Trinity River - October 13-14, 2007

By Eric Rassmussen


From my early morning down bag the river is sound: a constant rushing whoosh with an irregular rumble as it pours past the piece of rocky beach where we landed yesterday, and this morning begin to stir in and around our dew-wet tents. Soon there’ll be clanging, then coffee, and its siren aroma. I look forward to the Half and Half. No sun will likely warm us for awhile; yesterday not until lunch at Indian Creek did the fog clear. As we paddled under it from our Steel Bridge Campground, we saw several bulldozed ramps along river right. I first took them to be a new homeowner’s rough access, but later agreed with Don that the destruction is probably part of a plan to increase gravel shallows for spawning fish. Near the Douglas City bridge huge earth-scoopers and a great “Power screen” stood near a just-dug channel separated from the main river by a long, log-filled berm, opened here and there by the “ramps” we saw earlier. Let’s hope the endeavor succeeds, as we saw few large fish in the river. We did see several fish catchers: a few men, and many Great Blue Herons.

Atypically, most held their positions while we passed, perching elegantly in the shallows, on boulders, or atop a sturdy white snag.

Besides these magnificent sentinels, we were at times overflown by flocks of band-tailed pigeons scattering out of treetops on river left only to rapidly disappear into other high foliage above river right.

In many river edge trees we saw the reddening leaves of grape vines, and Alice, especially, managed to snag and then share several clusters of tartly, yet refreshing, low-hanging fruit. Also red were tangles of poison oak and an almost continuous display of Indian Rhubarb along the banks and stretching out from many tiny islands. Most spectacular Fall show was by the Oregon ashes that shouted pure, iridescent yellow from the shoreline, and even more loudly from the dense green slopes of forest.

The ample 500cfs flow and Hell Holes free nature of this section made the paddling easy and dry, except for new members Claudia and Daniel who discovered the value of dry clothes in dry bags, and learned that if you get too close to them, its best to kiss rocks. But strainers, like the log sticking out just above the river at the bottom of a turn on river left, are not to be touched at all. Give yourself space behind the boat ahead, so you’eve time to get out of the way of such snares.

We’re homebound now, snaking up 299 toward Redding. Seeing a few clouds here at 3000’; rain’s predicted for tomorrow. We’re glad the prediction for no rain this weekend came beautifully true.

By the campfire last night, after Ray’s hot Dutch oven apple crisp was entirely gone and rave reviews complete, Don elaborated on why this trip will definitely not be long-remembered, except perhaps by Daniel and Claudia. In a distant time, the era when Don was contributing to the Red Cross Canoe Handbook, there was a mathematically-minded paddler who created a formula that gave numeric value to such trip criteria as river width versus longest throw rope length, and nighttime temperature relative to sleeping bags chill-rating. The sums of the many individual measures yielded the famous Misery Quotient. Zero equals no misery; ones mean life-endangering distress. Zeros fade from mind. Ones circle campfires again and again. So the story of this wonderful weekend will brighten a campfire only if a printed copy is one used for tinder.