Packrafting: Oregon's John Day River

 

Morning on the John Day River -- June 2021

There are many ways to be remembered after you’ve died, some better than others. John Day may have preferred to remain a footnote in history, where he’s been described as a “lanky, good-natured, forty-year-old"¹ hunter from Virginia who accompanied John Jacob Astor’s Astorians across the U.S. in the early 1800s in a bid to establish the first trading post on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Instead, he is immortalized in Central Oregon by a town, a river, and a national monument because he managed to stumble back to friendly settlements after being stripped naked and left in the wilderness by Native Americans perhaps in retribution for an earlier killing of two of their people by whites. The resulting PTSD by some accounts left him sometimes ranting and babbling incoherently. 

 

Peter Stark’s “Astoria,” an engaging book on the history of John Jacob Astor’s campaign to establish a trading presence at the mouth of the Columbia, provides more information on John Day’s fate and the difficulties of gaining a foothold in the Northwest, then a vast unmapped wilderness. Today, Central Oregon is neither wilderness nor unmapped, but it is beautiful, with rolling volcanic hills covered by grass and shrublands punctuated by forests, farms, and small towns kept alive during drought by water sucked from nearby rivers, including the John Day.

 

En route to our first packrafting trip, an easy 4-day float interrupted by a few minor rapids, Ellen and I stopped at three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, drove through the town of John Day, and finally, on the only rainy day in a month of traveling, along with our friends Brian and Jenny from Seattle, inflated our packrafts at Service Creek and headed down the river for four days to the Clarno takeout with flotillas of bass fisherman and families. The trip was a gentle introduction to packrafting. Drought had lowered the river enough so that the main challenges were dodging rocks and scraping bottom rather than getting pushed around in the infrequent rapids and riffles.  

 

 John Day died in 1819 or 1820 in Idaho at a place called “Day’s Defile.”

The John Day Fossil Beds. Trails lead only a short distance into the Monument, and off-trail hiking isn't allowed probably to prevent fossil collection.

Ellen descending from a viewpoint at the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds the day before we put-in.

Rigging our boats at the Service Creek put-in on the only rainy day of the trip. Brian (left), Ellen, and I used Alpacka Expeditions, and Jenny (right) floated in the sea kayak that she built herself. The sea kayak was faster on flat water, but not as suited to rocky rapids.

On the water. After this trip, Ellen and I had our boats retrofitted so that our gear could be stored inside the inflated boat tubes rather than strapped to the bow. 

Brian consulting the river guidebook. 

The river from one of the volcanic bluffs near our first campsite.

Packing up for a day of floating.

Ellen and Jenny scoping the river.

The Central Oregon landscape. The vegetation was crispy dry, which seemed surprising for Oregon in June. 

Brian and Ellen cooking breakfast at camp.

Packing up.

Ellen negotiating Homestead Rapid, the biggest on the trip. We scouted it since none of us had packrafting experience, but the line was straightforward in low water and required only dodging couple of rocks. 

Packrafts make good camp chairs. 

Ellen floating on flat water towards Cathedral Peak.

Camping in the Oregon Badlands SW of the takeout after the trip. 

1. Stark, Peter. 2014. Astoria: John Jacob Aster and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival. Ecco. 403 pgs.