73 - 10/1/2011 - N Santiam

N Santiam (photo courtesy Ron Belnap)

As well as WRRR, I'm a member of OWA - the Oregon Whitewater Association. I don't get to do a lot of their trips, but I had never run the N Santiam and it was on my list of runs to check out for future trips. I tried to put together a group of local kayakers to go down and do the run, but in the end only two of us were available. We were able to drive down to the Portland area on Friday night and the trip leader graciously let us stay at his house. On Saturday morning, we all headed out and had breakfast with more of the group, and then went down to the N Santiam. All totaled, we had around 34 people on the trip. Most were in rafts and catarafts, but there were a number of inflatable kayaks, as well.

The flow was considered medium-high at around 3000 cfs. Several people said that they preferred it lower because it was more challenging with more rocks. There are around 6 good class III rapids, with a few class III- and lots of class II+ rapids. There's a good gradient, so the river moves fast between the rapids. The most exciting rapid was at Mill City, where a man-made rock dam makes a 5' waterfall drop. We had lunch just below this, at the Mill City access.

After lunch, we headed downstream. Right away there was some trouble. A small raft was wrapped on a rock and one of the people was swimming. My friend and I pulled over to help with the raft. My friend got the raft unwrapped and to shore. I was going upstream with my throwbag to help get the guide to shore, but for some reason he decided to swim downstream rather than getting to his boat. Besides that, there were no incidents, and the rest of the run was pretty easy.

We said our goodbyes to everyone and headed to our campground. After we got set up, we went out for pizza with some other people from the trip. When we got back to camp, it rained on us a bit, so we set up a shelter and built a fire.