Eel River
Alder Point to Eel Rock
May 3-5, 2002
By KitThis trip is a cooperative effort with the Six Rivers Canoe Club out of Arcata. Joanne Olson organizes the food, the Six Rivers people and the shuttle. I organized the POST end of things; loading the kitchen, deciding that we wouldn’t have a POST organized breakfast at Richardson Grove State Park, and other things like making sure Bijili had a ride from Sacramento and a boating partner with Charlie Pike. I also talked Gordon into helping us get the boats loaded at Bill’s in Oakland because the only people going in the van were Don, Charlie Wright, Alice and myself. The plan was to meet Bijili and Charlie Pike and John, Lu and Nate P. at Richardson Grove SB campground Friday night and then meet Joe and Carol H. in Garberville in the morning. We left the two extra vehicles at the hardware store in Garberville and took the POST van and the Pearson’s van to the put in. We got there at about 10 am, a half-hour early. When I actually am in charge of time things I can sometimes manage to be early to events. It’s only because I am paying attention and has nothing to do with what other people are doing.
Charlie rented a raft from OU so Alice and Amy and I and Charlie would be paddling the raft (what this really means is that Charlie rowed that darn deadweight for 18.6 miles and I tried to help out by paddling on the right and telling Charlie to turn around to look when the river took a bend or he was drifting away from the current (in the raft he faced upstream so he could pull the oars).
Joann asked for a 10 am shuttle and was told that we would have to wait till 11am. The shuttle came by the put in later that that and actually left by 11:30 or so. The shuttle took forever as usual. I think it went a little bit over 3 hours.
Alice and Amy took off exploring and dragged me down the beach to see a sight that was wonderful. A truck had driven over the mud leaving rows of deep tread marks. During the night tiny spiders had spun their webs across many of the tracks which under normal conditions you would never have noticed, but it was early morning and the dew had formed on these small webs so that when the light was just right, reflecting off the dew, the ground was full of patches of flashing rainbows! Alice, thank you for showing me those beautiful splashes.
While we waited, two guys, unknown to us, showed up who wanted some help with their shuttle but we were unable to help out since we were using all the seats available in the two shuttle cars. Then a drunken group of teenagers showed up spinning doughnuts in the gravel, hooting and hollering and barging around like the obnoxious warts they were. They had a small rowboat, a drift boat and a red canoe. They also had several coolers of beer that they distributed among the boats. The boys had on shorts and no shirts and the girls had on bikini bathing suits. They would probably get well-deserved sunburns. We were worried that their wildness was going to be a problem for us but they took off while we waited for the shuttle and the next time we saw them was across from Trestle Creek. Their red canoe, loaded with four people and a large cooler, had stopped upstream. As we passed the people in the drift boat they asked if we had seen the canoe and I honestly said, "Yeah, they are back there throwing empty bottles in the water and puking on the beach."
That bit of unpleasantness out of the way the remaining trip was peaceful and jolly as all POST and SRPC trips tend to be. If it didn’t sound like an insult I would say it was "the same ole trip" but I would have to qualify that by saying it is always a lovely trip even when it rains all day.
One special sight: Right after the Alder Point Bridge and its annoying gravel bar (both rafts got stuck) the river takes a sharp left turn and deepens in a small gorge. On the inside of the turn there is a sand bar that usually has a couple of nude sunbathers. This day there was a lone woman juggling. She had three balls looping in the air and she was dancing. The complexity of her dance with the balls made me think she was listening to Bach on her headphones. She danced and bowed and drifted backwards and dipped forwards and occasionally threw one of the balls way high as a counter point to her slow stepping feet. Her feet were following a slow beat and her balls in the air followed her feet in double time. She was so beautiful to watch I applauded her. She didn’t lose her concentration but nodded and continued her dance. It was one of those river moments I remember for years because it was so out of the usual.
Charlie was nervous about getting caught by the wind in the raft, so we didn’t stop very long at Trestle Creek. Just long enough for Alice and Amy to get used to the water and start swimming around like otters. Neither of them was interested in paddling the long stretches in the kayak so Damien, Mike’s son, paddled it almost the whole way. At Trestle Creek the girls paddled it around, crossed the river and back but when it was time to pull out for camp they gave it back to Damien who was quite happy to be on his own.
We dropped Alice, Amy and Nate at the upstream end of the sand bar near the Big Rock campsite and as we pulled away they were shedding PFD and hats and rolling down the hot sand dune. We rowed around the edge of the sand bar to the Big Rock campsite where a group had already put up the kitchen. I swear that the minute we turned around the bend headed for the Big Rock the wind socked us in the eye and the last one hundred and twenty feet were a monumental struggle. There were whitecaps being blown upstream at the narrowest part of the river by the Big Rock.
The kitchen was set up with two canoes upside down, parallel in the sand. Crossing them like the bar across a double "t" was another canoe. The wind was so strong that it blew the top canoe down the length of the support canoes and would have blown it off entirely except that someone jumped up and grabbed it and put large rocks on the support canoes to keep it in place. The ring of chairs was forming around the kitchen and hors d’oeuvres were making the rounds but the wind filled the wine cups with sand as it blew horizontally off the dune. You couldn’t tell there was grit in the corn chips because they are already crunchy but I had something soft and really hated the crunching at the end of the chomp. It guess it’s good roughage.
Some people put up tents while others (like myself) decided to wait out the wind. I was counting on it cutting off at 6 p.m. It stopped around 6:30 so I wasn’t completely off. Nevertheless I put four large stones in the corners to keep it down while I filled it with our several tons of gear. The drop in the wind prompted the dinner prep and we ate a fine meal of chicken in a mushroom cream sauce with rice and steamed broccoli heads with lemon and butter. It was a swell meal, quick to prepare and filling. It was still light out while I helped wash the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen area.
This year, instead of spending all her time in the water, Alice spent a lot of time with Amy exploring the beach and climbing the rocks upstream of the sand dunes. She didn’t find as many critters as the last two trips (only one snake and one salamander) but she and Amy probably went further afield than ever, as Eric said, "making as far upstream as they could go without swimming!" In the still evening air they could still hear when we called for dinner even though I could barely make out which girl was which at that distance. Alice told me that she had found a special secret place when she and Amy were wandering around but she wouldn’t tell me where it was. I remember some of the "secret places" of my childhood and am happy she has found some for herself. I think they are an essential part of childhood. The Eel is my "secret place" for my adulthood.
We got up early, ate breakfast, and got on the river while there was still a bit of mist floating dreamily about. I am always overjoyed (is it really possible to be OVER joyed?) at the beauty of mornings on the river and the Eel is my favorite river trip ever so Sunday morning was absolutely perfect. The air was cold but the sun was coming over the ridge and made promises about a warmer day that it didn’t really keep. There was an annoying breeze that started about 15 minutes into river time and never let up until the take out. There would be occasional gusts but it was for the most part only annoying, not terrible. The first time I went on the Eel 200 years ago the last mile or so was so windy that one guy in our group ended up towing his canoe while he waded along the shoals. His partner, a teenage niece, bailed out completely and walked along the shore until she started feeling left behind.
This Sunday wasn’t that windy. We stopped for a lunch break at Basin Creek but Charlie was worried about the wind picking up so we left Alice and Amy to ride with others and started down the river. Just around the time we reached the take out those who had stayed behind caught up with us so we all arrived at the take out at the same time, maybe 1pm.
We settled accounts, loaded vehicles and after a few vehicles had to be towed out of the gravel by Eric’s 4Wheel we got on our way. The POST group met at that strange pink restaurant in Yreka that has monster portions (take the Perkins exit and at the light go straight into the parking lot. The restaurant is on the right and a Longs or Safeway is on the left). Everything in the interior is coated in Pepto Bismol pink but the food is good and the portions more than worth the price.
The van pulled into Oakland at 11:30. Charlie told me later that when he and Don were unloading the boats from the trailer he wasn’t sure he could lift the boats, his arms were so tired. We were home in bed by 12:30.
Once again the Eel has been a mellow, good trip. I love to start my boating season with that gentle ride from Alder Point to Eel Rock.Trip details:
Put in at Alder Point- Take the Garberville Exit and proceed down the main drag until the road makes a left over the freeway. Follow the signs for AlderPoint Road to Alder Point. When you get to the Alder Point bridge stay on river left (don’t use the bridge) and go ½ mile or so until you see a dark brown water tank on the left side of the road. There is a road on the left of the water tank that goes down to the railroad tracks. If you don’t have a four wheel drive it is best to stop here and unload and take everything down to the river. If you have four wheel CHECK THE ROAD BEFORE YOU GO DOWN IT, IT CAN BE VERY RUTTED AND MUDDY!!!!
It is best to hire a shuttle because it takes 1.5 hours to drive from Alder Point to the take out at Eel Rock and if you can avoid doing it FOUR TIMES you should. Joann Olson knows the phone # of the shuttle folks. OLSONEJ@NORTHCOAST.COM
The whole run is 18.6 miles, at 1000 cfs and a mild upstream wind the average speed was 3-4 miles per hour (info courtesy of Bijili’s GPS).
For more detailed information about roads and points of interest check out Charlie Pike’s book, "Paddling Northern California" PIKE@GARLIC.COM