washington) in winter will appreciate it.

My long-time paddling partner and I set out from the Refuge launch ramp on a brilliantly sunny morning -- January 1, 1995 -- into a brisk east wind, which turned into a 20 knot tailwind as we rounded the southern shore of the island, heading west towards High Point. We were surprised at the intensity of the wind, as there had been only a 10 - 15 knot downriver breeze in Astoria, and we have always thought of the eastern side of Willapa Bay as relatively protected from the drainage winds common to the Columbia River in clear winter weather. It was more of a following sea than we had ever been in, and Gary had to brace quickly several times to avoid capsizing, with his Orca (broad, fat stern and microcephalic bow), though I was not having much difficulty in my Wind Dancer, with its higher volume bow. Gary was even surfing involuntarily, at times.

After rounding the point into the lee of the island, we serenely sailed upisland to our favorite campsite. A garguantuan stir fry and a couple bottles of wine put a couple of old guys into a pretty mellow mood, with an intense fire made possible with Gary's splitting maul to deter the chill ... Hmmm, the wind WAS picking up ... Oh, well, it can't blow all night AND all of tomorrow.

WRONG! After rattling our cage and the alder/spruce forest around our ears all night, the east wind was even more intense the next morning. Even from our vantage point some 2 1/2 to 3 miles away we could see constant spuming and spindrift ripping around the southern end of the island at High Point, obscuring everything across the Bay. In the lee, life was pretty nice, but the freight train wind in the distance had an emotional impact like a pack of pit bulls on the sidewalk outside your door.

We set off, slowly working south in the lee, making our way to High Point, where we slid ashore and hid in sun-filled rocky crevices to watch the wind's fury. After a couple hours, it abated some, with no more continuous spindrift, so we sprinted around the corner into its maw -- WHAM! We both paddle unfeathered, so it had a full purchase on us and we were barely able to make any headway around the point. After fifteen minutes of near maximum effort, we pushed forward around the Point into some lee and began working our way along the southern shore. (Some may wonder at our judgement. Well, we were adjacent to a hospitable shoreline where we could land any time. The wind would have pushed us onto shore in the event of a capsize, we were equipped for cold water, and could have stayed on shore for another day if we had to. We felt strong.)

We stroked and stroked, sometimes gaining a little ground, sometimes blown backward despite pulling with our maximum effort. Gary had a tougher time of it. For some reason, my yak fares better in strong head wind situations, so soon I was a couple hundred yards ahead of him. He stopped on shore and rested once. I paddled continuously, breathing hard even, which paddling never demands of me. It is one nautical mile along the south shore of Long Island, a stretch which is a pleasant fifteen minute paddle under "normal" conditions. This day it took me two and one half hours of hard effort to travel it. When I hit the lee, I was exhausted, spent, beat. I went ashore at the nearest place to watch and wait for Gary, who arrived fifteen minutes later. It was sunny, nearly windless, and brilliant, with dramatic sidelight illuminating the cedars and sprucers on the Island. Sunday drivers were passing by, nodding and waving pleasantly at my slumping figure on the shoreline. All I could think about was how tired I was as the adrenaline faded away.

Later, from the sea conditions, we estimated that the wind had been a 30 to 35 knot gale, with gusting to 40 knots which drove us backwards. We also realized that these conditions are common in winter down here in clear weather, with the NOAA weather broadcasts warning of easterly "drainage winds" through "gaps" in the Coast Range. We haven't been back to sample those winds again, but I'm glad we had the experience. It humbled me. It made me respect the wind. I learned that even familiar, "easy" water can be a demon under the right conditions.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1996 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on WaveLength mailing list in Jan. 1996.
Republished here with permission.

Becky's Birthday Paddle

Willapa Bay, Southwest Washington

Well, we didn't exactly go to Aldrich Point to paddle. My friend Becky's birthday coincided with Sunday, so she got to pick the paddle. And she chose the east side of Long Island in Willapa Bay. When we arrived at the Refuge headquarters ramp, the sun was just beginning to warm the air to a humane temperature, even though it had been up for hours. So we laid our yaks next to the rising water and slowly filled them -- so slowly the yaks were floating when we were ready to launch. Lunch, water, clothes, radio, chart, ego, scattered thoughts. No ripples on this water.

Off to the north, moving against the current past wiggling oyster poles of PVC, grebe after grebe -- some little guys, but mostly the big Western variety. Mallards off to the left, wanking in the mud at the edge of the tide, and a line of geese silhouetted against the green of the island. Scum line, scum line, then the loons! Lots of Pacifics, shy and scattered, and two big Commons, slowly eyeing us as we worked our way past, moving away in leisurely loon time. At only three yak lengths away, they filled the objective of the binoculars as we parted.

Paddle, paddle -- what ARE those two guys in the skiff up to? Anchored near the Peninsula to the east, running north, then south. They're gone now and it's quiet again. To lunch near an elk-stomping and -pooping ground on the island -- french bread, butter, Havarti dill, apple, Hershey's dark and water. Listen, listen, here comes a canoe chock-full of guys returning from Sawlog Slough, two paddlers and one center sitter, jabbering away down the channel with gear piled high. They never saw us. Launch again in ripple-free water.

North again to the Naselle River and Stanley Point, rounding grassy duck hunting blinds and to the top of the tide to a fallen-down ruin at the edge of the forest. A walk up the hill to an old cattle chute and corral, weird vegetation under a high canopy of elderberry, one new three-foot stump alone in the center of untouched moss -- why did they take this one tree, and how did it leave without marking the ground or leaving branches? Space aliens acquire a spruce?

Time to go. Fighting the tide AGAIN! Why don't they move that damn Refuge ramp up tide so we can get a ride? Sore shoulder, toes and arches asleep, chasing loons back. Lots of new "get outa here" signs on the bank for the hunters and 'shroom gatherers. We stole looks at the land anyway, but did not touch it. Now calmer, relaxed, worn in the back and butt.

Happy Birthday, Becky!
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1996 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on WaveLength mailing list in Oct. 1996.
Republished here with permission.

Last Day of Summer

The sun and balmy air lead us on -- hoping for a last-of-summer overnight paddle on the Columbia River. We got it. Becky and I rolled out of town at the amiable hour of 11 am and launched at Aldrich Point an hour later, trading gossip with duck hunters at the ramp -- getting their shacks ready for the opener next week. Our launch time hit the tail end of the ebb, which swept us across the river and down a mile or so to Jim Crow Point, less than an hour's paddling/drifting in the sunshine, an 8 knot easterly breeze at our backs. "Gap" outflow winds to 15 knots were predicted, so we were a little leery of getting trapped across the river on the WA side. Skirting the eddyline below the point, we slid ashore, astounded that no one else had preceded us.

The previous night's high tide (an 8 footer) had outlined the safe camping area, and we debated whether to pitch in the "front yard" of the frequently-visiting steelhead fisherman, who had made a roomy shack from dryer felt inherited from the local pulp mill. Five inches of rain fell here over the past week, renewing the sand, logs, and our sittin' spots. We set to, pitching tent, laying out cooking gear, and yarding yaks above the tide line. Then time to lay in the sun, swim a little, watch the River traffic (no freighters!), hit the Guinness some, maybe a couple of corn chips, and, yes, please pass the sunscreen, I AM feeling a little red!

After a little afternoon entertainment, it was time to fire up the vegie-slicer and the wok, as the wind dropped and the temperature hit 80 (this is fall?). Yumm! Seasoned mashed potatoes topped with stir-fried cajun pork strips and vegies! Too much to eat, can't tolerate the thought of dessert! Loll around, dodge the freighter and tug wakes, try to raise a tacking sailboat on the VHF, as it drifts towards dusk. At dark, a monster tanker obliterated the lights on the opposite shore, ghosting by quietly downbound, the VHF announcing preparations for a pilot exchange an hour (and 15 miles) hence, off the Astoria waterfront.

Midnight bladder breaks revealed a brilliant half moon and a heron grokking along overhead. Morning came on with 10 plus knots of downriver breeze, over our heads and off the point, with the eddyline really cranking! Breakfast was slow, with double hits of coffee as we watched bait fish flash in the shallows and a tern patrolled overhead. The VHF was out of entertainment. Some dragger offshore had 16 nailed with an open mike -- we could hear the noises of his reel and hydraulics work the net back aboard.

Time to shove off -- this wind is brisk! Quartering against it and the heavy downriver current, we worked our way across the shipping channel to Woody Island, taking the downstream end to avoid the wind. A stop at the float house where the kitty lives revealed her owners were home -- processing comb honey from hives set on the islands! A brief rest and slog, slog through the shallow channels, reaching the launch point in twice the time the reverse trip took yesterday!

83 degrees at the weather station yesterday. When is winter?
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1997 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on WaveLength mailing list in Sept. 1997.
Republished here with permission.

Easy Pig Trip -- October 1997

The weatherman said the wind and rain would blow itself out on Friday, and progress to sun on Sunday. So we four Astorians embarked on a two-day sea kayak trip on the Lower Columbia River. First-timers Link and Mary assembled the Folbot while Becky and I packed up the singles on the grass in Clatskanie, OR, after which we drifted and paddled 2 miles down the Clatskanie River (a slough, really) to the main stem of the Columbia. Along the way we hand-picked apples from our cockpits at the site of the old railroad bridgemaster's quarters (burned down last year) and wig-wagged at pickups bustling along the dike overhead. Lots of new rock on the dikes -- only two years after the big floods of the winter of 95-96.

Gill-netters in net sheds at the end of the Clatskanie River were loading web onto their boats, chattering about mesh and sturgeon drifts. It's kinda sad to see these seldom-used once-upon-a-time salmon boats from Quincy and Mayger and Pillar Rock and Clifton and Bradwood, themselves once-upon-a-time ports of call on the River. Then out into the side-channel of the main stem River, slow current a reminder of summer past, upriver dams barely leaking leftovers from spring snowmelt of a hundred days ago. Onward, lazily paddling in the sprinkles -- what? -- Becky said it would NOT rain. Oh, she says this isn't rain, just a healthy mist.

There are new signs on Wallace Island -- once the site of a feral pig colony engineered to be the central material for luaus by a long-gone entrepreneur -- *Day Use Only* *National Wildlife Refuge.* Guess pigs aren't endangered, though those pigs have all died. Past Wallace, the downriver breeze ruffles the Folbot-ers, dodging their own paddle drips and muttering about the wind and the "mist," as they huff and glide over the shallows to North Dead Wild Pig Island (NDWPI), a mile-long dredge-spoil creation forming the southern side of the narrow shipping channel. (No, that's not its real name. We call it "North Dead Wild Pig" in honor of Wallace -- the true "Dead Wild Pig Island.")

Sturgeon and steelhead fishers love NDWPI's northern shore, laying lures into the current behind the pile dikes. NDWPI has "migrated" downstream recently, owing to extreme floods two years running (El Nino?). The upper end has lost at least 80 lateral feet of bank (was 5 - 7 feet above nominal river level), which has reappeared as shallows "filling in" the covelets and hollows along the N shore, and as a fattening of the downstream "flats" ahead of the downriver pile dike. Nature at work!

We like the downstream end, flatter and sheltered by cottonwoods, with the occasional madrone (arbutus), a struggling spruce or two, and openings of coarse sand "moss meadows," delicately anointed with nuggets of goose poop.

Sunset magazine just ran a piece on this area of the Lower Columbia River, and they called these forced marriages of mud, rushes, scotch broom, cottonwoods, and dredge spoils, "wild islands." I don't think the editors of Sunset know about the pigs. Probably they were politically incorrect pork, anyway!

As the rain-producing atmospheric trough moves inland, we arrive at NDWPI. The wind switches to the west, ruffling the surface of a tarp quickly erected over a substantial two-table, four-bench, campers layout. We used to crouch in the sand on logs and stir our fry in the dirt here, but powerboaters have made a luxurious (and clean!) camp. It almost seems as if they planned to "live" here. Our best approach is to ignore their summertime residue and frolic in the fall and winter on their location. (In the spring, nesting geese put the Island off limits.)

Soon, the late-launchers (Gary and Roberta) arrive, having made better use of the ebb out the Clatskanie channel, and full-time lying, drinking, and bragging begins. Roberta, especially, is enchanted with the river shipping traffic, deserting the cooking area to watch freighters, tugs, and barges wash on by. A couple hours later, chips, dip, and wine have disappeared down hungry gullets,and it's time to stir up our OWN dead pig -- fried in the wok with greens, red vegies and jalapenos, and laid onto some really tasty instant seasoned mashed potatoes. This is too spicy for the Native American in our midst, who prefers well-cooked beef, carrots, and some really delicious boiled potatoes. Some of us steal bites of his spuds!

Mary wins the food crown with fresh-made crepes filled with huckleberry compote and cream cheese topping. All of our stomachs groan. We suspect overeating is responsible for vivid dreams of gnomes chucking rocks into the swash, counterparts to the regular freighter traffic.

Morning arrives calmly, bringing a leetle strip of brief sun as it pops up under the stratus. More food is cooked and eaten, all on the cholesterol list -- we're all too old to eat this way!

Time to pack up and hurry, hurry, up the Clatskanie channel to catch the flood, sweeping us past the apples again, to the float and ramp. Soon the Folbot is duffled away and other yaks are stacked on top of the pickup. Lunch in Westport at the Berry Place: buffalo burgers and freshly baked huckleberry pie. Some of us were purists and did NOT have ice cream.

Is this paddling just an excuse to eat? Gotta find a pig ...
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1997 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Wavelength list server, October 1997.
Republished here with permission.

Memorable Meal on Willapa Bay

Like others, my most memorable meals are associated with an "event" more than with especally exotic/tasty food ... but there waaass this ONE time. It's kind of a long story:

Marcia must have bought her Orca (one of the original Eddyline designs: microcephalic bow; huge, flat stern -- the automatic broach machine in a following sea) in '84 or '83. I didn't even know what a sea kayak was, then. But, in '86 she took me and my then-wife out to the local boat ramp to paddle the behemoth. It was cool, and inspired enough confidence for us to commit to a memorable week-long guided Baja expedition with Tim and Larry "The Kayak," over the Xmas break. Marcia moved to Corvallis, OR, and I sort of lost touch with her.

Fast forward to the summer of '93, two years after Marcia had sold her ENTIRE sea kayaking kit (yak, two paddles, all the specialized outfitting gear, multiple dry bags, etc., etc.) to my long-time buddy Gary, for $400! By this time, Marcia had taken her boat, with her spaniel Lacey on the back deck (or, in heavy weather, in the cockpit!), ALL OVER the Pacific Northwest, by herself: San Juans, Barkley Sound, Desolation Sound, all over the Columbia River, and, very often, on Willapa Bay, WA, to her most favorite campsite on Long Island.

Lacey was getting long in tooth, and Marcia's "gift" had gotten Gary and me started paddling yaks down here, so Gary, my SO Becky, and I scheduled a special "nostalgia" trip for Marcia and Lacey: we borrowed another yak and freed up the Orca and all of Marcia's gear so she could trek out to her favorite spot, one last time. This was to honor and recognize the lady we called "the matron saint of Lower Columbia River sea kayaking."

We really did this up brown: a trio of roses and a glass of Chardonnay were handed to her, as she stepped ashore at her old spot; we had planned a mega veggie stir fry tailored to her food preferences (you don't want to know); set up her tent; catered to her every whim; took her and the aging dog on a hike to the cedar grove; yada yada yada.

We were having a terrific time, telling lies, getting a little sloshed.

As we were finishing the mid-afternoon snack (freshly-made guacamole and chips) and the first bottle of wine, we heard an annoying little whine on the water -- a small skiff was approaching, vectoring across up the Bay. Ah, well, some yahoo out for a spin ... the falling tide will take care of HIM pretty soon! No ... they're coming ashore here. My god, it's Mary and Link! What's this stuff? A huge cooler? Crepes? Freshly sauteed apples in sauce? What's Mary doing with that stuff? Oh, yeah, she's warming the crepes, heating the sauce, ladling the stuff out onto crepes in front of our faces, and flambeeing the whole thing with brandy! Huh? Ice cream, still hard from the dry ice, on top? I think I've died and gone to food heaven! Groan ... I'm so stuffed I don't think I can even roll over!

Thank you, Marcia.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1997 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on WaveLength mailing list in Oct. 1997.
Republished here with permission.

Round the Island

Three of us circumnavigated Long Island in Willapa Bay yesterday -- the first annual Winter Solstice Willapa Paddle. A rare combination of perfect tides and calm, beautiful weather made this an easy, joyous trip.

For the uninitiated, the Willapa is a largish salt water enclosure just north of the Columbia River -- one of the last relatively pristine bays on the West Coast of North America. It is an incredible nursery for oysters and other bivalves (two species heavily farmed (ranched?)), a wasteland of thigh-deep mud at low water, and transient home to hordes of migratory shorebirds and waterfowl on the Pacific Flyway. Long Island is roughly seven miles long and two miles wide, running mainly north-south, with the only feasible launch at the south (up-bay) end, and the north end closer to the mouth of the bay.

This means that to circle Long Island, without fighting tidal currents, one has to catch an ebb tide with monstrous holdup (no "lower" than 4.5 feet) so the down-bay mudflat on the north end of the island will be covered with enough water. An error here adds four miles to the nominal eighteen!

George (a new paddler), Kathy (major boardhead and mother of three), and I (the "old bull" of the crowd) hit the water at the crack of 1030. We had anticipated an easy dawdle up and back the east side of the island. Moving steadily northward with tidal assist, spying the odd bird (a common goldeneye) and the usual winter crowd (grebes, loons, widgeons, mallards, and cormorants), we began to debate the prospect of a round-the-Island shuffle. Kathy, the fittest of the three, does real work for a living (she is a landscaper), and George has been doing a lot of paddling the last month or two, so we opted for the long venture. [My excuse? Intense cabin fever!]

To our surprise, we were able to round the top of the Island in much less than two hours and headed for the beach to wait out the low. A nice visit with locals on a back-and-forth shuttle from Nahcotta made lunch social as well as nutritional (smoked sturgeon on jalapeno bagel with a Snickers chaser -- cross-cultural, no?). Major gossip was exchanged and bladders were relieved ... equally satisfying, but to different quadrants of our physiologies. As a squall moved through, we hit the water again, moving south along the west side of the Island. Assisted by gentle following seas and a tailwind, I stroked hard to keep up with Kathy and George jabbering away like magpies squabbling over roadkill!

Shorebirds in close choreography flight complemented brant chuckling and grazing in the shallows. Scooting across oyster beds and spying on commercial clam harvesters, we slid down the west side, pausing briefly to admire the strong side-lighting of the setting (!) sun as we hit the south end of the Island and headed for home.

Tired but happy puppies, George and I hooted our way to the ramp, while Kathy fretted about arriving late to gather in her daughter from the babysitter. Funny how those worries surface only as civilization returns. Sorer but satisfied, I arrived home to Christmas baking and a warm and sensual reception ... next year, I'll get Becky out on the Willapa at Winter Solstice. Water Druids, we be.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1997 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on WaveLength mailing list in Dec. 1997.
Republished here with permission.

Martha Gets a Boat

It did not look good. Fifteen knots of steady SW breeze, working against the tail of the flood, roiling the waters off the Refuge ramp, pushing chop and froth along the channel. But, there stood Martha, looking hopeful, just-completed Pygmy Coho on the gravel, in the drizzle and wind. Hi, there, nice to meet you face-to-face, finally. Boat looks nice. What do you think about this weather? Yeah, I believe those folks in the Jocassee and the two Kiwis setting out are in for a surprise when they get around the corner into the wind! Well, give us a chance to get organized, and by then maybe George will have shown up.

Fifteen minutes later, there's George, Solstice on his pickup, grin on his mug, jaws already beginning some ribald joke. OK, we'll get loaded up and see what the weather does. (The wind picks up; the Jocasse and the Kiwis are joined by a canoe, ferrying Scouts and adults back and forth across the channel.) Hell, if they can do it, so can we!

Another half hour passes, and the boats are packed with slippery-wet gear. We shove off, Martha marvelling at the stability of her new craft, as we admire her handiwork. Into the breeze, to the edge of the point, grasping pickleweed. OK, let's sit here a while and see. Ten minutes later, I think the wind has dropped. Let's go! Yup, definitely a break. Martha is not so sure, but her boat surges ahead, like a new bird dog.

Half an hour later, we are around High Point, out on the exposed water, and there is so little chop we giggle and grin at our luck! For once, the weatherman was right -- front passed through right on schedule! The Kiwis and Jocasse are pulled up on shore at Pinnacle Rock CG, drying off, pitching tents, as we glide by. Martha in the lead, now, spotting loons and gadwalls.

Sandspit CG is an hour away across a smoothing sea, and abandoned as we slide ashore on cobbles. Clouds are lifting. Nobody here except tons of elk sign -- have they been eating beach grass? Tents go up, tarp pops over the decrepit picnic table, and ... the eating begins! Martha stands open-mouthed: Don't you guys ever stop eating? (We notice she has no trouble keeping up.) Time to laze around and listen to her stories of the Harris's hawk -- falconing the hedgerows down in the Willamette Valley for voles, mice, and the occasional rabbit. Wind drops to nothing, and the Bay empties, bringing gulls and herons to walk the muddy edges, sneaking the odd fingerling or clam or worm into their gullets. More loons in the distance, mournful. A redtail buzzes overhead, and warblers (Martha's specialty) flit in the brush at campside, chasing dying berries and insects.

The Scouts arrive on foot, some five-plus miles of road-walking from their put-ashore point, adults eying our beer, and pitch tents just above the high-water mark. George tells them stories of floating away in the night, and we admire their naivete.

Stir fry, tabouli, pasta salad, and cookie (crumbles -- victim of intense hatch-packing). Martha: Don't you guys every stop eating? (She is slowing down.) A fire from abandoned 2 x 4's smolders to life, the cord holding the lantern up melts, sending it to the deck, still lit, and more stories of the hawk follow.

Becky has a rough night, the beginning of what will turn out to be a two-day struggle with sinus pain. We eat fried potatoes and smokies as day creeps over the bluff behind us, and George whomps up more granola than a horse would eat. Slow morning, while Becky sleeps off the pain, and we gather gear quietly. By eleven, the Bay is getting full again and all is ready but her tent, so we roll her out into a camp chair onto the gravel, and shake the dew off.

The Scouts head out, walking the shoreline to Smokey Hollow, intending a visit to the Grove of Ancient Cedars enroute back to civilization and a stop at the Astoria Mac Shack, their reward for putting up with the adults for a weekend.

Launching onto lake-calm waters, we head south, reversing yesterday's paddle with a difference: our Folbot double has only one paddler: me. But that's OK, George and Martha are content to dawdle and gab as I punch away at the water. More loons, singing in the distance. Surfbirds on foot-square chunks of rock, peeping as we creep up on them, finally bursting into flight. Around the Point, across the southern end of the island to the ramp, fighting a little head-current. The Kiwis and the Jocassee are loading up as we hit the ramp. Becky drifts in and out of consciousness, and finally rolls out of the boat onto shore, walking to the pickup and assuming a head-back position on the passenger side. A couple in a Nautiraid slip ashore nearby -- and tell of their sweet night amidst a herd of grazing elk on the east side of the island. I admire the 10-year-old boat, wooden longerons and wooden frames holding the hull out.

Martha's boat still looks gorgeous, and none the worse for the wear. She thinks she will build another, maybe a stripper this time. She can't figure out how to fill her spare time unless she has a project. I'd say she should deepen her relationship with this boat, and not flit off to a new one. We make plans to go watch the hawk hunt in a couple weeks, hoping to get in some paddling on Tahkenitch Lake.

Yeah, Martha got a boat. We notice she pats it a little after loading it on top of the pickup, to return to Waldport. The boat wags its stern with affection. We think she will keep it.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Republished here with permission.

Tenasillahee Flamingo Surprise

Three of us squeezed in an overnight trip on the Columbia River, paddling upriver on the tail end of the flood from Aldrich Point to a campsite on a dredge-spoil island last Saturday, and returning the next day on the tail end of the ebb, avoiding head-currents, as old people should. We stayed away from the places where geese are nesting now, and only saw overhead flights of presumably migrant stocks (in the hundreds), along with the odd dozen or half-dozen swans (late for them to be here).

Both days were mild and mixed sun, haze, overcast, and a little drizzle, though not enough to justify the Goretex jacket. The evening showed Cathlamet's lights to good advantage, and the ghosting of barges and freighters in the channel in the mist and more serious rain. Water temp demanded the wet suit, but otherwise it was shorts and light top clothing weather! Spring! Oh, that sap is running!

The other two (a couple "renewing" their slightly dormant relationship) were on their first paddle since October, and I was futzing with the relationship between my chunky body and a new cockpit (new boat -- my SO's, but she had to go to Seattle ... oh, well, her tough luck!), so this was more of a shakedown cruise than a serious endeavour. Nonetheless, several eagles were spotted, scads of scaups, beaucoup buffleheads, and a scoop or two of harbor seals, along with the odd (really odd) power boater, and a very stuck-up pair of canoeists from Portland.

The old campsite was refurbished, which included returning the 30 inch diameter round we had been using for a table top, gardening away the offending scotch broom, and resetting the fire ring. To keep things humming, I did the hot stir fry, and the others the wine, the plastic pudding, and a mega-breakfast. No wonder that cockpit is a tight fit!

Two pink, plastic flamingoes (man, that new yak has a LOT of cargo room!) greeted the loving couple in the morning, a suitable iconographic introduction to the rites of spring. The return trip revealed massive work in process on tide gates on one side of Tenasillahee Island, and a couple miles of heavy rocking on dikes, all on a deer sanctuary. Why do the deer care if the tide is kept out? Did I help pay for this? Is this a harbinger of more dredge deposits and elevation of the upland on the island? Time will tell.

Summer is around the corner. I wonder how many flamingoes that thing will hold ...? Can I transport plastic waterfowl across the US/CDN border without being arrested? I think they'd look good in Zeballos.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Wavelength mailing list in March, 1998.
Republished here with permission.

Terns and Riprap

There's really no good way to do it. You just shoulder the yak and hop from boulder to boulder until you reach the tide flat. Or, if you have a buddy, take turns hauling each other's boat over the same terrain. Harrington Point, on the Washington side of the lower Columbia River, is shelved with riprap to support a shred of state highway, serving the deadend placenames Altoona and Pillar Rock. Long-gone salmon runs fed canneries in these riverside locales, now bedroom communities for nearby "bustling" Naselle and the bigger towns in Oregon, 40 minutes away.

The riprap is made necessary by freighter wakes and winter waves, neither in abundance this late April day as Lucien and Randy haul their monstrous decked canoe and gear to the mud and launch. I am slower, dutifully packing rescue gear, lunch, and other necessaries into the fore and aft parts of my small wooden kayak. By the time I have threaded through the swirls surrounding the pile dikes off Altoona, their craft is a toothpick across the half-mile-wide main river channel. We launched at the tail end of the ebb, and cormorants are feeding in the turbulence as I look both ways and scoot across the shipping channel. The VHF squawks of barges miles away, and power boats carrying returnees from the local "wine festival" have not yet begun to rip upstream past our spot.

Catching the others in the middle of their pee break, I land on "Miller Sands barrier island," in time to relaunch and drift/paddle back across the shipping channel to the upper end of Rice Island. The thirty-foot tall sand ridge forming an arcuate "barrier" around Miller Sands and the humongous deposits of dredge spoils on Rice Island are ignored on NOAA charts -- perhaps because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would not like to acknowledge the huge expenditure of resources needed to keep the River slanting across the River, deviating from its long-ago historic course. These are not small structures. The first is 50 - 100 Yards wide and a mile long, the second is up to a short half-mile wide and a mile and a half long. They grow annually to maintain the channel depth, and have been here for over 20 years.

The lower end of Rice, which we visit twice at its midst in our clockwise circumnavigation, is the location of the largest Caspian Tern colony in North America, about 5000 plus birds. They were attracted here some fifteen years ago from their previous home (at the mouth of Willapa Bay) by abundant salmon and steelhead smolts. The colony nails between 6 million and 20 million smolts as they enter the lower River on their journey to the sea. Biologists are experimenting with ways to "move" the colony downriver to a place where the smolts are less stupid or at least more spread out, hoping the birds will eat something less vital to humans.

Rice Island is a desert, with a fringe of struggling cottonwoods and beach grass, home to a few dozen nesting geese. One pair has produced the season's first goslings, a scrawny, tiny duo dwarfed by their fat parents, waddling furiously away from us as we paddle by. Lunch includes a tentative foray toward a hidden point which can overlook the the tern nesting zone, soon abandoned in deference to the smolt-eaters and their also-voracious cousins, the couple thousand double-breasted cormorants which also nest on the lower end of Rice.

Reaching the upper end of Rice, as the ebb turns to flood, we thread our way across, dodging cruisers booming upriver, to skirt the barrier sands of Miller Sands, landing briefly on the upper end. A half dozen eagles (just two of them mature), eye geese, goslings, and eggs for lunch, dinner, and dessert. We leave hurriedly, very out of place in this rich environment, to confront monster ships in the channel. One produces a shoreside surge I surf backwards, unwillingly, and we sidle up to the vague edge of the channel until the traffic subsides. The VHF is busy, with an upriver freighter passing a tug and barge combo as another oceangoing vessel heads downriver. Lucien, new to the water, gawks at their monstrous size, and wonders if the wake turbulence will sink the canoe. No, but it gives my yak a ride!

Altoona looks good, but the tide is now up IN the riprap, as we dance out of our craft and hop to rocks, extracting boats from the freighter surge and head home. On the chart, this looks like really BORING water ... guess somebody forgot to tell the terns and gulls about that.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Paddlewise mailing list in April, 1998.
Republished here with permission.

Paddling to Ninstints Queen Charlottes, August 1998

My fiancé Becky, my son Ian, and Ian's mom (Belinda), took on the southern part of Parks Canada jewel in the Charlottes, August of 1998. Becky and I paddled a double (Folbot Greenland II), and the other two were in hardshell singles. We traveled from a spot in the middle of Juan Perez Sound to the Skungwai (Anthony Island) vicinity, with water taxi service from Moresby Explorers each way. Thirteen days on the water (with three days lost to weather) might seem like a lot, but we could have spent twice that. As it was, we spent most days moving camp 8 - 15 miles and only made two day-trip forays from fixed camps. Our Zodiac return from Raspberry Cove (the main in/out point for water taxi service) included 2-meter-plus head seas and head winds of over 20 knots, making it the wildest boat ride of my life -- and conditions which kept EVERY sea kayaker ashore.

We spent the first two nights in a cramped little cove near Marcos Island, because BOTH of the better drop-off points were occupied with larger groups -- enduring an intense little system which tried to drown us out. Thanks to a protecting canopy of cedars, the skills of Tarpman (yours truly), and sturdy rain flies, we stayed fairly dry, attempting to diminish our mound of food to a size that would fit into our yaks. Working our way south the next couple days took us to the middle of Skincuttle Inlet, south of Burnaby Island, and as beautiful an island camp as I've ever seen. Bolkus is the former site of a Haida summer village, and one of the locuses legends describe as the point the Haida entered the Islands.

The fifth day stressed the two single-yak-paddlers, as we crossed two major point systems, to a picturesque cove at the northern corner of Carpenter Bay, where we caught and ate a good-sized rockfish and a small greenling, enjoying the two streams which drained into the sea UNDER high berms of cobbles. After a rest day at Two Fish Cove (our name), we got a flat-calm, warm, sunny day for the traverse around Benjamin Point, including bear-on-the-beach (we weren't!) and a fat lingcod on-the-deck as our rewards. Raspberry Cove, across from the well-publicized Guest House at Rose Harbour, was a welcome sight, and deserted!

Day eight we fought a strong head wind, a little head current, and some rough chop down the inlet to a cove on the tip of the (unnamed) peninsula separating Rose Inlet from Louscoone Inlet, making only five miles over three hours of hard work! The single-paddlers collapsed ashore, and we camped three nights there. Later it earned the appellation "Two Otter Cove" for the river otters which occupied it.

Fog, light drizzle, and some moderate wind/seas the next day postponed our visit to the totems and house pits at Ninstints until afternoon. The visit was mightily enriched by the presence of Captain Gold, the pre-eminent Haida Watchman, who collared us just before we (innocently) wandered off the trail around a sensitive site. Gold is a fount of information on Ninstints, and a story-teller of the first rank. Concern for the return of the fog sent us back across Louscoone to Two Otter, way before he had exhausted his story trove.

It would be difficult to convey the impact of the scene at Ninstints. We had pointed ourselves at the village site for most of two weeks, and came away much awed at its beauty and eeriness. Parks Canada (and the Watchmen) attempt to limit the number of visitors at each village site to something less than a dozen (at any given moment), so as to enhance the quality of the experience. That really worked for us at Ninstints.

Day ten we slept in late, tide-pooled the shore from our yaks (way more impressive than Burnaby Narrows), and visited the Gordon Islands in the afternoon. Very cool lagoon (high tide only) on the NW corner, and a beautiful little gravel/shell beach separating the two islands, with monstrous cliffs surrounding the southerly island. The next day we escaped ahead of a building NW gale back to Raspberry Cove, now occupied by one of the several guided groups we saw, and opted out for a smaller cove three hundred yards east, complete with trawl-web hammock and a rope swing!

By afternoon, the buoys to either side of South Moresby were reporting gales of 35 - 40 knots, stimulating a gathering of trollers, sailboats, and pleasure craft at the mooring buoys across Houston Stewart Channel. This pattern persisted for two more days, pinning everyone ashore (or at anchor) except a Coast Guard cutter which steamed impressively through it all and turned up Rose Inlet our last day.

The morning of our planned extraction, several of the fishing boats and one cruiser had abandoned the south side of the channel and were trying to keep a hook down in the small lee of our shore. As we stood in awe of the wind, a huge black bear ambled into our cove, ogled us and our seven-grain cereal, and rejected all of the above as food, preferring to hunker down fifty yards away for a diet of crustaceans and sea-lettuce. (We were relieved.)

About the time the bear finally moved on to the next cove, Bill, of Moresby Explorers, pushed their largest rigid hull inflatable (a Polaris, I think) to shore, the first small craft we had seen enter the channel in a day and a half! Smiling, Bill asked us if we were ready for a "rough" return, over the worst seas he'd seen in five years of running zodes up and down Moresby. We gulped, "Yes," and packed our yaks and other gear onto his craft. Two hours and many gallons of seawater in the face later, we entered the calmer "inside" waters of Skincuttle Inlet, as Bill also calmed down and drove the zode with one hand and smoked with the other.

The rest of the return was anticlimactic, although Bill managed some major flirting with a saucy lady who had herded a 10-foot way-trashed john boat (complete with 5-horse outboard and boyfriend) halfway down the main island to Hotsprings Island. The lady with the saucy 'tude was hoping for a haul-out. She must have found a willing troller to do the job, 'cause we saw her and her escort in Queen Charlotte City two days later, trash-boat on her Tercel, waiting for the ferry!

It was a great trip. Certainly the paddle of a lifetime, but even more, close to a religious experience for we sea-Druids. Ninstints and its mortuary poles exude an eerie, calming aura that can only be experienced. It is testimony to the many generations of natives who lived and died there, on the edge of the Pacific. We were honored to paddle in their wakes.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Wavelength list server, 1998.
Republished here with permission.

Marathon in the Charlottes

he second two-week trip I did in the Queen Charlottes this summer (see Paddling to Ninstints for the first) was in the company of six folks from NW Oregon/SW Washington -- who paddled Easy Rider decked canoes. In my high-volume single sea kayak I was hard pressed to keep up with the Easy Riders, which they paddled as doubles, using 260 - 270 cm kayak paddles. We were very heavily loaded, due to their style of camping, of which more later.

As the lone sea kayaker, I got to be "veggie man," meaning, at the beginning of the trip, each morning I loaded 100 - 120 lbs of potatoes, cabbages, oranges, carrots, jicima, onions, etc., into my hatches, and ran the same package up lines each night (bear avoidance). [We had no negative encounter with our ursal cousins. We "shared" beaches with them everywhere. With good camp hygiene, they were a non-problem for us.]

The others carried seven sealed plastic buckets per double, one a 5-gallon pail loaded with four gallons of wine (!), and the others rectanguloidal affairs with maybe 4 gallons of volume per bucket. These were absolutely stuffed with food, kitchen gear, and the like, making for a payload which boggled the mind of this reformed back packer/climber. As veggie man, trucking along with my weenie (and diminishing, thank God!) 100+ lbs of produce, I felt like I was not holding up my end of the stick. Oh, yeah, they also had a milk box packed with canned goods in each boat!

The Easy Riders were equipped with nylon sprayskirts bungied to the fore and aft holes, and a similar spray cover bungied over the cavernous center hole. At 18 feet long, 38 inches wide in the center, and 22 - 24 inches deep, they were pigs in the wind, but pretty efficient for the load. Most were paddled *sitting on the deck,* which made for tremendous leverage and a very efficient vertical paddling style. I tried their style, but found it nerve-wracking as hell!

Despite the feeling I would tip over in a slight swell, the other folks paddled them with aplomb through moderate seas and chop, never missing a beat, except for one paddler whose only steering stroke was stern rudder! On flat water, I had to bust my ass to stay up. On windy/rough days, however, my reduced windage and foot-controlled rudder beat 'em to the beach regularly.

The capacity of the Easy Riders allowed us to cook over open fires, possible because of all the driftwood. We only had one campsite where driftwood was scarce, and carried a milk box full of dry stuff. This system worked very well.

They had monster fry pans and kettles, which exploited the high surface area/low temperature character of beach fires. Aside from my role as the fresh fiber guy, I also packed a small white gas stove as our backup. Mainly, this was used to expedite hot drinks on early launch mornings when we ate cold granola and did not have a fire, and to dispense the single-source, espresso-grind Venezuelan coffee I hid under the veggies at night. One couple claimed the stuff to be a powerful aphrodisiac -- I think they were just bragging, though they DID pitch their tent a long ways from the rest of us ... on coffee nights.

We spent fifteen days on the water, three of those being rest/storm days. With a drop-off at Raspberry Cove near the southern tip of Moresby Island (Queen Charlotte Adventures; nice converted troller with inside seating), the fifteen days was about right for the 130 mile return to Moresby Camp. We did not take the most direct route! However, we visited all the Haida Watchman sites, from Ninstints to Skedans (K'una), and did an "end run" around one outside section on a marginal day, which added a good ten miles to our route. Most paddling days we did 10 - 15 miles in 3 - 4 hours; our marathon was a 26-miler (8 - 10 hours), which about toasted my forearms and wrists! Certainly my most exhausting paddleday ever, with the load of veggies below decks.

I had never visited the northerly sections of Moresby Island before, and found them as fascinating as the southerly reaches of the Park though larger-featured. Because the Hotsprings Island/Skungwai corridor is heavily promoted, solitude is more available north of Hotsprings. Watchman-guided tours at Tanu and K'una were better-done, and allowed closer looks at totems and house sites than at Ninstints. In addition,we experienced little competition for campsites in the north.

In the south, we twice raced others to the beach (won one; lost the other) to get choice sites. And, Parks rules stipulating 12 campers maximum per beach were violated routinely at Raspberry Cove. One of the two nights we spent there we had an Ecosummer group (12), a couple from Everett, WA, and a foursome from Massett, as well as our seven bodies. Talk about public intertidal flush!

Random observations: a rat on Murchison nailed a dry bag for the nuts one of us stupidly left inside; there were way too many bodies at Hotsprings; Burnaby Narrows at low, low tide was amazing; there is a mystery cabin on Burnaby near Swan Bay; we caught (and ate) WAY too many rockfish; poor vibes at the RV park in Sandspit (but the only coin-operated hot shower stall around); believe the signs about logging road closures (we did not, to our regret); bring a head net for the bugs; beach-camping is not always possible; composting toilets (Watchman sites only) were very popular and are needed elsewhere; rained almost every day, though this did not prevent travel, despite one paddler who left her rain gear home, because the last time she was in the Charlottes it did not rain (!).

A "wilderness experience" it ain't, for the most part, with zodiacs and the odd cruiser zipping by, float planes plopping down, "mothership" yak groups clustered in popular places, and brightly-clad guided groups drifting along.

However, it was an incredible experience, doing the entire length of Moresby, and there are a lot of out-of-the-way spots for a person with a little extra time and just a little imagination.
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Wavelength list server, 1998.
Republished here with permission.

Day After Halloween

Two weeks of a head/chest/throat cold put me down pretty bad, so Sunday's paddle is more an assertion of vitality than an exploration. Vitality yields to exploring, nonetheless.

A couple dozen pickups and boat trailers signal that the duck hunters are in high gear, with maybe one rig from other yakkers. Heading up the Clifton Channel into an eight knot breeze, coffee sloshing inside, it feels good to work the tissues. Why is this yak so tight? Oh, yeah, those ten pounds had to go on somewhere. Maybe if I put on enough weight, I can skip this wetsuit. Grumble, grumble.

Shotguns in the distance, blooping away. Turn left inside Welch, head for the slough passage cutting across the island, pausing in the rushes for food. No eagles. One hawk. Lots of widgeons and teal, all skittering away from me. Mallards jump up, gadwals following. Coots don't care -- they know they taste bad.

No hunters in the slough -- surprise! Up to the other end, opening onto the main stem of the River, turn left to a sandy beach. And, what a beach -- the dredge has added ten vertical feet of spoils here, almost squeezing out a goose blind, sunken into the sand. Wonder if the channel deepening will leave any of these areas alone.

Bagel and cheese, more coffee, rejected Halloween candy. All the important food groups!

Back into the water, upriver a half mile, and down Multnomah (Red) Slough, as the wind drops. Boat at the government float house, generator thumping, hey there! nice bunch of ducks! Yeah, we did OK. My old buddy Tom appears, admires the plywood surfaces of the yak, and we discuss how long a duck should "hang" before the meat is aged properly. These ducks look well-hung, in the metaphorical sense, anyway.

Sliding away from the float and the generator thump, back to the Clifton Channel as now the breeze becomes a tailwind. Swell too small to surf, too big to ignore, as the head begins to clear and the lungs whimper. Where did all these sore muscles come from? Oh, yeah, I forgot -- after fifty, if it doesn't hurt, it doesn't work. A Muehlbergism to remember.

Duck hunters returning to the ramp, two in poke boats, staggering across the channel, canoe paddles working like fury against the quickening current. One is losing this game, and slips into the eddy below the ramp's float. He is panting, but reaches the float only minutes after his partner. No, we did not get any, but we had fun, anyway.

Only six duck hunter rigs remain, but a new green SUV with yak racks is behind me. Wonder if that's Ken? He must have chickened out on the overnight for Halloween. Trick or treaters won't visit these islands! Peel the wetsuit, drink the coffee, back to town. Head and chest are better, mind is much improved. I think I like this stuff.

Happy Halloween, folks!
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Paddlewise mailing list on 11/1/1998.
Republished here with permission.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

Well, it was more like twenty, or maybe twenty five. Anyway, it finally quit raining and blowing like fury around here, and I got in two paddle trips in two days, after a too-long hiatus. In Tillamook they're portaging cows to high ground, and Hwy 101 is under water for a few days. Here, everything is wet, and the hooded merganzers don't know they are socializing in a mud puddle because it looks like a lake.

One trip was a 10-12 mile circuit in the islands, dodging waist-high mist with shotgun bloops in the distance as duck hunters cleaned out the remainder of the stupid mallards. Low-grade compass work made quick work of a beeline to an island off the shipping channel. As the mist cleared, I shot across the channel to the Washington shore. The main feature was a two mile gunkhole along a steep weeping wall shoreline, complete with red-breasted sapsuckers, and myriad waterfalls, culminating in cheese and bread on a quiet, sunny float in Skamokawa, WA. Nobody else thought to paddle that day, but the Refuge guys were out spying on critters to clean up the Xmas bird count. No, I can't join you, I only have neoprene booties to wear. Heavy rainfall made for swift current on the return.

The other was a solo high water exploration along the east shoreline of Long Island, Willapa Bay, WA, making the best of a 12 foot tide. All the dikes were awash, and all the backwaters were open. Only a couple lone buffleheads, one solid redtail, a handful of flickers, the usual gang of rowdy crows, and three dozen mallards were around. Where do all the other waterfowl go at high tide? Is it too deep for them? Too wet? Puff. Puff. Too much food. Not enough exercise. How did this sprayskirt get so tight? Must shrink in the wet. One solitary full-sector rainbow, internally backlit, as the rain shimmers down. On the return, mist in the face, and a grebe surfaces ten feet away on the starboard side, ponders my stroke, and plops down.

Where were all the other people? Too easy, and too much fun. Work returns next week.

Who needs 70 degree weather and shirtsleeves? Who wants solid water to slide over?
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1998 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Originally posted on Paddlewise mailing list on 12/31/1998.
Republished here with permission.

Randy Does Not Get to Frankfort

Thirteen of us congregated on a small pocket beach on the Washington shore of the Columbia a few miles below Skamokawa Saturday night for a wonderful saturnalia of food, laughter, companionship, rain, wind, and water. Some braved the eddies and current rips running off points on the WA shore as they paddle-drifted five miles downstream from Skamokawa, and others pumped their way upstream five miles from Harrington Point, during the small mid-afternoon window of slack current.

This endeavor began as a four-person retreat, and blossomed uncontrollably as friends told others about the plan. Eventually it included my long-time friend and oatmeal-expert Randy (and his sweet SO Beth), who brought along Debbie the bar pilot and Mary the Alaska PA. Mary (different one) and spouse Link (of the Pitt River Band) putt-putted across the eddies with a whole chinook and more damn potatoes than any fifteen natives could eat. Our contribution was a trademark stir fry, Gary contented himself with fresh strawberries over shortcake and french toast, while Beth noodled along to the tune of chocolate chip macaroons (to use up those otherwise-wasted extra egg whites).

Oh, yeah, this was a paddle trip -- mainly, to test out the late spring showers, and for Randy, a chance to see Frankfort.

Frankfort is an abandoned town platted in the 1890's as the western terminus of a speculator's grand railroad scheme (failed, naturally). Never amounted to much, past a hotel, grocery, post office, two-three dozen houses, and a few thousand tons of upriver brights landed in the heyday of the Columbia River salmon fishery. My colleague Pat delivered fish, mail, and supplies in the '60's, near the end of Frankfort's isolation from a land access. As loggers penetrated closer to Frankfort, eventually roads connected it to modern highways, eliminating the river focus which had been its charm and economic mainstay for seventy years.

It is almost a mythical spot, swallowed up in maples and conifers, with patches of domesticated-gone-wild botanicals revealing moss-covered homesites. Here and there is a ramshackle, rotten framework, engulfed in alder, brambles, and green slime. A monster hanging-tree maple (four people's outstretched wingspans around) must have been at the town "square," but now is just the upland locus for fallen-down hippie-houses nearer the river. A year ago the sheriff had to come out and collar a squatter who had been scaring people off by firing a rifle over their heads. Neighbors still own homesites there, anticipating a land boom in the 22nd century, I guess.

And Randy had never been there, in twenty years of trying! Some trips overland, and at least three on the water. So, on Sunday, Randy and Beth set off with mongo 270 cm paddles flying from the upper deck of their Easy Rider double, skirting lagoons and dodging freighters in the channel, determined fire in the stern paddler's eye. Eight miles out of camp, ebb humping us all quickly past double-crested, croaking(!) cormorants on nests to upper Rice Island, the VHF crackled with George's (remember him?) query: are we going to Frankfort? Sure, we'll meet you there.

Off they went (I guess -- I couldn't see them), directed to a point on the WA shore by Gary, long-time oceanographer, and frequent-Frankfort-visitor. We rounded the upper end of the island, expecting a lateral parade of paddlers, strung out across our path across the Bay, heading to mythical Frankfort ... ahhhh, nope, no paddlers there ... maybe to our right or left? Nope. Oh, well, Gary knows this area, and Debbie is a bar pilot -- they can navigate!

Paddle, paddle, look, look. Man! They must be way ahead of us -- wish I could raise George on the radio -- he only turns it on to talk (initials are GAB, comprende?). Ah, there's Gary and fiance' Roberta -- and NO ONE else, right at Frankfort. The others? Gary misdirected them to the wrong point, some three miles east of us! Half an hour and a few terse radio exchanges later, Frankfort-less Randy and company are on their way down to us, as we all hustle against the building afternoon breeze, fighting adverse wind to the takeout, some three-four miles downriver from Frankfort. No time to go ashore.

Randy is pissed! He even went into the blackberries at the wrong point, sniffing around for houses! We decide to have T-shirts made: "I've been to Frankfort -- but Randy hasn't!" Or, to put a sign in Randy's garden: "Frankfort" so he can say he's been there. Or, maybe it's like Brigadoon, just a state of mind, and Randy can't see it ... we don't know.

But, we had fun, Randy still has Frankfort in his future, and everyone got suntanned and tired (some more than others!).

Never go to Frankfort -- just enjoy the journey!
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1999 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Republished here with permission.

A Fine, Bone Day

Too nice a day for housework. Too antsy, too. The ridge of high pressure is easing east of us, and another low is creeping ashore, maybe arriving day after tomorrow, producing moderate outflow down the Columbia River drainage -- maybe 15 knots of east wind.

Time for the Bone.

The Bone is a little protected piece of tidal estuary/river on the uphill end of Willapa Bay, WA. Only 3 - 4 miles of tidal stuff, and another short mile of low-gradient "river," flatwater on big tides. Today was a big one -- maybe highest of the year.

Boats plopped onto the salt grass. Clammy rubber met warm flesh. Do all nice things start with brief discomfort? Sort gear, stow it, eat it, and stuff it. Pop into cockpits and push off. Buffleheads all over, and not shy either. Males are bobbing their mating dance -- three months to wait boys -- save it! The females seem unimpressed.

Push, push, push. A dozen lesser yellowlegs, startle, and cheep cheep away. Brilliant light and clear, cool air, brown crispy strands of tall grass, lichen-slathered alders and crabapples on the old dike. Washwater grey snags and black-green spruces. Chocolate water. Invisible mud.

A mile up, mallards and wigeons jumping off the wet marsh. There's a loud bunch! Nope. That's a herd of elk, slopping through the swamp! A dozen heads and more buffy butts. No antlers, and silently the last melts into new growth.

James Swan settled in this drainage in the late nineteenth century, living off the oyster trade and extracting artifacts from the Chinooks. Swan eventually visited many of the natives on the BCcoast, including the Charlottes, settled in Port Townsend, WA, and ended his sojourn on this planet a lonely drunk. Are these his dikes? Some of the spruces are old enough. Not his elk.

Nobody lives here now, and the place is a "natural area," recognized in law and practice as a preserve for marsh critters and peace of mind. The river is a navigable waterway, and now and then someone runs an outboard up it. More often, paddlers are alone here, though once I saw two rifle-totin' good old boys hustling a big Grumman up to where they had laid out their elk. No PFD's, but good-lookin' rifles -- maybe they were gonna shoot their way out if the canoe turned turtle? Just a little mystery.

The banks are closing in, and the water is slacking, as we slide over a big deadhead, normally an insurmountable barrier to upstream exploration. As the tide turns, so do we, for bagels, cheese, Almond Roca, and strong coffee at a bankside pause. Time for home, and the tide races with us, back past the buffies and the splatters of the elk, up onto put-in mud and grass.

Not a bad way to start the last year of the century.

---
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 1/3/1999.
Republished here with permission.

The Frosty Betrothal

It was an ugly rumor, but the source was impeccable: my ex-wife said our son got an email from my long-time paddling buddy's daughter that the paddling buddy was planning to get married to his girl friend of four years' duration. This news came an hour before we were to launch on the first overnight paddling trip of 1999, our companions ... the lovely couple.

Naturally, I did not believe the rumor, so I confronted our duo at the launch site. Yup, it was true. The first decent weekend of 1999, and it was already ruined. I don't know what got into those two. Is it my fault? Was there some deadly pheromone in those two pink plastic flamingoes I planted outside their tent last spring? We'll never know!

Ah well, time to schlepp upriver from Brownsmead (OR, USA), levering the Folbot into the upstream-flowing current (tidal reversal here) of the Columbia River, and sweetly admonishing the beautiful lady in the bow compartment to paddle forward!

A terrible day -- sunny, comfy, 40 degree water, no motorboats, shipping traffic crackling on the VHF, mergansers launching on the port side, buffleheads bobbing to starboard, and eagles aloft ahead. Oh man! Gonna get married, and to each other, no less. Must have been those 90 days straight of rain. And Hagen said rain doesn't hurt you ... "revel in it!" Yeah, right.

Becky and I are slow, but the lovers are slower, and what is normally an hour and fifteen minutes stretches to two hours plus, as we drift and slide in the sunshine and crisp air. Finally, the upper end of Tenasillahee Island appears, and we skirt a couple lazy steelhead boats as we gouge the sandy bank, much retreated from its position last fall. Lots of erosion this winter -- thanks to La Nina! Dredge spoils of coarse sand are clean, well-drained, and this site is sheltered, also.

An hour later, and serious wine consumption and guacamole ingestion have commenced, in celebration of the inevitable nuptials. Firewood gathered, puffed into flame, and fajitas are enroute over the campstove. Man! It's nippy! More wine -- antifreeze would be better, but this will have to do. After topping off with pound cake under a drizzle of kahlua and raspberries, time for intense harassment. They're too old to "have" to get married, there's no reason to consolidate houses, wait, now I know, it's a simple case of needing cash to finance that basement project. The groom-to-be denies it, but I sense a quivering lip. Or is that just shivering!

Stagger off to tent, stuff my body in the bag, with Becky inside her fleece cocoon inside the bag, and we take turns initiating pee-breaks all night. How can two pairs of bladders be so active? Must be the cold, as rime builds on the tent fly. Day dawns with a chilling fog, and freighters drift through, booping and beeping. Geese herluk! herluk! overhead, seeking a warm landing zone. The sweety gets her tea in bed, and I stoke the fire and help make coffee, sausage, french toast. More stomach groaning, but man! It's cold! Gotta eat.

Sunshine melts off the frost, and we saddle up, launch, and fight the ebb current up around the head of the island, swinging into a freighter wake as it breaks in the shallows just behind us. Crossing eddylines into the tail current, past abandoned gill net sheds and old cannery sites, lumping past the old wooden drydocks (in salvage for their mongo timbers). More mergansers, a couple more eagles overhead, and geese, geese, geese! Nature's winning, here, I think!

Just an hour home, tail current and tail wind as helpers, and we unload in the shallows, losing our immersed feet to the water, and stagger our loads to the pickup.

This is fun, fun, fun, fun. Impending marriage or not. Wonder if I'm best man ... probably not ... maybe they'll change their minds and just live in sin. That sounds like more fun to me!

Happy boating!
---
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 3/17/1999.
Republished here with permission.

Green River, Utah

My son Ian (26) and I (54) just spent four days paddling down the lowest 50 miles of the Green River, a classic desert flatwater experience. Might even tempt me to delve into the desert again, though I truly do love the eight feet of rain we get here on the Oregon coast (where the landscape really is butt-ugly, has terrible mudslides *right on the roadway,* and all the natives smell bad!). Yeah, Kansas, Bradford. Anyway ...

March is normally a time of mixed weather in this portion of Utah, with others reporting some rain, a little snow, and sometimes annoying headwinds along the Green, up into April. We saw only a couple afternoons of 10 knot headwinds, and basked in fine 70 F days and 40 F nights, with a little overcast one day. No naked base jumpers, though we heard rumors ...

Because we were wedded to a hasty trip, I rented a green 15-foot Coleman canoe, paddles, the requisite human waste depository, and spare life jacket from Tagalong Expeditions, an outfitter in Moab, Utah. Along with a 40-mile jet boat extraction from the Confluence with the Colorado River, this set us back about half a kilobuck (and well worth it). Next time, I'd bring plastic sea kayaks or someone else's FG canoe! Other paddlers on the River who leapfrogged us were in hardcore WW Daggers and classic 17-foot Grummans. Did not seem to matter -- we all made about the same time, and were all smilin'!

The Coleman canoe was the perfect craft for this venture -- contrasting color, impervious to sand scrapes, absorbant of all verbal and geological abuse, and sturdy, stable, and dependable. Aesthetic? Well, no. But, it did *not* smell.

Our section of the Green is loosely labeled Stillwater Canyon, and is a mixed bag of open bottom land and steep-walled sandstone canyon. No rapids, not even any noticeable riffles at the midwater stage we saw, though when the water is low, there are supposedly a couple spots where you have to line up on the best slot. Even so, the current moves right along, maybe 4 knots in the swift parts, and down to 1 knot in the lazy sections. We paddled steadily, and managed our 15 mile days in perhaps three hours of work, interspersed with laziness and sidetrips.

The canyon scenery is impressive enough, but the sidecanyons are the biggest treat. Ones with water are miniature studies in vegetative adaptation to hot and cold, wet and dry, with conifers adjacent to barrel cacti, and sometimes a fully-leafed-out cottonwood for seasoning. We also explored one Anasazi ruin on foot at Fort Bottom, and ogled a dozen others from the riverbank. In between there were early-50's uranium mine adits to admire, a couple old (turn of the century?) line cabins, and the odd brush corral, all relics of the speckled past for this region. Between the cowpokes and the miners and the modern rafters, this place has seen it all! Loosely flanking the east shore of the river is the White Rim Trail, a mainly-unobtrusive, sometimes close, but usually distant 4WD route frequented by a couple dozen rigs a day. I was never annoyed by it, and never even noticed vehicles, especially after we dropped below its level. My son grumbled about it. It's a generation thing, I guess.

In March, campsites abound, though the tamarisk is a pain, and we apparently usurped another party's "chosen" sites two nights running. The third night, their 12-year-old enforcer was waiting at their last site, plaintively begging us not to "take" their spot. We just laughed, and moved down the bank a hundred yards. The next morning, his Mom and aunt were plying us with dollar bills for the remnants of our TP, as they had forgotten to bring any! We were gallant, of course.

We say several dozen ducks, mostly small guys I could not identify, but a couple pairs of mallards, a merganzer (swear to god!), a large handful of Canada geese (in the desert?), kingfishers, a golden eagle or two, and a bunch of warbler-type birds I don't recognize. Too early for swallows, though nests were common. One of the Canada geese barely escaped becoming dinner for a large cat (could have been a mountain lion, though might have been a really large bobcat -- the encounter was a long ways away and at dusk). Lots of evidence of beaver, sucker-type fish jumping in the shallows, and NO BUGS! And, *no motors.*

Next time, I'd allot twice the time, for side canyon exploration and more ruin ogling.

Equipment notes: we paddled in farmer johns because the water was cold, and sweltered a little. A month or so later, the water should be warm enough you would not need the neoprene. Because the water is so mellow, I doubt anybody but a true klutz could fall in! Take hand lotion, fruit juice, bagels, hard candy to suck on, sunscreen up the wazoo (on it, too), several T-shirts, and enough clothing to wait out snow showers. I got a little cold in my "summer" sleeping bag, and my son did fine in a heavier bag.

Nice place, nice time of year! Now back to that work thing!
---
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 3/27/1999.
Republished here with permission.

Columbia River

Scuttling down the side channel toward the River was more work than usual, what with the head wind and the heat. Seventy degrees in April? Give me a break! Pleasure boaters out working the lower units of their outboards for the first time of the season putt-putted amiably past us, waving lazily in the heat. One was a mother-daughter pair, mom smoking a filter-tip cigarette in leisurely fashion as grown-up daughter handled the throttles.

Cormorants overhead, all headed upriver, at altitude, too. Must be a bunch of new smolts released from a hatchery somewhere. On reaching the main stem, we spied two terns, foraging upriver some 20 miles from their nesting zone, perhaps displaced by a project to move the tern colony away from down-river-bound smolts.

Out in the main stem, from a mile away, we spot a tent and what looks like a yellow raft on our prized campsite on Dead Wild Pig Island. Oh, no! Our favorite spot, taken over by power boaters in the off season! Babble ensues between stern and bow boaters about alternatives. Yeah, next to that big cottonwood on the channel side would be good, unless it gets windy. Paddle paddle discuss discuss.

As we get closer, we see the tent is a shaggy dome occupied by a solid, round shape and the yellow raft is really an inflatable yak. Looks vaguely familiar ... oh, yeah, that guy John from Longview we saw out here three years ago. Wonder if it's him?

When we pull ashore, the guy hollers out, "Is that you, Dave?" Yup, it's John, and all is well. Sure, he would welcome some company, and so would Max, his dad's ankle-height Shi-tzu, all of 10 years old and as friendly as they come.

The sun bakes us as the wind drops to zero and we sweat, sweat, sweat. Lolling and eating commence in earnest, interspersed with obligatory tent-pitching on the best viewpoint for freighters and tugs (several show, sending monster surges over the flats below the tent). Later, the wind picks up, eventually hitting a solid twenty knots with gusts to 25, and we are grateful the cottonwood on the other side was not our shelter, because an afternoon walk shows it roots-up, another casualty of high water this winter (thank you, La Nina).

Hiding behind a diminishing grove of cottonwoods, dinner gets cooked and eaten, complete with a Max and John visit. John paddled some 150 plus miles of the River from Umatilla to Longview seven years ago, in his inflatable, but job and school have kept him off the river except for weekends since then.

Rain comes and goes all night, with moderate wind and a bright half-moon. Morning shows mist and breeze, cut by hot Sumatran coffee and hearty oatmeal. Max and John pack up to catch residual flood tide back to the WA side as we move slowly to gather gear and spy on chickadees and white-crowned sparrows dodging each other in the brambles. Becky is the packer today -- her compulsive SO having barked at her yesterday about differences in packing styles. Old guys should be smarter than that.

The wind rises again, sending a steady stream of whitecaps past our launch point and we debate the best timing. Before the front? Or is it past? There's a clear spot. Now? Yes! Hustle hustle bustle stuff back into the Folbot, slide into the slimy wet suit and paddle jacket, push into the water, and struggle with the damn spraydeck. Curse Folbot's half-ass engineering! Why couldn't they make a real spraydeck! Two waves wash into the cockpit before we are reasonably wave-tight and head across the whitecaps. Half an hour later, we ease into the backwater and munch on goodies and clean our glasses, sheltered from the wind.

A few miles of wind-aided slow paddling later, and we are back at the float, no pleasure boaters in sight, as winter returns to the Columbia again.

Thank you, Ma Nature, for another embrace!
---
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 4/25/1999.
Republished here with permission.

Stuck in the Brokens with only 13 liters of wine

Six of us spent six days in the Broken Group, Barkley Sound, launching from Toquart Bay. We hoped to "beat the crowds" by making use of a little window of decent weather which slid in before most of the rest of the world was free for the summer. We succeeded -- but did not have enough wine -- perhaps a benefit to our livers, but not our dispositions!

We spent three nights at THE primo site on Clarke and a night each at nice spots on Hand and Gibraltor. Few others competed for our tent sites, running about 10 persons per night where we camped -- a small number of bodies -- although we heard of crowding on Willis and Gilbert. The only crowding we experienced was a horde of over 20 bald eagles feasting on a couple really ripe sea lion carcasses in a small cove on Wouwer. Never did figure out the pecking order, though there was plenty of vocalizing by the mature birds!

Generally, we had decent weather, with three days mostly sunny and two mostly rainy/misty. On our exit day, a stiff 10 - 15 knot westerly breeze greeted us on the Toquart-Stoppers crossing, a challenge for our less-experienced paddlers. Even so, the never-been-in-dicey-conditions grampa (63) made it in style, breaking the cherry on his Pygmy Queen Charlotte XL with aplomb and a way-laid-back stance in the cockpit. Our high-maintenance paddler had no trouble and no one wanted to lay paddle down to jabber on the radio.

The evening of our exit, the young pups (two Bellinghamsters and the queen of Astoria) managed to dump our ER doc on a boomer off the west end of Gibraltor. No harm was done, aside from a lost camera and a damaged male ego, thanks to excellent training in George Gronseth's kayak academy. Bow-to-bow rescue had him back in his boat within 2 minutes. Five minutes afterward, he was pumped out and paddling! Many thanks to George's fine instruction and rescuers Linda and Belinda.

Otherwise, we had an uneventful trip. At present (6/18), no warnings have been issued for PSP contamination of shellfish, so we enjoyed mussels galore to replace the flank steak that got left at home.

The scuttlebutt from the fare-taker was that Benson is slated for some degree of closure, maybe just for overnight use, perhaps related to possible archeological studies (?). We could not verify this. 'Twould be a shame, as the campsites on Benson were in exceptionally good shape, as was the spouting horn on its west shore.

Fishing was very mediocre, though I caught a couple sub-legal ling cod. A 65 cm minimum length for keepers makes for a lot of catch-and-release fishing. Recommended: barbless hooks for those seeking lings.

Great trip, greast place.
---
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 6/20/1999.
Republished here with permission.

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.

Sanity Paddle

Last night we discovered the 16-year-old next door had penetrated the drywall separator between his apartment's attic and his neighbor's in a botched attempt to pilfer goodies. We figured we were next. Some intense negotiating resolved this to our satisfaction, but generated a lot of tension.

Time for a little paddle relief.

Murky here, but driving east to the putin brought out the sun. At launch, it was downright hot -- for Oregon, anyway. No wet suit today, with water temps in the high 60's.

The launch site is the source of a conflict between the County and the landowners, with the County wanting to place a fancy ramp, 200-foot-long float, and big parking lot. The landowners are against that, mainly for the traffic and hassles it will bring. None of the paddlers want any of that stuff, either. All we need is a sandy beach and a portapotty. Right now it's a standoff, with the old funky float pulled, so power boaters have a difficult time launching. The landowners are willing to fund replacing the old floats, and most boaters would be happy if the County maintained a portapotty. Contemplating the funky floats and thinking about the conflict makes me work a little faster to get in the water.

My little wooden yak is my day boat, 'cause it is light and quick. Gliding across the current, several dozen geese Herluck! their way overhead and plop down in the adjacent channel, soon to be displaced as I slide into their view. Off they go, like slow bombers. Only a few are of this year's hatch.

Muscles are likin' this -- feels good to pull hard and move fast. No rudder, just solid footpegs. The hull feels like an extension of my lower body.

As it gets shallow, heading across to the shipping channel, I steer around the obvious shoals and hope I guess right. Tide's rising, so eventually I'd get off, anyway. Here comes a small freighter down the channel -- maybe I'll get to wakesurf! Nope -- all the energy is dissipated on the sandbar a couple hundred yards ahead, where the terns and gulls are hanging out. The waves really piss 'em off, and they rise squawking!

I edge right, to Fitzpatrick Island. Fitzpatrick is a dredge spoil creation, and is getting smaller each year. This winter, the north shore steepened and slid away, narrowing the island by several yards. Couple more winters like the last, and there won't be any "land" left, just several herky nav marker emplacements. Ashore and pop out of the yak, sweaty and wet. Hook a seat on a log and munch on goodies, enjoying the terns and their goofy fishing plops. You'd think they'd get a headache!

Motion at the flotsam line catches my eye. Many little birdheads thirty yards away bring out the binocs. Man, there are **fifty** sandpipers over there! I sneak around behind them in the bushes and close the distance to ten yards. As I lift my head and spy through the glasses, their beady eyes balefully meet mine. They are suspicious, but content if I stay here. Some cease working the insect population over and watch me. Others ferret out their lunch. I lower myself and slink back to the lunch log. Now, what was it that drove me out here? Can't remember.

Launch and power upstream around the upper end of the island, bouncing across the freshening breeze-riffled waters. Another mile, and I'm back in the side channel, bearing down on the launch ramp, with a lone boater winching his Alumacraft onto the trailer. On the beach, a new mountain bike track graces the sand. I unpack everything, wondering why I carry all this stuff on a sunny, beautiful day. Slide the yak on top of the pickup, and slowly wend my way back along the dike road, finger-waving at the locals as I munch my lunch. I take the long way home and hit the Logger Cafe for marionberry pie and coffee, gruffly dispersed by an ample logger's wife.

Sanity paddle. Two hours on the water. Twenty points down on the blood pressure scale.
---
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 7/28/1999.
Republished here with permission.

A Maui Day on the Columbia

Nancy the art teacher would like to own a sailboat. She likes to sail, and on Tuesdays she does, with a buddy from Portland. The sailboat of her dreams disappeared, or drifted further into her future, after a week's kayaking with an outfitter in the San Juans. Seduced by paddling, she found a terrific deal on a 10-year-old Arluk III in Portland. That was in July.

Since then, she and her partner (who also bought a yak) have been hitting the water regularly around here, doing the backwaters and sloughs on the Columbia River. She and I crossed paths last week in a coffee shop, and set yesterday for a day paddle out of Aldrich Point, on the OR side of the Columbia River. Her friend Debbie came along for the yuks. Nancy used to hit the beaches on the islands midriver, years ago with her kids, when it was legal to camp on the islands.

A late morning start, and we plop into the warm water as a threesome, jabbering away and drifting down with the current below Woody Island, home to a dozen float homes, crude jewels studding the edge of the channel. Around the point and onto Nancy's old beach. She searches out where her kids played in the sand when they were little. Now they are driving cars and dealing with teenage sexuality and angst. The old tent site is thick with head-high willows. Debbie trudges along dutifully and plays the foil. It is noon -- hot, calm, and beautiful. We decide we must be on Maui, somehow,

Off the beach and across the shipping channel, pausing so Debbie can natter to a colleague who is piloting a freighter down the River. The captain is a friend, also, and taken aback at a call from a Columbia River Bar pilot on his port hand, from her sea kayak! The freighter's wake is the biggest ripple to pass under our hulls today as we zip across the channel and power over the eddyline below Jim Crow Point, hitting the sand and digging out lunch. Yakisoba noodles? Man! These ladies know how to tempt a hungry guy! My week-old PB and J seems pedestrian, but I trade hard candies for a bite of the Yakisoba/tofu combo.

Debbie and I admire the softening of this beach, a haven in May for an impromptu gathering of loosely-associated Astorians. The sand is warm, and the sun softens us, too. I am impatient to go, to show them the shore above here. We punch out across the eddyline, and I circle around to do it again, as they follow. Taking a slip of smooth water inside the main current, I slide along the cliff, within two feet of the rock wall. What's this? A pair of close-set eyes on a stalk of a neck? Arthur the river otter, just a baby, pops out of his shoreside nook and smoothly enters the water five feet off my bow. Did not know there were otters in Maui!

More strokes against the gentle current, past old rotting piles, once home for the gillnet fleet, past an abandoned rock crusher site next to a quarry, and up to Three Tree Point and another eddyline. Finally, the wind begins, two hours late, and Maui on the Columbia disappears. Edging across the channel again, no freighters in sight, pumping rhythmically for a mile. Dave misjudges the tide, and we skirt a mud flat -- chart says there should be water here! Too bad the chart lies!

Another half hour and we hit the launch beach, somebody else's kids bouncing and laughing in a game of "King of the Innertube" as Dad watches and smokes from the comfort of his pickup's cab. For us, the endorphins are our drug, and we three agree to paddle the Bone in a week. George, you missed a good one!

Who needs Maui anyway?
---
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 8/20/1999.
Republished here with permission.

Lazy Sojourn in the Deer Group -- August 1999

My SO Becky and I spent most of the last two weeks touring in the Deer Group -- a chain of islands in the southern part of Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, BC. This assembly of islands is the piece of Barkley Sound which was NOT included in the Pacific Rim National Park. The included archipelago is the well-known Broken Group, which we had visited several times previously.

To access the Deers we drove a killer logging road from Cowichan Lake, some 70 - 80 miles of high standard gravel track spiced with monster log trucks and yarding gear. The other route to the jumpoff point (tiny community of Bamfield) is only 50 miles of similar road, starting from Port Alberni. I think if we go back, we'll take the steamer (way more romantic!) and skip the log truck leapfrog! Bamfield is a prime locus for salmon-seekers, who flock in good years in the hundreds. This being a bad summer for salmon, it was a good one for paddling solitude.

We assembled our Folbot Greenland II next to the boat ramp in Grappler Inlet (aka Port Desire) and stuffed it with gear and food for a week, planning a resupply mid-trip. Stroking past the Bamfield Marine Research Station, the Sound opened out, calm and quiet ... except for a dozen power boaters screaming out to seek salmon! Early afternoon found us on an island some three miles distant, completely owned by the Ohiat Band, which satisfied our needs for a sandy beach, windy bug-free spit, and lots of kelp-infested waters. (Careful readers of Mary Ann Snowden's guide "Island Paddling" will quickly ferret out which island this is.)

The Ohiats have a peripatetic guardian, Doreen, who comes by daily to collect the CDN$10/tent/night tariff, which we gladly surrendered for such a primo site. Other sites on Ohiat lands are similarly administered, although some Ohiat beaches are strictly off-limits. There are a few good tenting spots off Reserve land in the "outside" islands, but the Ohiats definitely have the best ones, albeit at times all Ohiat lands are forbidden.

There commenced days of sloth and paddling activity, in roughly equal numbers, to feed our minds with books to read and our muscles with miles to cover. In mid-trip, we shifted to some islands between Sandford and Fleming, hooking on a venture back to Bamfield to replace our mega-moldy bagels and diminishing water supplies. Two days later, we pursued the results of a recon around Fleming Island to an unnamed cove on the outside of Tzartus Island (the largest of the chain -- some 5-6 miles long and a mile or two across), avoiding a popular island nearby which suffers from too much "use" by folks who do not understand the principle of the intertidal flush.

All of these islands have bipolar coastlines: an "inside" one fairly uniform in contour and having the odd hospitable beach, and an "outside" one well-dissected with surge channels, sea caves, and arches. We did not see any big surf, but winters make the "outside" piece of coastline dichotomy a very sporting proposition.

At the end of our trip, we returned to Doreen's island for another two nights, and circumnavigated the outermost islands, garlanded with a few dozen powerboaters seeking salmon and a short double handful of huge sea lion bulls. The last day, Hayley Shephard dropped by for soup and a PB and J sandwich on the last leg of her solo journey around Vancouver Island (see: http://www.oceanmaid.com/about-hayley-shephard.shtml a couple screens down for excerpts from her paddling Journal).

Finally, Bamfield beckoned, and we tore down the Folbot on a public float, accepting the hospitality of one of the fishing lodges for an overnight stay, courtesy of Mr. VISA. A hot shower and sit-down meal never satisfied so!
---
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR

Copyright 1999 by Dave Kruger.
May not be reproduced or redistributed without author's permission.
Republished here with permission.

A Bay Foray

Long Island, Willapa Bay, WA

We were a motley crew. Martha and Joe in their newish wooden yaks, me in my long-thrashed cargo barge, George in his newly-beseated Solstice, the sleekest of the lot, all followed by the 6 hp 12-foot aluminum skiff. Up the east side of the island, threading amongst oyster flats and dodging the shallows. Loon here, loon there. Pintails galore. Heron or two. Slow oyster barge wending south.

Fighting the tide and the wind, gradually at first, eventually head-on, real wrist-challenging stuff. Joe lags, and as I drift back, he explains that he is experimenting with his boat. I wonder if he realizes that if we do not head the island soon, we will fight the tide both ways instead of just one? I coax him out of the heavy current in the channel and we work the mild eddies along the shore, catching up to the others, the skiff now out of sight and around the point.

Across the shallows the chop is short and brutish, slopping us around. Beaching at the skiff, we all get wet in grungy swash, laughing at our ineptitude. Mary and Link, skiff people, have a fire, and have explored the midden ground, locating a scraper and some worked bone (human?). P B and J, crackers, slam down a juice and a candy bar, and relaunch ... that tide window is closing! Martha and Joe discover the value in quickly closing the cockpit, a lesson in wet lapness.

Now the ten knots is at our rear quarter, forming over-the-deck wavelets to annoy the rudderless and wet us all, top to bottom, from paddlespray. Punch it out, work the chop, as the skiff takes a couple over the stern and Link works the handpump.

The island's cliffside shows the effects of nine feet of winter rain, one slump so large it takes some of the island's "ridge" road. Others are slumplets.

George and Joe lag, Martha jets ahead, and the skiff disappears, leaving me alone but in sight of the others. This is a peculiar kind of isolation, in which I can see the others stroke, and wonder at their mental state, extrapolating from their body language what they think. Looks like Martha will be complaining -- she is paddling on one side only. For George to be this far behind, his seatback must be killing him. (The next day he is first to the takeout: "I'm not gonna be last to the beach two days in a row!") Joe is an enigma, perhaps watching birds, maybe experimenting again, or possibly scared shitless, his first experience with a following sea. I dawdle, but the laggers lag further, and Martha gets smaller in the distance.

As we round Jensen Spit into gentler water, Link comes up on 16 and I tell him we are all in sight of camp, where he and Mary have already hauled out the chain saw to make rounds from windfall. Eventually, we drag our tired arms up the beach, a tough fifteen miles, and barely ahead of the falling tide.

Pot luck progressive eating commences, mixing mega-garlic bread, fresh tabouli, chips and salsa, with a crunchy vegie stir fry, chased with cheese and crackers, steak, and Jello cheesecake. Who dreamed up this menu? Certainly not a nutritionist!

The night is clear, with a gigantic moon, illumination for several bladder forays -- too much wine! Herons grawk and swash slaps as the tide rises and falls again. In the morning, the Bay is empty, and Joe and Martha swap lies about birds, Joe claiming 8 loons in half an hour. We hear them but can not see them. Instead we opt for a hike up the road, inspecting the slide.

As the tide approaches maximum, all launch, and George is gone, beating the skiff home around the south end of the island. Other campers are at Pinnacle Rock, several thousand dollars of nylon decorating the beach, and a few kilobucks of glass and plastic shoring up the gravel.

At the ramp, George is exultant, a mood which carries over to "round food" in town. George is on a healthy kick, so his is salad, the rest of us, pizza and beer. Debriefing commences, and plans for another Bay foray jell.

The boats are smiling.
---
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 9/30/1999.
Republished here with permission.

That Airedale Pup

That Airedale pup has brought new life to Albert and Leena. Swinging on the end of a stick Albert grabbed. Albert is gregarious enough, but when he sees boats at the putin, including a beautiful bairdarka some daytripper has, he can't stop talking. As one of the two landowners who control my favorite River putin, he always gets my undivided attention. Plus, he has great stories, and is a master woodworker to boot. If Albert and his neighbor have to shut down Aldrich Point over their squabble with the County, dozens of sea kayakers, a couple hundred duck hunters, and many more rubberneckers will be sorely disenfranchised. If that happens, I'll hope Albert still likes me half as well as he likes his Airedale, so I can sneak across the dike from Albert's back yard, when the ramp and beach go under.

Enough politics. Slide those boats off. Haul gear, shivering in the pre-noon coolness. Maybe 6 knots of downriver breeze. Becky is eager -- she has not been on an overnighter in two months -- so she has the yaks packed before I am done jawing with Albert, the baidarka guy, three friendly duck hunters, and the Airedale. Duck hunters shag gear and pack up. Albert ambles. The baidarka guy lifts his boat with one finger and lightly lilts to the water. Becky eyes me and I slink off her direction. She is a stern mistress ... paddling awaits.

We fight a little head current to the top of the island across the channel and slip into smooth tail current, turning past Tronsen and along the upstream edge of Woody Island, barely sliding over the shallows leading to the main stem of the River. Tail wind and tail current make for an easy trip over to the Point and onto the beach.

This seems like cheating -- only 45 minutes of paddling! Nobody here! And nobody has been here in a couple weeks, with scattered fire ashes and smoothed footprints near the fishers' shack. Lunch slides down easily and we kick back in the sun. Sun? Oregon? In mid-October? 'Fraid so. Must be La Nina, softening us up for a wet, cold winter.

Tent pops up, gear out. Snacks go down, and we inspect the shoreline. Skittering fry in the shallows and a plethora of coon tracks add to the ambience. A hundred yards from the tent, a swath of branch swishes tells of a beaver shopping in the local willow emporium. An otter track complements Mr. Beaver's endeavor.

Puff, puff! This firewood is heavy! Gotta have coals for the weenies. Cedar strips for kindling, and away we go, spuds simmering on the stove. More celery and red pepper anointed with hummus and cream cheese to whet the appetite, before the big franks go down, followed by a cuppa joe and some high-maintenance cookies. Paddling is just an excuse to eat, methinks.

Only two freighters (grump, grump), and we're off to bed, just as a lone duck hunter sprints his skiff around the point, sees us in his overnight spot, and does a quick U-turn. In the night, half a moon lights a dozen freighters ghosting by. As it gets light a handful of tugs, hustling barges, wake us. And none too soon, either -- we were both cold in our summer sleeping bags, fleece comforter not withstanding. Must be old bones.

Coffee, fruit, and hearty oatmeal power us up for more basking, and a small navy boat lumbers by. We inspect Mr. Beaver's new swishings, dotted with the evidence of a do-si-do with Mr. Coyote. Buck teeth and big tail against fangs and speed. Wonder if the coyote fears the beaver? The beaver made off with his branch, by the evidence in the sand.

Against the current and against the tide, pulling hard, across the channel as we look both ways, remembering what Mom told us as kids. Duck hunters converge on the ramp and we hit the beach, reversing the gear shuffle. These duck hunters want to talk, too. One admires the boats and thinks he will get his wife into a double. She does not hunt, but loves the water.

So do we. Sanity has returned.
---
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 10/17/1999.
Republished here with permission.

Women of Bamfield

(I had written this last summer, and ha