This is a trip I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve paddled from Skamokawa to Astoria several times in the last couple of years, and the last time I went down there, I felt like I had energy to spare and joked with my clients that we should paddle back with the flood tide. They looked at me like I was crazy…

It is about 19 miles or so to paddle from Skamoakwa to Astoria, and so doubling that would come in at just under 40 miles, the longest paddling day I’ve ever done. When Ginni and I were building the schedule a few weeks ago, we were looking for a compatible tide series for this trip, and the only one that was available to us demanded a 4 AM departure from Skamokawa. We looked at each other and said, “Why not?”

The plan was to paddle to Astoria on the ebb tide, arrive around 8:30 or so, and eat breakfast at the Blue Scorcher bakery, just a couple of blocks up the hill from the Maritime Museum. Then when the tide turned, we would head back upstream to Skamokawa.


What 4:30 in the morning looks like

So we dragged our butts out of bed at an unnatural hour, made our way down to the dock, and set out downstream, leaving Skamokawa at 5 AM. There was a strong current flowing out and my new GPS showed us zipping along at 7 mph. Ginni borrowed the GPS and got her kayak up to 8.5 mph for a moment.

Down below Miller Sands, where the shipping channel turns towards Astoria, the dredge equipment was working, and we also saw this buoy, tangled in several hundred feet of gillnet. I’ll digress here for a minute. First of all, these nets are not cheap! Why anybody would lay out thousands of dollars worth of net in a place where they would risk tangling it this severely is beyond me. And it wasn’t just snagged on the end, either; whoever did this evidently drifted down on this buoy with the net strung out for hundreds of feet on both sides of it. But what really gets me is that after it tangled on the buoy, they just cut it loose and abandoned it, as a hazard to fish and to navigation. The bright side of this story is by the time we passed this buoy again on the way home, the guys running the dredge equipment had removed the net and piled it on one of their barges.


number 6, festooned with gillnet

That last leg of the paddle from Rice Island to Astoria is a long one, since the destination is in plain sight for so long, without seeming to get much closer. Finally we starting pulling up on Tongue Point, just east of town.


approaching Tongue Point

By this time, we were starting to smell the cinnamon rolls and coffee!


Ginni

Not long after, we were pulling into the East Mooring Basin to see if there were any lingering sea lions hanging around. We only saw one, apparently not with the program as most of the rest of the gang is off to California to the breeding grounds.


entrance to the East Mooring Basin

Here’s a great name for a fishing boat, huh? And a bottom dragger to boot! Last year, the trawling industry here was hit with scandal when they were caught dumping and grinding up protected rockfish bycatch to prevent their whiting season from being shut down. Nice, huh? Little was done about it and they continued to fish for whiting even after being caught cheating the system. And this year, when salmon fishing is sharply curtailed all up and down the coast, the trawl industry gets to kill 11,000 Chinook salmon as bycatch. Can you tell I’m not a fan of the trawl boats?


God's Will?

I don’t know much about this boat, except that it is an old, out of service pilot boat. It is a beauty though, with such a great color scheme. Here’s what I found when I googled it.


kayak and pilot boat

We paddled under the old red cannery building that was so damaged in last winter’s windstorm and then up to the dock at the Columbia River Maritime Museum. The mileage to this point, measured by GPS, was 19.4 statute miles and we did it in 3 hours and 15 minutes. Not too bad! But we knew the return trip wouldn’t be so quick…


under the cannery


Astoria


the dock at the Maritime Museum

After changing into “cilvilian” clothes and stowing the kayaks, we headed up to the bakery, where we spent an hour or so hanging out drinking coffee and eating breakfast. Josh looks like he’s still asleep though!


at the Blue Scorcher


at the Blue Scorcher

We got back on the water about 10:30, when we saw the ships at anchor starting to swing around with the change of the tide, and headed back past Tongue Point, where we saw four or five sturgeon jumping and rolling in just a few hundred yards. What makes them do that?

While our average speed on the downriver leg was 6.4 mph, now we were only averaging 4.3, and as we pulled alongside Rice Island and the dredge equipment again, the wind was starting to blow. We stopped on Miller Sands for a quick break and then continued on.


taking a break

This part of the trip was much less smooth than the first part, and we were soon surfing wind waves, and, around 30 miles or so, were starting to feel a bit tired! We took another break below Jim Crow Point and then got back to work for the last 5 miles or so. This part of the trip had only taken 50 minutes earlier in the day, now it took almost twice that! As we were pulling up next to Skamokwa, we were actually starting to notice an ebb current again.


where's the kayaker?

We finished the trip back at our home dock at 4 PM, eleven hours after we had begun. We covered 39.2 miles in eight hours and five minutes of paddling time, according to the GPS. We were tired, my drysuit was leaking and our boats seemed heavier than ever before as we carried them up the ramp to the paddle center. I joked that next time we should do the same trip in whitewater boats, just to keep things interesting. Oddly, there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for that idea….


Finished!


finished and tired!

More late blog entires…

Way back on the 21st of June, Columbia River Kayaking held a surf class at Cannon Beach, OR. We had a great time playing in the waves, capsizing and rescuing ourselves and each other and getting our sinuses well filled with salt water. I’ll leave out most of the words this time and just put some pictures up for you to enjoy.


Haystack Rock


getting out


wave


pushing out from the beach


waves and rock


oops!

Busy, busy, busy!

I keep meaning to write this post before it gets too stale, and I keep being too busy to get to it. But today, I seem to have found myself with a little bit of slack time.


getting ready to tow

Last week, we ran two leadership scenario days for our guides at Columbia River Kayaking. The task was given to two or three guides to plan and lead a kayaking day trip. We invite along an assortment of paddlers, and then as the day progresses, Ginni and I come up with scenarios of different kinds for the paddlers to put into play and for the guides to respond to. These can range from wandering away from the group, unzipping PFDs, capsizing or needing to be towed.

The first day was with Josh, Katie and James as the leaders, the second day was a harder day, with Matthew and Levi leading. They have a year or two of experience over the other guides so we gave them some harder tasks to deal with.

The first day we ran through an assortment of capsize drills, including this one out in the middle of the river. My job as the “client” was to get unstable, capsize and then be too seasick to stay in my kayak, requiring a long tow to sheltered water. Here’s Josh, emptying the water out of my kayak with a T-rescue.


kayak T-rescue

The next leadership day was set up to be a little longer and harder. The night before, we loosened some of the hardware on the guides’ kayaks: the skeg control and a deck line fitting on Levi’s, and a foot peg track and seat back strap on Matthew’s. If this sounds underhanded (it sure seemed that way to Matthew!), I should point out that we created no scenario for our guides that has not already happened in real life at some point. Hardware does fail!

I also set up my kayak with a bunch of loose, float-able gear in my front hatch. More later!

We set out downriver to Brookfield with our little group, and spent the morning spreading out, not listening to our guides, unzipping our PFDs and generally making pests of ourselves. At one point, I capsized, let my kayak, paddle and PFD float away and when one of the other “clients” came over to help, I capsized him as well. Things were starting to get interesting!

At lunch, we debriefed some of the issues from the morning, and then Ginni pulled out an exercise I had not seen before. “OK guys, your paddle is starting to get hypothermic and has a minor head laceration. Pull out your kit and deal with it.” As guides, we need to be able to deal with almost any contingency that might come up on the water, and hypothermia is certainly common enough, as are minor injuries. This is a great exercise for seeing right away how well equipped the guide’s kit is. Here’s Levi’s paddle, dressed in warm clothes, with a thermos of hot tea, and a bandaid on the head injury. Nicely done!


Levi's paddle, dressed warmly

After lunch, the plan was to cross the river just upstream from Jim Crow Point. At this point in the day, the wind and tide had combined to create some very choppy and confused water near the point. I set out with my front hatch cover loose, got ahead of the group and promptly capsized in the rough water. I pulled all the loose gear out of the hatch and spread it around and flooded the front compartment before anyone caught up to me. Now things were really exciting! My kayak was half sunken, with gear floating everywhere in the rough water. Another paddler had taken off straight across the river, and when Levi went to deal with that, he found that his skeg control didn’t work. Whoops!

Rescuing a needled kayak

Rescuing a needled kayak

Matthew took on the task of rescuing me, which takes more time and effort when one hatch has been flooded. Levi gathered everyone up again and retreated back behind the point, while Matthew towed me and my partially flooded boat back to safety.

Plans were changed now and we headed back upriver to look for a better place to cross, as the wind, which was supposed to be light, instead continued to build, setting up wind waves and whitecaps over the whole river.


kayak portage train

We ended up landing on Fitzpatrick Island for a rest and regroup session. There were still two miles to go to get back to Skamokawa, and some people were tired and others were not comfortable in the waves. We ended up portaging across the island to launch on a more hospitable beach. In the middle of the portage, Matthew suddenly stopped and set his boat down for a closer look. It seems that his foot peg track had fallen out! That certainly could have happened in a worse place…


Something is wrong with Matthew's kayak

We finally reached Skamokawa, remarkably close to the time that our guides had been aiming for, but not before a few more bothersome “scenarios” popped up.

I love doing these leadership scenario training days. Of course, I have a lot of fun capsizing and causing trouble for the guides, but I also get a lot out of watching how things develop and learning different ways of dealing with trouble. Thanks to the guides for enduring it and thanks especially to the folks who came along as “clients”. We couldn’t have done it without you!


replica qajaq at SSTIKS

I have been attending the South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayak Symposium since 2005. I was introduced to the Greenland paddle at the West Coast Sea Kayak Symposium in Port Townsend, WA in September of 2004, and when I got home from there, I went online and found plans for making one. It’s been a downhill slide into Greenland style kayaking ever since.


Rolling demonstration with Juniper

That first paddle I made lasted about a year, until I learned to roll and broke it while working the bugs out of my reverse sweep roll. I’ve made four paddles since then, and have three more partly finished ones hanging around the shop. I’ve built two skin-on-frame kayaks, one a replica from drawings in Harvey Golden’s fantastic book.


a few of Harvey Golden's qajaqs

But the highlight of the year for Greenland kayaking fun is SSTIKS, held every June at Twanoh State Park on the Hood Canal near Belfair, WA. About 100 people plus organizers and instructors gather together for a weekend of classes, racing, rolling demonstrations, harpoon throwing, kids kayaking games, evening presentations and food.


Mckinley's hand roll

I have been helping with the kid’s program for the last two years, and this year I was in charge of the kid’s program for the first time. This year was the biggest kids group ever; at one point, we had 14 kids on the water at once, from 5 year olds all the way up to teenagers. The kid’s program ends with a bang on Sunday, with the kids dividing into teams and building improvised craft from a pile of materials we set them up with, then racing their creations out around a buoy and back again. Next year, we are thinking about doing a race like this with the grownups too, since the grownups are often envious of how much fun the kids are having…

I took a lot of pictures at SSTIKS, and you can see more of them at my Flickr pages here.


Kids' Games at SSTIKS 2008

Today was the first Columbia River Kayaking Immersion class of the 2008 season. We got a full roster of 6 students and I spent the day working with Ginni learning how to teach this class. We had a great group of people from around the Northwest, all beginners or nearly so. It is so exciting as an instructor to watch people improve over the course of the day!

Immersion is a day long introduction to the basics of sea kayaking, including basic navigation, trip planning, wet exits and deepwater rescue basics. if you are thinking of getting into sea kayaking, or getting back into sea kayaking after years of absence, you can’t go wrong taking a thorough introductory class like this one.

Here’s a few pictures to enjoy, many thanks to Pentax, for making this awesome waterproof camera.

Getting ready to kayak. It’s important to have a good fit to the kayak!

getting ready

There are dry ways to get in a kayak from a dock, and then there are wet ways…

getting in

Rafted up.


smiles

Paddlers practicing handling each others’ boats.

two paddlers

Rescued! Here’s Ginni, demonstrating rescue techniques with me as the water dummy.


rescued

Sunday was the third annual OOPTIKS symposium, and this year it was held in my backyard, at Skamokawa Vista Park. OOPTIKS is sort of a cross between SSTIKS, the South Sound Traditional Inuit Kayaking Symposium and OOPS, the Oregon Ocean Paddling Society, a Portland area kayaking club. OOPTIKS was started three years ago, as a way to get the instructors from SSTIKS together with the folks in OOPS who were interested in learning more about Greenland style paddling.

There were about 35 attendees and about 15 instructors this year, and the weather, which has persisted in being kind of cold and cloudy and rainy lately, broke open into a beautiful sunny day for this event. In the morning, there were a variety of strokes classes and then at lunch there was a short harpoon throwing demo. After lunch, things split up into games, more strokes classes, and a very heavy contingent of people wanting to learn Greenland style rolling techniques.

As usual, I had a hard time getting good pictures in the bright light, and then loading them to Flickr, where most of my pix are hosted, seems to bleach them out even more, but here’s a few of them anyway. Enjoy!


Don at OOPTIKS 08


someone's Romany


ship and kayaks


Henry throwing the harpoon-OOPTIKS 08


Henry throwing the harpoon-OOPTIKS 08


Henry throwing the harpoon-OOPTIKS 08


kayaks


end of the day-OOPTIKS 08

What a day!

Some months back, Columbia River Kayaking was contacted by one of the organizers of Eco-Challenge 2008 and asked to participate in this event. Eight lovely sports models were going to bicycle down to the river from Mt. Hood and then kayak to Astoria, ending the trip on Earth Day weekend, supposedly raising awareness about environmental issues along the way. And of course, looking really cool in their kayaking and biking gear.

Anyway, this was supposed to be an event that would be handled by one of the female members of the company, but in the end, she wasn’t able to get away from her other job in time, so I took it on instead. Last Saturday, Katie and I drove to Troutdale to give the girls a quick kayak safety lesson before their journey started the following Tuesday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get them in the gear and in the water for a real kayak safety lesson and we had to settle for a lecture on dry land. We agreed to paddle with them on the last day of their journey, which was to be from Svenson Island, around Tongue Point and ending at the Maritime Museum on the Astoria waterfront.

There were a few critical things wrong with the plan, though. They were set to start out paddling downstream at 10 AM, against the incoming tide. Ideally, if one has to round Tongue Point at all, one would want to do that at a slack tide, when there is little water movement to kick up waves and clapotis. And of course, it would be better still to paddle with some help from the current rather than against it the whole way. At the last minute, the weather report – snow, hail and wind – forced a change in plans and I was told we would be starting out from the John Day boat ramp, much closer to town, and at 9:30 or so, which would have lined up with more favorable tides.

Alas, that was not to be. Katie and Josh and I arrived at the boat ramp at 9:15, after a harrowing morning which involved my new Subaru blowing a head gasket while crossing the Astoria bridge and a made-for-the-movies zip through town trailing steam all the way. We left my car at the Maritime Museum, and moved the kayaks onto Josh’s roof rack-less Geo and decided, incorrectly, that we were running too late now to stop for coffee and carbohydrates.

We got to the boat ramp and found no Eco-Gals had arrived yet, so we geared up and set to waiting. In the hail and snow.


hail!

The Eco-Chicks and their entourage finally showed up around 10:30 and spent close to an hour getting ready to get on the water. Check out the Ugg boots on one of them. When I took this picture, I didn’t even notice that. I had assumed and been assured that the girls were getting good gear to paddle in and I just left it at that. That was a mistake, but there was probably nothing I could have done anything about it anyway.


getting ready

It was close to 11:30 before they were all in their kayaks and we moved out of the boat ramp into the John Day River, accompanied by a giant powerboat provided by FMC Watersports in Portland, loaded with organizers and photographers. The girls’ boats all had little waterproof video cameras mounted on them as well. I sure would like to see some of that footage!

Here’s Megan and Aly in their double, just as we are entering the Columbia River. Look at those smiles! They don’t know yet what things will be like an hour from now. If only they all could have been in doubles…


Aly and Megan

We paddled out of the John Day and into the Columbia and turned left towards Tongue Point. There was a bit of a breeze coming through the gap behind the point and some of the paddlers were having a hard time tracking straight in the wind. I realized that several rudder pedals were not adjusted properly and when I went to fix one of them, I realized that the mechanism was totally broken.

So as soon as I was able to find a good beach, I pulled the whole crew up on dry land and ended up removing the broken rudder and stowing it inside and adjusting some more footpegs. At this point, we realized that the girls were already getting tired and hungry and had almost nothing in the way of snacks. “Oh, they gave us some Redline energy drinks,” one of them said. So we gave them all of our granola bars and a banana and got everyone back onto the river just behind Tongue Point. Note to interested parties: Energy drinks are not adequate fuel for intense exercise!

Tongue Point is a large basalt ridge, poking out into the Columbia River just upstream of Astoria. When the river hits this obstruction, flooding or ebbing, it creates standing waves, claoptis and generally turbulent water, even on a calm day. When wind is added to the mix, it gets even more exciting. Lewis and Clark were pinned down here for days by the wind and waves. It is not a place for beginners to paddle kayaks. Which is exactly what was going to happen next.


rounding tongue point

There was probably about a 15 knot breeze blowing and whitecaps all around the point. We gathered everyone together, gave some last minute tips and around we went. I think it probably took over 45 minutes to come around and get clear of the tidal turbulence. All along the way, the boat was right in front of us, with cameras clicking away. I’m sure some excellent photos were taken, but none by me. The lens on the little Pentax was continually wet and it was totally impossible to get a shot that included a horizon that didn’t slope to one side or the other. You get the idea, though, looking at the picture above. It was pretty lumpy water.

But we got around the point without incident; everyone was still upright and some were even smiling and talking about how beautiful it was. Good attitude! But some of the girls were starting to get truly exhausted. All the training and gym workouts in the world had not prepared them for this kind of work. And of course, a granola bar and an energy drink was not anywhere near enough real fuel to keep up this pace for as long as we needed to. We were still almost three miles from the end point, having traveled less than half of the distance so far.

We were starting to get spread out as a group and there was a pretty serious looking front approaching. The current was nearly one knot against us, so every time anyone had to stop for any reason, we lost ground quickly.


Krystal and the storm

As the rain was just starting to hit, I took these two pictures in quick succession. The first one is looking back towards the point and the trailing end of our little parade. The next one is about a minute later, looking ahead.


looking behind


looking ahead

Then the wind hit, and things really fell apart. I guessed the windspeed at about 25 knots or so, and it was filled with stinging rain. I was pushing on ahead with one of the girls nearby when I looked back and saw a kayak upside down. I turned around and went back and made the paddler with me come back too, just so she wouldn’t be alone. When I got there, there was gear all over the river, the paddler had let go of her boat and was hanging onto someone else’s boat and one of the other girls had the empty boat with her and was getting blown upstream towards some pilings. What a train wreck!

I sorted that out while Katie gathered up the gear; Josh was already towing someone so he was kind of pinned down. I got the empty boat back to the girl in the water, but it wasn’t quick or pretty. She had been in the water for at least a minute by this time. Brr! When I heaved her up on her boat, I realized that she had on only a thin pair of nylon pants, no neoprene and no polypro of any kind! Yikes! She was totally freaked out, did not (!) want to get back in the kayak and she was quickly picked up by the support boat. I didn’t realize until the end of the trip that she was the one wearing the Ugg boots. Note number two to interested parties: Ugg boots are NOT paddling gear!

Katie and Josh regrouped most of the rest of the gang and kept going so we wouldn’t end up going back around the point again, backwards. And in quick succession, as I checked up on two stragglers, they both opted out and were picked up by the boat. I think I paddled the stretch of water in front of Alderbrook five times by the time I caught up with the group. We pulled into the east mooring basin behind the seawall with the survivors and took a well earned rest. We shared the last granola bar amongst the seven of us that remained and finished the rest of my tea ( I am going to buy an extra thermos for days like this!) and then headed on towards the museum. When we popped out into the river again at the west end of the seawall, it was starting to get sunny and the river was calm enough that what we had just been through seemed almost unreal.


kayaker and ship

This was the last picture I took that day. Shortly after, we pulled up to the museum’s dock to the applause of the few folks who were waiting there. We each got filmed briefly for our comments, then we got the heck out of there, and headed up to the Fort George Brewpub to decompress and relax. And I had the first food of the day that wasn’t a granola bar. At four o’clock!

In a few minutes, I am going to get up and go over to Astoria with the car hauler trailer and pick up the Subaru. I’ve already been shopping for an engine. I guess my bad car luck wasn’t over yet after all..

What a long post! I hope that some of you get a chuckle or two out of it. I know a few people have been waiting for this entry.

This week I had a three day kayaking tour to take out. After many requests for more arduous and lengthy kayak trips, we scheduled a three day trip with trips of 14-20 miles per day. We got four people signed up for this trip.

The first day was a trip from Deep River out to Portuguese Point, on to Knappton cove and back again. The Onieda Road boat ramp was damaged in the big storm in early December, and is now closed for business. We launched across the river at a friend’s dock instead, and headed downstream with the tide.


kayakers and pilings

Portuguese Point was called “Cape Swell” by Lewis and Clark, and they didn’t mean, “oh, this place is just swell!” They encountered the ocean swell that used to be able to roll right up the mouth of the river in the days before the jetties went in, and their men were getting seasick. We didn’t have that problem.


front deck

The next day had a forbidding weather report, and we opted to take a day off from paddling and drive out to the coast to check out the museums and the beach. We started out on the north jetty looking for birds, but the impending weather front wasn’t friendly to bird watching, so we just did a little weather watching instead before heading up to the visitor’s center.


peggy and jetty

While we were at the Lewis and Clark interpretive center, the storm front came ashore, filling the sky with huge snowflakes in an instant. Hello? It is almost the end of March, and this is the beach!


snow?!

The last day, we paddled from County Line Park back to Skamokawa, and encountered almost every kind of weather that we could: snow, hail, rain, wind and sunshine.


hail!

* * * * * * *

Way back in the beginning, I promised something about shiitake mushrooms. I just ordered some new spawn and will be making up a batch of new logs this month. A couple of days ago, I went up to look at my old logs, which I had assumed were just about used up, being five years old already. I was surprised to find a whole bunch of new mushrooms growing out of the logs! Levi and I cleaned up and reorganized the logs, and picked the mushrooms that were good. I split these with Levi and put my half in the food dryer.


shiitake mushrooms

The day after WFR finished was Saturday, and I had a kayak tour to take out. Mark from Vermont comes every year around this time and we take him out somewhere on the river, depending on the tide. Amy, one of the WFR students who was still here, decided to join us for the day, too.

We set out from Skamokawa around 11 AM and headed across the shipping channel into Oregon waters, and followed the tide downstream. When we got to where we were across from Three Tree Point, we crossed back to the Washington side, above the site of old Brookfield, WA. Brookfield was a bustling salmon cannery town for many decades after the Civil War, and it had its own Post Office all the way up until 1954. When the highway was built here in 1937, it was hard on the cannery towns that the road did not connect to. Those places were reliant on the river and the steamboat traffic for their transportation connection to the outside world and when the steamboats went out of business, the little cannery towns died out. All that remains of Brookfield today is a series of burned out pilings and probably a few ghosts.


green kayak

Just below “downtown” Brookfield is Jim Crow Point, predictably named for the presence of a black man during the post Civil War era who worked as a river pilot. One of these days, no doubt, someone will get a hold of this historically loaded name and get it changed to something more palatable. Anyway, the water hits this big chunk of basalt and zips around the end, sometimes creating interesting water conditions and a big swirling eddy downstream. There is a well-used beach there, complete with driftwood shacks and even a framed, blue-tarp sided “bunkhouse” that various locals built and use for camping and fishing in the summer.


beach near Brookfield, WA

The weather was all over the board. Early in the morning I had woken up to hail on the metal porch roof, then there was rain, and then sun and then rain again. Right after lunch, it was nice and sunny.


kayaker and sun

A few miles later, it was starting to get darker and a little windier. As we worked our way up from Three Tree Point, the wind chop was starting to build in the main channel and we hugged the rocks as close as we could to stay in the eddy and out of the worst of the chop.


over the shoulder

I kept hoping that we would beat the rain front to Skamokawa, but we didn’t quite make it. As we came up to Vista Park, it started to rain and the dark gray sky behind us was looking darker and grayer.


starting to rain

Just as we came up to Skamokawa Creek and were crossing over the shallow sand bar, a hard gust of wind hit, and a minute later it was filled with hail. Yikes! By now though, we were only a hundred yards or so from the dock, and by the time we got out and were drying off in the paddle center, the sun was out again.

It was just under five hours from the time we left the dock and about 11 miles of distance covered. Another great day on the river!


hail and wind

Today, I took the day off from bashing my knuckles working on the car and went kayaking. Originally, Karl and Andrew and I were going to go to Ilwaco, but Karl bowed out and so we went with a revised plan instead. Andrew’s old friend Neil came along and brought with him Annette and Jay. We started out at County Line Park, named for it’s being near the county line, of course. The plan was to paddle from here downriver to Skamokawa, about 16 miles away.

I took a ton of pictures, but most were pretty washed out from the bright sunny day, or blurred beyond use from water on the lens. Oh well. A couple of the blurry ones were kind of cool, so I kept them.


waves and splashes

We stopped on White’s Island, just upstream from Puget Island so that Andrew could check on the horned lark population that he has been monitoring there for years. They have not been so happy with all the new dredge spoils dumped on top of their nesting grounds by the Army Corps of Engineers, but if it weren’t for the Corps, there wouldn’t even be a White’s Island, so what can you do?

While Andrew and Jay went for a quick hike, I wandered on the beach looking at all the flotsam and jetsam, and I found more evidence that irony is alive and well.


irony

Zero garbage, indeed!

We stopped for lunch on this little beach, tucked away in a corner, and out of the east wind. This beach is covered with gravel deposits from the Missoula Floods, thousands of years ago. Andrew found several pieces of petrified wood while we were sitting there.


lunch

Now the outgoing tide was starting to pick up nicely and after lunch we practically flew along the basalt cliffs, past several waterfalls, to Cathlamet, where there are a number of boats of all kinds tied up at the old working waterfront. This craft appeared here a couple of years ago, and I had a Chinese couple on a tour that fall who translated the characters on the side and told me that they meant “Lucky Star”. She doesn’t look so lucky anymore, or maybe she is just lucky to still be afloat. She looks like an old longliner, and has such a pleasing shape.




number 37

We really lucked out on the weather, as it was sunny and almost warm at times, and what wind we had was at our backs. We got to Skamokawa a little before 4 PM, about 5 hours and 15 minutes from when we launched. A very nice day!


kayakers