Illinois River 1/2 Day

Hope – To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment. To have confidence, trust.

Faith – A confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

We decided to attempt a one day paddle raft descent of the 32 mile Lower Illinois River. At the time the level was approximately 8,000cfs above the recommended level with more rain in the forecast. Yet the 5 day forecast indicated a departure day flow in the high but not ridiculous range, and the window was on a Saturday.

We left Portland after work on Friday evening and eventually settled down for dinner at 10pm in Grants Pass. Our team of 5 paddle rafters, 2 safety kayaks and an exceptional shuttle driver arose the next morning to eat a hearty breakfast. The last meal we had planned on eating for quite some time. We arrived at the Miami Bar put in exactly on schedule. Dave, Mike, and Steve, catboaters who would be running the canyon section with us were just getting ready to shove off. They had planned on eating lunch, scouting Greenwall, and running the river at a quick but careful pace. On this day at least we had running the river in common.

BOOM! Rock shrapnel ricocheted off my lower legs. I looked down to see a 5 foot tear down the side of our boat. A frozen silence accompanied the stare of 7 dudes. “That’s too big to fix here”. About 5 minutes of everyone checking out the boat commenced while I retreated to a thinking area also know as an outhouse. I should stop here to add that Aire makes a very high quality product. The raft we were attempting to use is experimental in that the material used has never before been used for this type of an application. In contrast, the Puma we use for first descents was made of their standard material and has been absolutely bulletproof despite numerous wraps, drags, and nasty treatment.

I emerged from the time-out with a plan. Our safety boaters had already discussed running without us so they were simply assured that we would be at the take out to get them, at some point. Kenny and Willey (sounds like a bad country duo) also had to proceed so that Dave and his crew didn’t wait around for us downriver. The kayakers took off as we got dressed for the drive back into town. After several minutes of driving out we got cell reception and Montana Dan radioed H.Q. (aka his mom) who then started calling around GP for a replacement boat. Ferron’s Fun Trips was the only one who answered the phone in February. I eventually chatted with Ferron who said, “Well, it is the middle of winter, I might have a self bailing boat out in the stack somewhere, what kind of frame do you need”?

After finally finding the road he lives on out by the Rogue’s Hog Creek put in, I knew immediately from the driveway fence of recovered broken oars that we were about to encounter Ferron Mayfield. Possibly the character of all characters that have made a life out of guiding on the Rogue and the same person I followed down the Lower Rogue 17 years ago when I encountered Class III water for the very first time behind the oars. I’ll never forget our conversation as we scouted Blossom Bar on that trip after I had expressed my confidence in my ability to run Blossom, yet I was still very anxious as I have a very profound respect for the river. Ferron prefaced his reply as he commonly did with, “Well, respect for the river is a good thing”. Amen. Ferron then rowed his cat boat adorned with flags, plastic animals, and Bo the Invisible Dog down Blossom flawlessly. When I asked him about Bo today he said Bo is out behind the garden now helping things grow. Maybe that’s the moral of the story.

We rambled back to the put in arriving at 12:20. We had set 1pm as the cutoff time to try the trip. I deduced that even if we got in some trouble, if we got past Submarine Hole in daylight we could run the rest in the dark. We shoved off the beach at 1:02pm with sleeping bags, water, a water purifier, and enough carbs for today’s floating snacks and a night in the woods. The flow of 2100cfs was healthy, sometimes big, but ultimately smooth. Dirty swam after getting bounced by a 10 foot breaking wave in the second class IV and that was enough to keep him awake the rest of the day.

After Prelude, I gave some brief but specific instructions as to how we were going to read and run Greenwall. Since we were completely solo, we would skirt the meat by dropping into the kayaker’s sneak route far river left and then see how she looked as we dropped in. We peeled into the lower scout eddy at the Wall to kill all of our approach speed then we slowly backed out into the current for the approach. We backed down in paddling forward but facing upstream and staying close to the left side. The ominous roar of the upper ledge seemed to be distracting the boys, kind of like a bear breathing down your neck but you cant turn around to look. “We’re fine, looking good, easy”. Going backwards this slow, we got stuck on a partially submerged rock, 5 feet above the move. This helped reduce our entry speed, but also meant that we had zero momentum if we didn’t make the line. We wiggled off and started cranking. The borrowed boat with Ferrons Fun Trips emblazoned across the side ferried across the meat. With a quick right back we spun around and dropped cleanly down the center of the far left chute. I didn’t immediately see a solid ferry line back to river right so we simply pulled into an eddy on the left and took a look. Following a quick boat scout we peeled out to try a creeky little boof line but the wear strips on the bottom of what is usually a gear boat were very grabby and wouldn’t allows us to slide through. We ferried up again to try another line with the same result. At this point it was a little after 3pm so we obliged to portaging the lower half.

Montana Dan, Dirty, Professor, and Corporal C-Rad proved there grit by paddling aggressively through the remaining class IVs and pushing through the flat water to the take out. We hit the beach at 6:05pm. Total elapsed time was 5 hours and 3 minutes beating the previous ORT time (which was oar assisted) by 15 minutes. We even had 15 minutes to derig and celebrate before it got completely dark. There was little doubt we would get er done. There was always hope and faith.