Wiki # 11: Pure Joy Gorge on Quartzville

 I took out at the bridge upstream of the Pure Hate Gorge and put in at a spur road a couple miles upstream of that.  I didn't want to miss the ledge I had seen from google satellite imagery and ended up suffering through some devils club and log portaging before the ten foot ledge which was a fun boof into a pool.  Below here was about a mile of class III-IV boulder gardens with wood.

First ledge

There is a quarter mile long gorge that was the main event.  The walls soared overhead and my initial attempt to scout on the left was fruitless.  I relocated to river right and spent the next hour groveling up and down the cliff walls, happy as could be to find a way to scout the whole gorge.  The gorge was all good to go and classy aside from 3 logs which required attention.

 The first was in a narrow rapid that I portaged on the right (not without struggle), just below here was a fun and unique 10' broken ledge/slide.  This needed to be run in control as the outlet of this ran into a small rapid with a log which needed to be portaged.  Luckily the features lined up below the ledge/slide for me to be able to broach myself between a rock and the wall and exit onto the boulder bar in the center of the river.  From this point I was able to walk across the log to shore.

The next move was to get in my boat, paddle around the corner and boof over an exposed rock onto shore, from here I carried down to a pinch where two more logs blocked downstream progress.  These were also located in such a way I could utilize them in the portage, doing an airplane seal launch into a small, but boxed in hole off of one of the logs.

There was one more class III to exit the gorge and a log across flat water I had missed during my scout.  I was able to do an iguana move over the log and I was home free!  Below here were two more log portages and a quarter mile of class III slides leading to the take out bridge.  I jogged the shuttle and headed home, glad to have seen a new section of river with a neat gorge.

If seeing the gorge calls to you, I ran this when Upper Quartzville was at a good medium flow, and this section felt low but safe.  I would suggest shooting for 3000 cfs on the Quartzville gauge (for a winter run).

The name is a play on the Iceland/Greenland conundrum.  We found the Pure Hate Gorge downstream to be totally fun and an enjoyable place (at the right flow) while this Pure Joy Gorge is less than stellar.  However, like many obscure Oregon streams, this run would be enjoyable if free of wood.

Click on photo to enlarge

  -jacob

Pure Joy Amongst Pure Hate

The Pure Hate Gorge on Quartzville Creek has a write up on Oregonkayaking that has kept anyone I knew of away.

I had never been particularly interested in the run until Lucas Glick and I were riding on a speedboat with kayaks in tow across Green Peter Reservoir.  We had just paddled off the Middle Santiam Wilderness run and found we were going to get to our cars with plenty of light left.  Conversation with the kind locals quickly died out as nothing but the most basic of pleasantries was possible with the noise of the wind.  I began brainstorming and I thought that Pure Hate was nearby, short, and would be low.  Maybe we should check it out?

Lucas is not hard to convince when it comes to trying new things in a kayak so once we reached the take out and had our gear packed we headed up the Quartzville rd.

 The put in was easy enough to find, a quick walk to the river and we were on our way.  There were a couple small bedrock rapids and some wood before a 6' ledge.  Below here things kicked off.  First was a slide with wood.  Then the creek turned the corner and dropped through some serious whitewater.  The first two rapids had us pretty worried and a downstream view showed another corner in a locked in gorge.  With less than an hour of daylight left we hiked out, deciding to potentially return the next day.

We stayed at the Glick's house in Sweet Home, where we were treated to some cooked food by Lucas's mother.  I was tired after the long day on the Middle Santiam and by the time I fell asleep I had written off boating the next day and Lucas bailed on the Clear Fork.  Lucas came into the guest room in the morning and asked if I wanted to head back into Pure Hate.  I thought about it for a few seconds, but knew I couldn't turn down a chance to see what was in the gorge and before long Lucas Reitman had showed up at the house ready for adventure. While making breakfast we looked at some canyoneering reports and the satellite imagery, by mid-morning we felt we knew mostly what we were in for.

We put on to slightly less water than the day before but still acceptable exploratory flows.  Again we paddled our way down to the gnarly rapids at the head of the gorge, this time though the Lucas's were fired up to run the near mandatory one and I decided to force a portage route, while also trying to set some sort of safety.

Glick went first and came through with nary a wobble.
Lucas Glick drops into "Fear and Loathing", a two drop rapid with a tricky ledge into a pothole that is just out of sight in this photo.

 Lucas Reitman also cleaned it.  I scrambled around to a point where I could do a throw and go, and took advantage of the low water to take a peak around the next corner, which turned out to be a fun rapid the Lucas's ran on verbal beta.

A great place to be.

Below Fear and Loathing the rapids were pretty locked in but not harder than class IV.

There was one logjam that required a seal launch.

We ate lunch at a neat side hike with a waterfall.

Once the gorge opens up there are a few more rapids worth scouting.  All the rapids below Fear and Loathing either had a clear line or we were able to portage at low water.

One of the last rapids.

After a slide comes in on the right (it doesn't go as clean as it may look) we were in the runout and the bridge came not much later.

We were stoked on the run and were already planning our next trip to this cool gorge on the drive home. It is very similar to Opal Gorge and Elk Lake Gorge in that it feels like a class five trip, but aside from the entry rapid (Fear and Loathing and its predecessor) it is manageable for adventurous boaters at low water.

Our best guess was that good levels for this run are between 500-1000 cfs on the Quartzville gauge from snowmelt.  In the winter when the stream is fed from rain, the gauge reference here may become obsolete.

The take out for this run is the put in for Upper Quartzville:  44.5806, -122.2454

You can put in as high as this bridge:  44.5845, -122.193

The gorge starts here, so if you don't want any warm up you can find a place to scramble down from the road between the bridge above and this point:  44.584, -122.2282

  -jacob