Milk Creek/ Zigzag River

On my way back and forth from school to my parents house, I often take the route through Molalla. There is a creek I had crossed over before in the town of Colton that had been catching my eye.  There are a couple small ledges next to the road and it seemed like a small, but paddle-able creek.  On one particular trip I stopped to check it out since it appeared to be running. I poked around, then gave Shane Conrad a call and we decided to check it out the next day. I didn't expect much, but it was something new to us so off we went.

When we showed up there were a couple local kids there on bikes who showed us a path to scout some of the "waterfalls" they knew about. They turned out to be a couple of three to four foot ledges, but they seemed interesting enough, so we put onto Canyon creek, which shortly confluenced with Milk creek. Right at the confluence was a fun class three drop consisting of a few bedrock ledge/slides. Below here was some class two and a log or two that were easily dodged. Soon, the bedrock reappeared on the side of the stream and we were scouting the biggest drop of the run the kids had referred to as the "Hult Road drop". It was straight forward anywhere you wanted to go off, but the left looked the most fun.  Shane went first, and discovered it was pretty hard to get as far left as we wanted over the shallow bedrock since we had scouted on the right and we both ended up missing out on the boof.

There was also the option for a log grind in the middle I hoped to do on our second lap, but logistical issues had us heading home after one. Below here was a fun section of class 2-3 bedrock drops with one long low angle slide. Eventually this section tapered away into gravel bars with some wood. There was one log around a blind corner I was able to get over and Shane able to walk, but for the most part it was a clean creek-bed. It wasn't much further to our takeout at Dooghe Rd. It turned out to be a fun little adventure that I may come back to if I happen to be passing through and short on time though I would certainly not set aside an entire day for it.

It is conducive to a trip on your own since the shuttle is easy and the whitewater friendly. Flows for us were 1500 on the Molalla gauge, but 2000 would be a good thing to shoot for, and the run may actually be pretty enjoyable if flows were much over 3,000 cfs.

 We took out where Dooghe road crosses Milk Creek, and put in where Hwy 211 crosses Canyon creek. My dad and his friend Rodd returned a year or two later and put in further up 211 a ways (near S Grays road) and took out lower.  This added a couple more ledges up top and some class I-II down lower.

The run on Milk Creek

click to enlarge

Milk Creek and the Zigzag River from Jacob Cruser on Vimeo.


The next day my dad and I ran the Zigzag River. People ask me what my favorite river is sometimes, and I usually just say "any river I haven't done yet".  Though every time they ask, the Zigzag pops into my head for a moment.  Its not a challenging run, in fact, none of the drops are even class four on their own. I just always seem to enjoy myself on this one though. The run is continuous, so your attention is required from beginning to take-out, yet it's easy enough that there is no concern and I often get into a meditative type state.

We call the rapid "26 moves" that starts just below the put in, and goes around a few corners before ending near Camp Creek.  We call it this because there are about 26 small moves, and it is highway 26 that moves you to the put in and take out. We don't have any names for the rapids below,  and I don't run it often enough anymore to have it memorized so mostly we just keep asking "is this the island with the wood?"

 The rapids below the road 21 bridge are a half class harder than those above, and have some hydraulics in them. My dad and I had an enjoyable run, and were surprised when there were no mandatory wood portages! Not common for the Zigzag.

     -Jacob

Zigzag River

           After a low water run on the West fork Hood (3.7 ft) that included two laps each on Punchbowl, Nate Merrill, my dad, and I headed over Lolo pass in order to run the Zigzag river on the way back.  We put in where highway 26 crosses the creek the second time if you are coming from Sandy.  We had low water but it was floatable.  Nate had one scary pin mid creek, but was able to work his way free.  The creek was really fun and going from this bridge to the lower highway 26 bridge is a good section of very difficult class III.  It sounds like an oxymoron but if you ever run it you will understand.  I feel comfortable on low end class five and such, but this was still keeping my attention, and Nate (who is plenty capable of much more difficult than class three water) had two pins.  My dad also pinned his IK on a rock that was actually under the water within the first ten seconds of the put-in, but cleaned the rest of the run, so the IK's will do fine. We only had one super easy portage and some minor log-dodging, which isn't always the case for this creek, or any creek of this size for that matter, or really any obscure creek in Oregon :) That was a pleasant surprise.

            I think it is a very worthy stop if you are in the area.  It is very similar to the majority of streams coming off Mt Hood, such as the upper Sandy, East fork Hood, White river.  It is just smaller and steeper.  It would be a great run to do before the Sandy Gorge, definitely more focus required, but no individual rapids are harder than Revenue Bridge, but you might feel right at home pin-balling your way down the upper part of that rapid if you have just come of the Zigzag.

            My verdict-worth doing.

Sandy at Brightwood should be between 1000 and 2500 cfs.  It would be super fun at high water but logs would start to get very scary in a hurry.  I don't know if I would be willing to run this creek when it was at bank full but it would be very very fun. 

      - It runs from snowmelt mostly.

a picture of the zigzag river at flows too low to boat