In a rare social attempt we decided to attend the American Packraft Association Roundup on the Payette River in Idaho. I was skeptical this would really be the best venue to meet new adventure partners but was willing to give it a try once. It would hopefully give an opportunity to catch up with a couple friends I had not seen in years and get us on a variety of short whitewater runs that suited both mine and Heather's tastes. Looking at logistics, driving looked like the way to go to give us the most flexibility so we explored potential multi-day trips in the area before and after. A lot of our first choice options like the Bruneau and Owyhee rivers were already on a trajectory to drop too low by the time we got there but a friend suggested eastern Oregon's Grand Ronde River might be a good option. I knew nothing about the Grand Ronde at the time (and not too much more by the time we launched) but it seemed like a good opportunity to get in 46 miles of Class II semi-wilderness with trees and basalt.
We made shuttle arrangements and began our long drive ahead of the APA Roundup. We took a western approach through the Owens Valley. In hindsight we should have driven north from Bishop but just past Lee Vining we hit standstill traffic due to a bad car accident at the critical pinchpoint along the western shores of Mono Lake. This set us back over an hour on what was already going to be a long day of driving. Onward we drove past the mysterious military storage depot of Hawthorne (with bizarre recent storm damage along the road) and then onward past Walker Lake. Hours later we drove through the northern Nevada town of Winnemucca whose billboard proclaimed the dubious title of "Gateway to the Pacific Northwest" which was worth a laugh. We turned off the highway just as darkness set in to detour 20 miles into Paradise Valley. The hyper-dusty road meandered and jogged around fields and then eventually past some farmhouses. For the next several miles the road was littered with slowly marching creepy critters. Based on their size we thought they might be tarantulas but after a later closer look and research realized they were a migrating swarm of Mormon crickets. We had a quick look at the hot spring (thankfully no crickets here!) then based on our driving exhaustion we instead sought out a camping spot to save a soak for the morning. Happily my guess at a campspot nearby panned out and despite the nuisance-y fine playa dust everywhere we had a cozy night's sleep in the rooftop tent.
In the morning we only had a short 0.5 mile jaunt to the Paradise Valley Hot Springs. A deep, ominous, and boiling hot travertine vent was the source of the hot water, a feature reminiscent of others I have seen around the Basin & Range. An algae coated trough and pipe network then delivered the water to two scummy jacuzzi pools a lastly a much cleaner plastic cattle trough at the edge of the Little Humboldt River. We turned on the hot water and sat enjoying the quiet remoteness of the pool as it slowly came up to an ideal temperature. Not long after the pool warmed comfortably, the sun was gaining ferocity and it was time to hit the road.
Without much to note we eventually reached the put-in for our Grand Ronde trip later that day at the highway bridge over the confluence of the Minam (pronounce "mynam") and Wallowa Rivers. The 850 cfs here seemed rather thin over the many shallow rocks, suitable but not quite ideal flows for our packrafts and I had some worry we would have to aggressively paddle to finish on schedule. From what we could see it was moving steadily at least and the gauge said that we would get a boost up to 1200 cfs when we finally joined the Grand Ronde River 10 miles downriver. Our shuttle was arranged so there was little more to do other than pack and wait for tomorrow. Between the ambient air and water temperatures and style of the river we decided pants and a long sunshirt would be sufficient to wear. Nearby the Minam State Recreation Area Campground provided us a very nice stay among the trees very close to our put-in.
Wanting to make the most of the cool morning hours we rallied for a early morning start. The river generally moved at a steady gradient with few pools requiring paddling. Once we past the campground 2 miles downstream it was mostly us and the trees. Somewhat comically we spotted our first raft group only 3.5 miles downstream. As I tracked our progress on my GPS I noted we made about 4-4.5 mph progress with minimal effort which fortunately continued to be our average for the remainder of the trip. On the true right a rail line extended just above the river, apparently decommissioned as we spotted two groups of people cruising down on rail bikes. At one place there was a big rock in the middle of the river, otherwise it was a pretty continuous view of forest. We stopped for lunch in the shade of the bridge at the Grand Ronde confluence, or at least next to it once we realized the old thing dripped tar onto everything below. At some point we saw the first of many bald eagles and we soon established the ratio of bald eagles to raft groups which managed to stay above 1.0 by the end of our trip.
Now on the Grand Ronde the size of the valley seemed a little larger and basalt cliffs became more prominent interspersed between stands of trees. There were a few minor Class II rapids which mostly helped refresh us with some cool splashes. In addition to deer we saw a couple deer hanging out at the water's edge.
My favorite scenery was probably the areas with basalt cliffs mantled with stands of trees, which reminded me a lot of our John Day River float (next river to the west) from the previous season. We waved to groups as we passed and stopped paddling to float past eagles.
When we had made about half of our miles and were just shy of the burned area we were warned about we started looking for camps. Being only two people we had plenty of options but with a few hours of direct sun left we were hoping for something that would provide some shade. After floating past a few decent sites we came upon the only real island we had seen on the river and on it found a quite nice spot to call our camp. We chilled in a shallow pool in the river for a good while then sat in camp chairs where I struggled to stay awake between the heat and antihistamine I had taken. Finally shade fell on the tent and I took a pleasant camping nap before dinner. So far I was impressed at the remarkably chill pace of our trip. Other than some nasty globs of sap to avoid, this turned out to be quite the idyllic campspot in the middle of the river.
As we packed up in the morning we spotted a group of white pelicans hanging out in the eddy opposite us, seemingly at home despite our surprise at the sight. We only passed two more groups this second day. The burned area was not nearly as bad as advertised with plenty of isolated patches of forest that managed to survive. We spotted one group of at least 40 bighorn sheep large and small scampering around cliff bands just above the river. By the time we reached the bridge at Troy (and I turned on the car to find the temperature was 108F!) we were ready to be done. We took the opportunity to dry stuff on the roasting cobble beach while we soaked in the river in the shade of the bridge.
Once in the car we realized we were not 100% sure of the way out of the area but eventually we figured it out. At one high overlook on the road we spotted a scraggly black bear moving sluggishly in the heat along the river shore. Since it was on the way we ended up stopping again for another night of pleasant camping at Minam. The following day we drove on to see what the packraft roundup was all about.
