North Fork John Day

BETA

~ 43 miles

Stream:  This Eastern Oregon overnight run starts out at 5600', and has more water than most streams you would encounter at that elevation in Oregon.  It runs from snowmelt and has a nice long season in the Spring/early Summer. 

The stream is clearly immature up near the put in, with minimal incision and migrating channels.  You get the high desert experience, with more action than the Grande Ronde, or lower sections of the John Day.  The run is II-IV(V).

A couple of us did this run over Memorial Day weekend in 2017, this is the only time I have done the full run (I've paddled the section you can drive upstream to from Dale while in the area on another trip).  The stress level was a bit higher than I like on class III runs due to the lack of eddies and the wood concerns, but we still had a good time. I would choose less water next time, probably shooting for 2,000-2,500.  Keep the water level in mind as you read the report, less water would change the experience.

The first mile offers a nice warm up, at one island we went left when we should have gone right and had to hop over a log jam.

Warming up.

The start of the significant whitewater is clear, the first rapid can be boat scouted, but as the river bends to the left, hop out on the right and climb up to the trail.  It is worth scouting out the next mile of stream if levels are healthy from the river-right trail, while the whitewater is class III/IV the eddies can be scarce, and the wood ever-present.  On our trip this section was both fun, and stressful with levels peaking over 3,000 cfs. 

Fast action up top.

After scouting the first mile, we chose to walk our boats along a hundred yards of it, due to the obstacle and others like it visible in the photo.

We put back on, and ran some fun stuff before scrambling into an eddy above a log we hadn't seen.  Fortunately it was an easy portage and we were back at it running some more fast and fun stuff.  The relentless nature of this section keeps up until the confluence with Trout Creek, which comes in on the right at a point where a large log is in the river.  It looks bad from above, but further inspection proved to offer easy passage on the left.

The final portion of the first onslaught of class III+ whitewater.

Downstream the gradient drops slightly, and the wood decreases.  Diligence is still required as wood in the wrong place could be tricky, eddies were still rare at our flow, and the corners can be blind.  The logs are spread far enough, and the portages easy enough that they don't detract much from the trip at this point.

A couple of the logs on the NF John Day

The further one goes, the less blind the corners, the less steep the rapids, and the less hidden the log hazards.  There were some campsites along this part of the run, on our trip many of them had hikers in them as there is a trail along this upper part of the river on river-right.  The trail switches to river-left about 4 miles downstream of the Granite Creek confluence in the vicinity of Bear Gulch.

There is a section of good rapids in the mix a number of miles below the first onslaught.  This view of the rock formation on the left is the indicator that you are about to enter this next section of whitewater.

Making moves with the rock formation in the background.

10-15 miles downstream of the put in, you cross under a bridge and Granite Creek comes in on the left.  I recommend hopping out at the bridge if levels are high, as just around the corner is Granite Falls, a rapid that should be scouted and is often portaged.  If you miss the opportunity to exit the river at the bridge, there is a decent last minute eddy at the lip on the right.

Foot bridge, Granite Creek comes in just below on river left.

Zach Collier mentions a nice horse camp his group stayed at near this bridge in his trip report from 2023.

Granite Creek Falls.

The couple miles below the Granite Creek confluence is the highest quality whitewater of the trip, the longest and steepest can easily be scouted from the right bank along a trail.

Zach and company named this rapid "Little Jake's"

The whitewater is still pretty continuous below here at high water, and long miles of class II are often broken by fun sections of class III (at high flows).  The wood situation and visibility improves drastically down here, from this point on the river was read and run.  If you are looking for solitude, don't hold out for an ideal campsite down here, by the time you find one you will likely be within access of a road that comes upstream along river-right and one does not typically embark on a wilderness trip to fall asleep to the sound of motors.  

Picture taken from the access road.

That said, there are some nice spots down here that Priscilla and I have car camped at on another trip, so it's not a bust if you didn't find something upstream.

When I did the full trip, we found an island that worked ok for us not far below Big Creek, and only one intrepid motorcyclist had made his way that far upstream.

Big Creek confluence 

There is class V on this creek, but I have not heard of it being run.

Our chosen island to camp on.

The floating eases further below Big Creek, and there are miles of lazy floating down to about a mile below the bridge at Trough Creek.

Lunch break from another trip 

(we drove up to just run the last few miles that day).

When we were kayaking the run, a sign warned of downstream danger, and a scout was mandated by this sign.  

We were unsure if the sign was related to the fish-counter not too far downstream, or a section of fun class III rapids further along.

The most interesting rock formations were in this lower roadside section.

And some human formations were neat to check out as well.

Eventually, the stream eased off completely, with some class II's downstream of Dale.  Knowing we were near the end it was pleasant just floating along slowly and taking it in.  We were further lulled into relaxation knowing the shuttle was already run. 

 After reaching the take out we leisurely loaded our gear before making the drive back to the Willamette Valley.  We took the route back through Redmond for the views, I passed up one gas station while at half a tank and very much regretted that. 

Beautiful and new to me roadways helped me ignore the gas-light that had come on.

I pulled into a Redmond gas station a few hours later, an hour after the gas light had gone on.  I found out that by really finessing the gas consumption and (fortunately) traveling mostly downhill that our Toyota Yaris can have a tank range of 399 miles.

Back in Redmond was a reminder of why we had the three day weekend.

Flows:  3,000 cfs is the max I would recommend putting on at the NF-52 bridge.  It was stressful due to lack of eddies and wood in the upper reaches.  If I came back at similar or higher flows, I would put on to Granite Creek.  The section of the NFJD below Granite Creek was fun and not very stressful, with better and more challenging whitewater than what we encountered upstream (excluding the initial couple miles to Trout Creek).  If the levels were lower I would put in at the NF-52 bridge again.

North Fork John Day River at Monument

Flows the days we were paddling the NFJD, Memorial Weekend 2017

Access:  We hired the owner of the Dale store to run our shuttle, we were happy with the fair price and the job he did.

541) 421-3484

The entire route is paved.

We took out at a bridge a couple miles downstream of Dale.  To get to the put in we headed North 15.3  miles on Hwy 395 from Dale.  Turned right, and another right 1.3 miles later in Ukiah onto Camas Street towards Granite.  This road becomes NF-52 and 40 miles from Ukiah crosses the NF John Day at the put in. 



Take out:  45.001482, -118.989199

Put In:  44.913070, -118.400401

North Fork Silver Creek > Silver > Illinois

I think this is the best run I have done in Oregon, and one of my all-time favorite trips.  The adventurous nature had a lot to do with that, but it's also full of good whitewater in a very cool place.  I have since talked to several people who have run the creek and I wasn't surprised to find that a couple of them felt this was their favorite run they had ever done. 

Day 0:  At the time we are not linked in well with the community in the area, so spend weeks planning this trip, looking at satellite imagery we see there will be a lot of logs.  I estimate we could have as many as 30 log portages on day 1, Ben claims they are all "shadow trees" and feels we will be able to float under most of them.   We haven't done an overnighter on a run without first hand beta before in our hardshell kayaks so that plays a roll as well.  Shuttle logistics are daunting, but a scouting trip shows us there is access off Peavine and Bear Camp roads, though snow is a concern and we will likely need to hike in 6 miles (all downhill on a paved road).

Three river wide logs in 1/10th mile, will we be ducking or walking around these?  The answer will dictate the flavor of our trip.

Day 1:  We stay the night in Grants Pass at Priscilla's parents house, waking up early with Priscilla's family helping us out with shuttle.   There is fresh snow on the drive to the put in (complete with bear tracks), but we still arrive at the river much earlier and with more energy than expected.  The stream above the put in looks awful but consolidates right at the put in and we begin our trip with an enjoyable rapid.

Fun read and run class III-IV continues for a couple miles with some ledges mixed in and 1 log portage.  We are blown away, Ben was totally right about being able to float under all of the logs that were visible in the imagery.  They all appear to be deposited by high water and reside 5-10 feet above the stream, spanning the creek.

Emile floats under another "shadow-tree".

Photo: Priscilla Macy

We encounter a couple scouts and the creek becomes even more enjoyable, we begin to have hope this won't turn into a suffer fest.

There is one portage around a gorge with a log jam, Ben's boat is dropped 20 feet off a cliff into the river.  It has a dent, but no puncture.  We eat lunch on the portage.  A tributary comes in from river left over a couple small waterfalls and the stream enters a mini-gorge via a fun rapid with a nice boof at the end.  

In the mini-gorge, with another duckable "shadow-tree" in the foreground.

The next drop is a narrow 20 foot waterfall.  We don't look for a portage route, but I doubt that option would be straight forward.  The falls is tricky, but forgiving.  We have a number of rolls and a swim (due only to botched rolls in the pool), but there were not dangerous features in the pool below so the stress level stays low.

More read and run continues broken up by a scout every now and then.  We are beginning to have a lot of fun while at the same time realizing we have not made it as far as we had intended to by this point in the day and are glad we are prepared for 2 nights out.  We startle a bear hanging out on the river left wall and Ben pitons his boat in a neat rapid and now he has dents on both ends :(

We know we still have a serious section of whitewater ahead of us with 3 waterfalls (seen on our google scout) so we proceed cautiously, not wanting to get boxed in above one of them.  The first two falls turn out to be unique and fun with reasonable scouting options, though portaging would be tough.  Both were in the 10 foot range.  The gorge walls are daunting here, we are proceeding cautiously and do not find ourselves over-committed at any point during the trip.

The third falls is the one we are most concerned about as it appears to be the largest based on our mapping efforts.  It ends up also having the trickiest logistics.  We initially fear that we have got ourselves into a bad situation as the walls are vast and a portage route is not immediately obvious.   I catch an eddy on river left to check out the situation there and the drop is V+.  It has a twisting lead in before crashing into the left wall, it does have a nice landing pool though!  I spot out a narrow portage route on the left and signal the rest of the group down. Two people almost blow out the bottom of the scouting eddy but are grabbed from the bank before gong over the drop backwards.  The portage is short but has about 15 feet that is exposed, a slip would mean swimming over the drop.  Luckily there are footholds and handholds where we need them and soon we are all standing on a nice staging area from which we can complete the next part of the portage.  We do a throw and go, which was pretty fun.  The pool here is large and there is a nice launch pad for our boats.  The large boil created by the falls also provides a soft landing.

Portaging "Prisoner Falls"
Named by the Knapp brothers who first descended this creek.

Prisoner Falls from below.

We float through the gorge below Prisoner Falls and before much time has passed we see a wall of pitcher plants on the left and take a moment to enjoy the moment.  Just around the next bend the stream was backed up by a small log jam (runnable) where a nice camp presented itself on the left.  We stopped here for the night, stashing our food on the other side of the river in case a bear got curious.

Day 2: It rains softly all night and we wake up to gear that is just wet enough that we don't relish the thought of sleeping in it another night.  The level has also dropped a little so we plan to try to make it all the way to the take out today.  We have 4.5 miles to go until we reach Silver Creek, then 7 miles after that before we reach the confluence with the Illinois, followed by another 7 miles on the Illinois.  We feel it is possible to make the 19 miles to the take out, but given we only made it 4.5 miles yesterday that goal is by no means guaranteed.

We find the going easier down here, the big gorges let up for awhile and we have some easy floating mixed in with some committing class IV gorges where a log in the wrong spot would make for quite a predicament.  We are forced to deal with only one truly blind corner, which turns out to be benign.  Below these committing gorges the easy floating is next broken up by a landslide rapid that we partially portage on the left after a fun lead in.  After this class V mess the stream eases off again, with some class I-II stretches ending in one final hurrah before the confluence with Silver Creek.

The last couple obstacles are a large log jam we portaged more easily than anticipated on the left and then ate lunch at the bottom of.  After this portage are a couple lesser rapids leading into a tricky one right at the confluence that everyone aside from Ben portaged over the small ridge into Silver Creek.

Silver Creek provided 7 miles of quality whitewater, much of which was read and run, but there were also a few scouts.  There were no rapids that did not get run and we were having a great time.  It would be worth running just the mainstream of Silver for a less adventurous run.  I'd call it class IV with some "BC class IV" sprinkled throughout from the NF confluence down to the Illinois.

Just before Silver Creek enters the Illinois it flows through a final gorge.  The entrance is a powerful ledge that everyone aside from Ben boofed center.  He took the meat line through the gut on the right.  A final set of enjoyable rapids continued through this gorge and we rejoiced as we passed under the foot bridge and into the mighty Illinois.

After a quick celebration we turned the engines back on and trucked down to the take out, loading up and making it past Powers on our drive home before it becomes dark.

    The Team:     Ben Mckenzie, Priscilla Macy, Jacob Cruser, Emile Elliott, Brandon Lake

Videos

Day 1

Shadows,  Bears, and Marshmallows from Difficult E on Vimeo.

                                                          0:45    >>>      3:22

Jefferson Uncommon from PMacy on Vimeo.

Miscillaneous

happy trees and happy accidents from Difficult E on Vimeo.

Below are the flows we had on our trip down the NF of Silver Creek into Silver Creek into the Illinois.

(March 25-26, 2016)

We had a large storm roll through earlier in the week to supply our flows, we got on the run as the levels were on their way back down.  If I went back I would shoot for similar flows, and while it could be paddled lower the NF would lose a fair bit of its quality.  Higher would be just fine, but too high and the portage at Prisoner Falls would get marginalized.

Put in:  42.532439, -123.784084
Take out:  42.517164, -124.040155

Gate: 42.557979, -123.713982

*Bear Camp Rd is typically closed when there is enough water to do this run, Peevine Rd had no gates on it when we did the run though.