Check out the John Day River 2009 Photos  in the River Photos section.

Flows were between 1600 and 1800 cfs.

This year, we got to the put-in by 10PM after a 5 hr drive by way of Shaniko.  We slept under the bridge which echoes little sound.  We should pick a new place to camp next year.

Day 1 - up at 5AM, rigged the boats, and was on the river by 9:15AM.  We did not scout upper Clarno for the first time this year.  We ran upper Clarno down the middle just left of the holes, rocks and just right of the island with sticks/bushes sticking up.  Clarno we scouted and ran down the middle big green tongue.  At the bottom of the tongue was a big diagonal that doused us.  This was the first year through Clarno with the boys.

Night #1 / Day 2 - stayed at Muddy Path Camp.  DO NOT stay here again next year, the flies were insane.  Ran Basalt down the middle, and then ran hold by accident at the bottom of Basalt just to the right of the last rock that is in middle, middle-left of river.

Night #2 (66.8 R) - Another rafting group took our favorite Orange Cliff camp (77.L) resulting in a very long day on the river.  There was even a single inflatable canoe that had taken a huge brown camp (75.4R) which was the last camp that could fit us for another long stretch.  We floated 30 miles today to reach 66.8L.  We called it Dusty Windy Camp with lots of room, though burned out trees.  Sunny and beautiful morning.  Also called “Sandstorm Island”.

Nights #3 & #4 (51.2L) - “Windy Snake Camp”.  We stayed two night in this favorite spot of ours.  The boys and I, along with Mike’s dad, did a very long hike up and out of the canyon.  It was at least a 3 hr hike that was very steep at times.  The NRS Wing popped a few times in high winds so we took it down.  The last night we had our 4 season expedition North Face tent actually cave in slightly on one particular gust.  It worried the kids, but it was actually pretty cool.  You could hear the wind start way down the canyon, and when the gusts got close to camp they sounded like a freight train, and then they hit the tent and it was intense.  Lots of snakes in this camp, one small rattlesnake and the rest were either bull or gopher.  Mike and I caught the rattlesnake with an oar and a bucket and transported him way down river and took turns flicking him into the river until Mike got a good fling and the snake decided he was too tired to mess with us.  For the rest of the snakes, Mike became known as Mike the snake wrangler.

This camp site has great swimming and floating near the beach and is protected by bushes / trees that are about 20 feet off shore, making a private little lagoon of slow moving water.  We kept the kitchen on the beach.  It is possible we saw Big Horn Sheep as we saw white at the top of the hills that was no longer visible when we got to the top, nor when we got back to camp where we first sighted them.  Noted in my journal, the 2nd night at this camp had “hellish winds”.