Minam River

                                                                                 

                                                                          BETA

Stream: This is an excellent hike in run within the Wallowa Mountain range in NE Oregon.  The amount of time to take to do the run is preference-dependent, it could be done in a long weekend by boaters short on time, but we took 5 days and I was happy with that.  There are a few routes to hike in, check the access segment further down for more info, but expect to hike around 10 miles.

The best hike:quality access point reaches the Minam River near Rock Creek.  Upstream of here has been run, but there is more wood and less whitewater.  After a warm up below Rock Creek, the good whitewater really starts below the North Minam confluence.

Camp at the confluence with the North Fork.

There are many good sections of whitewater down here, with scenic floating in between.  In the whitewater sections one side of the river is often a granite wall, but the other side is steep hillside.  The section between the North Minam and the Minam Ranch is the best part of the river, lots of high quality class III and IV whitewater at medium flows.  Most of this is read and run, but boaters may wish to scout a couple times for wood and lines.

There are many quality sections of class III-IV between the North Minam and Minam Ranch.

The crux of the run is Minam Gorge, the only true gorge on the run.  After floating through a flat meadow with eagles overhead an obvious horizon signals the start of Minam Gorge, eddy out right for the scout.  The first ledgey ramp has a number of line options, and the best option varies with flow.  It can be portaged with some effort on the right. 

 Below the entry ramp is a wave hole that can be skirted left, then a ledge that we ran right at low water, but middle might be better at higher levels.  It is important to run this ledge in control so you can eddy out right to scout the bottom of Minam Gorge, which is often portaged due to a couple low head dam style holes created by ancient logs anchored into the river, remnants of a mining operation.

Looking upstream from the eddy from which the portage at Minam Falls starts.

The bottom of Minam Falls.

Below Minam Falls good class III/IV whitewater continues off and on until it fades into the Minam Lodge area, a wide open valley.  Good camping is found on river-right just above and below a footbridge.  Paddlers not interested in the class III/IV upstream can hike in about 7 miles from Moss Springs and start at this bridge.

Scenic floating through the Minam Lodge area may have a log or two to negotiate.  Below the valley, class II-III whitewater begins depending on flows, the continuous nature of this whitewater builds.  By the time the Little Minam is passed, the whitewater is completely continuous and a pool will not be seen for many miles.  The rapids are easy and open, but rafters who have flown into Minam Lodge to float this lower section have been surprised by logs and a lack of eddies.  Kayakers and packrafters will have much less trouble stopping for wood.  There are some horse camps on river right before the river leaves the wilderness area that are mostly tall grass, then a couple nice sand/gravel camps once out of the wilderness.

The rest of the run is class II, but still very continuous, slowing a little before the confluence with the Wallowa River and take out bridge.

Elk crossing!

This run is an excellent adventure run and paddlers comfortable on class IV will enjoy the trip.  The hike is beautiful, the whitewater is quality, and the river lives up to the Wild and Scenic designation.  Class III boaters will enjoy the section below Minam Lodge.

A group of happy campers on the Minam River.  Yann Crist-Evans, Jim Owczarzak, Quinlan Pfiefer, Sara Gallagher, Kira Minehart, Priscilla Macy-Cruser, Jacob Cruser.  Photos on this report are a mix from people on the trip.

  
Flows:  The Minam is a tough river to plan for.  Because it is a multiday, plans often need to be made in advance.  The river is too high for most of the spring runoff, and drops quickly through ideal boatable flows.  Paddlers just doing the lower section below the Ranch can run it higher,  just be ready for the increase in flow to equal a higher pace and fewer eddies.

We were on the river July 5-9, 2024, this was low runnable.  I'd look for a minimum of 500 cfs next time, and not too much higher than that.   Our friend Ben paddled the river 4 years earlier on the same weekend at about 1,100 cfs which was padded and probably as high or higher than I would want to run it.  He loved it.  Look at historic flows to try and time your trip, flows are often too high or access is snowed in during the spring, then levels can drop quickly through the ideal range.  I found the Dreamflows overlap of the last 5 years of flows useful for planning.  The last week in June into the first week in July seems to be the most statistically relevant time range to shoot for in a normal snowpack year.

Our low water trip, just enough water to be worthwhile.  I'd shoot for 100-200 cfs higher next time.  Ending our trip the day we started would have been good enough.  I was happy it worked out given that we planned many weeks in advance.  

Ben's trip, high runnable.  Better for kayaks than packrafts.

Access:  There are many routes into the Minam River.  Having read about them, and talked to people who have tried different routes and seen the river myself, I believe the best route is this:

Middle Fork Catherine Creek road > China Ridge Trail > Meadow Mt > Rock Creek

Start:  45.15907, -117.55681

End: 45.22224819978197, -117.52138918423859

This route is about 9 and a quarter miles long, and has not been tested with boats as far as my knowledge goes.

We took access starting just to the south of the above routes, at the Buck Creek trailhead.  The hike was about 10 miles, the first part climbing up to Burger Pass, then the second part dropping back down from said pass.  The first 5 miles on the river were slow and pretty woody with only one notable class III/IV rapid.  Ben Mckenzie hiked in to the headwaters from the Lostine River, and found the upper reaches to be steep and unrunnable due to wood in the stream, class V whitewater and brushy banks.  Thus, I believe the above pictured route gives the shortest hike, and starts at the best part of the run.

Fortunately, there seems to be decent camping in most places where the trails meet up with the river.

Rock Creek (Baker City) / WF Eagle Creek (Wallowa's)

In the morning of May 27, 2017 Joseph Hatcher, another guy and I checked out the Rock Creek that flows off the East side of the Little Alps near Baker City, OR.

The NF John Day @ Monument was running about 3,000 cfs from snowmelt.

It was very steep (700 fpm+ for a portion: 44.8906, -118.0976) and we found a bouldery, eddy-free mountain stream cascading at a rapid pace down the mountain.  We discussed Joseph and the other guy running the creek, with me standing along the bank to catch them above wood hazards since eddies were not available.  In the end we felt it was more sketchy than we wanted to deal with and no one put on.  Neither Killamacue Creek or the section of Rock Creek above the Killamacue confluence looked any friendlier (in fact they looked worse).

Typical Rock Creek

There is a fools hope that a run might exist below the S Rock Creek Lane bridge, maybe a local would enjoy checking out that section.  It looked less steep than the parts we scouted, but scouting/portaging might put a boater on private property. The run we scouted would probably also be fun if someone knew it was completely free of wood, and could be run put in to take out without having to stop, though its unlikely that scenario will occur.

We then headed over to the south side of the Wallowa's and the Eagle Creek drainage, where Joseph Hatcher and I paddled the WF Eagle Creek.  We took out just upstream of the NF-67 bridge and put in a couple miles above that at a low water crossing, upstream looked flatter and woodier than the portion we ran.  The part we ran resembled a wider, less steep version of Rock Creek.  We found the run to be stressful class III+ with plenty of wood and few eddies.  We scouted every foot of stream eddy to eddy style and the eddies were more often difficult to catch than easy.  We had few portages, the fun came from puzzling the river together and not from the whitewater.

I'd not do it again, but was happy to find out what was on the run.

 We had 1300 cfs on the Eagle Creek Nr New Bridge gauge (which can be found here).

And about 2700 cfs on the Imnaha gauge, May 27, 2017, the Saturday before Memorial Day.

Put in:  45.0444, -117.4617
Take Out:  45.0235, -117.459

 -jacob

Lostine River: Williamson Campground to Pole Bridge

          
The Lostine River really stood out on the maps because it's a deep granite canyon with lots of steep sections and has a road that more or less follows the creek way up into the mountains. If you think of the streams in the Wallowas as the spokes of a bike wheel, this is one of the few where the road gets past the rim. The easy access, great camping, and steepness was calling my name and so I started my exploration there, heading up to the creek several times over the course of spring and getting a sense of what flows we needed. When Jacob and I ended up there during our circumnavigation, flows were too high, but we definitely saw the promise, and we got a delicious taste when we knocked off Cherry Picker.

The highest water season in decades forced me to wait what seemed like an eternity for the water to drop, but finally the time came. It started out with some emails, trying to get some good boaters to make their way east. That's one thing that's been hard about moving to a small town in an area not known for kayaking: there aren't many kayakers, you've got to import them from elsewhere. Thanks to some good convincing by Jacob that I wasn't just crazy and the whitewater wouldn't just be a manky-woody-portage-fest, some folks expressed interest. With the groundwork done, and a solid idea that the flows were right, a small group finally came together. First, we knocked off the obvious treasure, Wiki 1.

The first time down the creek we had Chris Arnold, Ty Overeem, and me. We spent a lot of time hiking off the road and scrambling down, only to get a look at a few hundred yards of clean stream. We couldn't really tell how steep stuff was since we were looking from so high up, but some of it made the creek seem like one giant steep boulder garden. Once we noticed the abundance of single-boat eddies, we decided we might as well go for it and we put on. The put in, by the way, is really nice, some wooden steps lead from a campsite to a serene pool with a gravel beach, a stark difference from what lies just around the corner.

Ryan Scott contemplates the calm before the storm.

Heading around the corner from the campground, the creek immediately begins to tilt on edge and starts rolling on downhill. There are lots of nice little eddy moves and smaller boofs as the river gives you a chance to warm up and get acquainted. About a mile into the run, the first recommended scout shows up, pretty much at a blind right-hand corner. Again and as always, never run a blind corner! It's best to hop out at a landslide on the right and walk down to scout. This one really makes you turn back and forth a lot while dropping at a dizzying rate; we called it Tailspin. The photos only include the middle part of the rapid, it's nearly a quarter-mile long end to end. The most important move was a really nice cross-current boof to avoid a nasty log jam blocking half the river.

The Crux move in Tailspin

The Satisfaction of being post-crux: Jacob, Ty, and Ryan get it done in perfect formation.

Still Spinning.

Following Tailspin, the river eases off a bit, but there's no point on this whole run where you can relax. Constant boulder boofs and some wood avoidance keep you on your toes. At some point, there's another blind right corner with some house-sized boulders coming off of a landslide on river left. Stop early for this one, an eddy at the corner is deceptive and caught one of our paddlers off guard on our first decent, forcing him to run the corner.

Condemnation Corner
**Log gone in 2016**

Once he knew he had missed the eddy, he turned and saw that he was headed straight for a river-wide log. Seeing no way out in his boat, he jumped ship and scrambled on to shore, sustaining some severe bruises but otherwise fine. By the time the rest of us ran down shore and made visual contact, he was standing up on a huge boulder and OK, much to our relief.

No good line.
**log gone in 2016**

Condemnation is best scouted and portaged on the left, but hopefully by the time this one comes in again, the wood will have disappeared. And after the portage- more bouldery goodness! There were a couple spots that required some tricky wood-avoidance, but this section was mostly clean as well and quite enjoyable.

Soon the walls start to rise, and the Last Delight Gorge emerges from the forest. You can see it coming from well upstream because there's a huge granite face on river right with nothing growing but stunted little bonsai trees. Once you see this wall, get out on the left to scout/portage the entrance drop, which had wood for us.

Once you get past the entrance, the deepest part of the gorge comes into view, and the substrate changes from boulders to bedrock.

Feeling Delighted! 

The gorge is short, less than a quarter mile, but it sure packs a punch. There's a diagonal hole at the top, then a moving pool into a killer boof. We saw this one when we were scouting before the run, standing on the rocks above like giddy school boys. I've heard from some locals that the boof ledge is the best place around to watch salmon jump. At about 8 feet, they can get above it, but most fish will have to make a few attempts and will enact their best aerial gymnastics.

Scouting the boof 

And downstream of the boof 

Jacob digs deep. 

Ty styling the main attraction.

 

Below the boof, there's a log jam that looks unrunnable, but can be snuck under on the left. There's a hole under the logs that you kinda blast through while ducking, but the move is quite manageable.

Getting ready for the logjam. 

Many logs, one line. 

After the jam, there's a nice eddy on the left that we all stopped in, just above the last move of the run. The final move consists of a 90-degree turn against a wall that leads immediately to a speedy ski-jump style launch into or over a big hole. The hole took a couple of us for a ride over the two runs, but didn't hold on too tight and everyone fought till flushing.

Coming to the end.

 

At the take out, we all enjoyed a cold one, thanks to Oakland who dutifully guarded the cooler while we were on the river. I was really satisfied that this run turned out so well and the boys were far from disappointed. In fact, we all agreed that in terms of steep, bouldery goodness, this was the best whitewater any of us had done... too bad it's only in a few weeks a year.

Video with plenty of footage from the Lostine, as well as the Imnaha.

Wallowa Wiki's from Jacob Cruser on Vimeo.

~500

The Chase

A quick teaser of Matt's new stomping grounds.  We found this rapid after being skunked by high water (in July!).  There will be a more thorough report coming in the next couple of months.

   *There is profanity at the end.


The Chase from Jacob Cruser on Vimeo.

We had been scouting a promising stream, but it was higher than we wanted to run it.  Minimal eddies with the presence of wood was our big concern.  This lead to us "Cherry Picking" this drop, resulting in the name of the rapid.

    -Jacob