The prospect of hot coffee got me going. In my outdoor world on a chilly morning, if I want coffee, I've got to put the water on to boil and then make the coffee, all while my hands are stiff and cold. How wonderful is it to crawl out of a warm sleeping bag to have coffee waiting?
Right at 7, I emerged from our tent and putting on my Tevas, went in search of coffee. I did not have to look to hard to spot the Cambro coffee dispenser sitting on a table. This is a piece of catering equipment that is near and dear to my chef heart. As I wandered about sipping my coffee, the movement help keeping me warm, I realized there is a downside to the double-walled coffee cups that our crew so thoughtfully provided to keep our coffee warm. The cups are such efficient insulators that they don't let any heat through to warm your cold fingers!
With the introduction of caffeine, my chef brain started wondering how our crew made coffee in large amounts on these expeditions. Myself, I would have made cowboy coffee by mixing grounds with boiling water, letting it steep, and straining it into the insulated beverage dispenser. So, I asked Sara how she made it and she described this exact process, stating that the steeping time had to be "exactly four minutes!"
Sara is our granola girl, earth child, and throwback from an earlier era. Also with twin dark braids, she is a Vermonter who in real life is an EMT, a skillset that would come in later in our trip. Constantly smiling, she and her granola tendencies remind us of our very great friend Kelley, mountain biker and ski patroller, who herself would make an awesome river guide.
 |
| Dead Soldiers |
 |
| Breakfast: Beans, Bacon, and Chilaquiles |
 |
| Sunlight at Last |
After a really nice breakfast, a meal that I do not eat in real life, of beans, bacon, and chilaquiles (great way to use up the tortillas from dinner!), I packed our gear into the dry bags, a matter of fifteen minutes or so. The crew started in on cleaning up and striking camp. Because this was our first time breaking camp on the river, I was really amazed at the amount of gear that our crew brought, set up, and broke down each day.
While the crew cleaned up and struck camp, a process of well over an hour, I set off to revisit the wildflowers on the bench above the camp, flowers I hoped would glow in the warm morning light.
 |
| More Handsome Phlox (Phlox sp.) |
 |
| Desert Paintbrush, Castilleja angustifolia syn. C. chromosa |
 |
| Remains of a Black-Billed Magpie Nest in a Hackberry |
While I was poking around the Hackberry trees near our camp looking at all the old bird nests in their branches, I spotted a small yellow, black, and white warbler in the branches, looking very much like a tiny Meadowlark with the black chest/throat patch. I'm guessing that it was a migrating Townsend's Warbler, but without my binoculars to hand, all I can do is guess.
In looking at this warbler flitting from branch to branch, I noticed a pair of Northern Flickers cross the river, their red feather shafts giving their underwings a rosy blush in the warm morning light. All through our trip, I would spot and hear many of these ground-feeding, insect-eating woodpeckers. Their bright white rumps in flight make them pretty unmistakable.
 |
| Almost Ready to Depart |
All our gear stowed, the two gear boats got off a few minutes before us so as to secure our next night's camping spot. Our leg today, the shortest of the trip at 8.5 miles and shown in green below on the maps, would take us from Hackberry Camp on the east bank to Ryegrass Camp on the west bank. Ryegrass is a large sandbar that is divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper. We were in the middle section with other groups on either side of us.
 |
Day 2 - Hackberry Camp to Middle Ryegrass Camp (green)
|
This section of river is relatively tame, giving Laird an opportunity to take to the river behind us in an inflatable kayak. I would have kayaked myself, but I wanted to be able to photograph the world around me, hard to do, but not impossible, from a kayak. I often shoot pictures from my kayak, but that's on flat water where all I have to worry about is the wind pushing me. Today, we had better waves and a bit more whitewater and we got a bit wet.
 |
| Laird Trailing in the Duckie |
 |
| Riverside Grasses Glowing in the Morning Light |
As we floated in the current downriver in the bright morning light, many, many chukars were posted up on rocks above the hillside grasses, calling and calling. We saw dozens and dozens of these chubby game birds that prefer, like quail, to walk or run rather than fly. I dubbed them "Rock Chickens" for their propensity to climb atop rocks amid the grasses and sagebrush and cluck away.
 |
| Chukar Atop a Rock in Full Serenade |
 |
| Crazy Cloud Formation over Prime Chukar Real Estate |
In relatively short order, we pulled over to the west bank where a spring creates a little oasis complete with small waterfalls, the so-called Weeping Wall. We took advantage of the spring water to refill our water bottles and jerry cans.
 |
| Spring at Weeping Wall |
 |
| Watercress, Nasturtium officinale, at Weeping Wall |
Having gotten our fill of spring water at the Weeping Wall, we entered a section of river that seemed to have more towers, perhaps intrusive magma structures, than we had seen before. We sped through some small riffles on our way past these structures.
 |
| Typical Riverside Scenery: Basalt Boulders, Sagebrush, and Balsamroot |
 |
| More Awesome Clouds! |
Not too far from the Weeping Wall, through the rapids Read-It-and-Weep and Artillery (nice long wave train) we spotted a sight that does not belong, a sure sign of human interference, a grove of tall Lombardy Poplars. We were musing that this was likely to be an abandoned home site when Amanda asked if we'd like to stop and explore, it being a short day on the river.
We had no idea what to expect other than probably remains of an old structure; we did not know until after the trip that this is the ruins of an old homestead from the 1800s. Bandits from Idaho established this mostly hidden ranch as a place to corral their ill-gotten Oregon livestock.
 |
| Site of Rustler's Cabin |
Making our way to the cabin site was more difficult than it appears from the river. Even from a few yards inland from the river, we could tell that ground in certain areas appeared to be boggy and that there appeared to be a spring up the hill, explaining why a cabin might be situated in this location. As we got up to the spring, the water was several inches deep, and because I was wearing sandals, I left the fording of the creek to Laird and Amanda, both of whom were wearing waterproof boots.
For my part, I hung out just at the base of the poplars and poked around, Ann already having returned to the raft on account of her still-tender feet. To the downstream side of the homestead remains, I could see somewhat intact walls of stone corrals.
 |
| Upriver from Rustler's Cabin |
 |
| Our Raft Far Below |
 |
| Hidden Corrals to the South |
Moreover, when I moved to the upstream side of the hill, from my vantage point just to the south of the springs, I noticed that further to the south, hidden in a swale and invisible from the river, sits another set of stone corrals. At that point, I had no idea of the nefarious purpose of these corrals.
 |
| Nearing Ryegrass on a Lazy Lefthand Bend |
 |
| New Artwork at Each Camp; Laying Down Against the Breeze |
Again, my first order of business was to set up my tent. Because of the wind, I found a little dip in the ground nestled among some spiny shrubs with rosemary-like leaves where I tucked in the tent. I would typically not pitch my tent in a swale where water would collect, but there seemed no chance of rain in the offing. [Flash forward to the mounting clouds in the western sky in the late afternoon. Gulp!]
Ryegrass being little more than a very large bar of sand over cobbles on the inside, shallow side of a bend in the river, I found it very difficult to find an exact location where I could get the tent stakes through the cobbles under the layer of sand.
In wandering around the area looking for a place to pitch the tent, I saw the first signs of Great Basin shrubs and plants. Where all the plant life at our camp the night before was almost identical to what we have in Central Oregon, this is the first time that I noticed plants that we don't have, such as the spiny shrubs, Greasewood (Sarcobatus vermiculatus), among which I pitched the tent. I also saw a few Shadscale (Atriplex confertifolia) at this location, but not as many as I would see at Pothole Camp on Day 4. The beach was covered in mostly bloomed out Sand Lilies (Leucocrinum montanum), a lot of not-yet-blooming Milkvetch (Astralagus sp.), and various grasses.
 |
| View Looking out Our Tent |
By the time I finished setting up our tent, inflating our sleeping pads, and getting our gear stowed in the tent, the ladies had a wonderful lunch spread set up. I had a bit of pita with hummus, olives, feta, and veggies. Once again, I really appreciate the healthy food.
 |
| Marvelous Lunch Spread |
After we finished lunch at around 2pm, Laird and I set out on a little hike to explore the hills behind our camp. We ended up walking to a fantastic chocolate- and linen-colored prominence called Pruitt's Castle, a prominence that we could not see from our camp or until we had walked perhaps a half a mile north along the hills.
The post of the photos of Pruitt's Castle and the wildflowers that we saw is a must-read.
 |
| Layers of Lava and Sedimentary Rock Form Pruitt's Castle |
 |
Bitterroot, Lewisia rediviva, on Hike to Pruitt's Castle
|
Laird and I returned from our walk just about at Happy Hour and the gentleman that he is, he mixed gin and tonics for us. We enjoyed those cocktails with appetizers of cucumbers marinated in soy and sesame oil, cheese, and wasabi almonds, pretty fantastic eats out in the middle of a wilderness. As we noshed, a pair of highly vocal Ospreys flew over, the first ones of the trip. We would see surprisingly few Ospreys on this trip; I expected to see many more.
 |
| Happily Whipping Cream for Cocoa |
 |
Dessert: Cocoa with Peppermint Schnapps,
Whipped Cream, and Grated Chocolate |
Ann and I sat around the fire until about 9:15 when we called it quits to go get warm under our quilts. Just before 10, I heard Laird and Sara head out to the hot springs at the edge of Upper Ryegrass, hot springs that we saw just before landing. The afternoon was too warm for me to want to get in hot water and hot water is not good for Ann, so we opted out. I did not hear Laird and Sara return; no doubt I was already lulled to sleep by the local white noise, spring peepers calling insistently from the other side of the river.
 |
| Dusk on the Owyhee |
I would have a somewhat difficult time staying asleep this night because in part I was battling a leaky sleeping pad that positioned a rock in the middle of my back, but more so because tiny creatures kept trying to get into our tent vestibule and I kept shooing them away. At one point, a much larger snuffler (size of skunk, it sounded) was messing around with a dry bag just outside the tent. After I scared it off, a largish bird whose call I did not recognize took up residence just outside the tent. It was probably a Screech Owl going after the local creatures of the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment