Trip Report
Whitewater Packraft - Lower Deschutes River: Warm Springs to Columbia River
Excellent trip with fun and safe Class III whitewater at about 4500 CFS
Alex Bond
- Tue, Oct 1, 2024 — Thu, Oct 3, 2024
- Whitewater Packraft - Deschutes River (Lower): Warm Springs to Columbia River
- Deschutes River (Lower): Warm Springs to Columbia River
- Packrafting
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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Approximately 4500 CFS on the gauge, which was a great water level. If I had to choose I would probably prefer a little more instead of a little less. Sunny weather throughout. No wood hazard and the rapids had calm water below them for easy recovery in case of a swim - generally super safe conditions.
3 days was just about perfect for a fun and pretty relaxed pace - our time on the water was something like 11 AM - 3:30 PM on day one after driving from the take-out to the put-in (about an hour's drive), 10 AM to 3 PM on day two (one boater's zipper failed in the morning and it took us about an hour to get it closed, the rest of us put his gear in our tubes and once the zipper was closed we kept it shut for the remainder of the trip), and 9:30 to about 1 PM on day three. You could probably push the pace and try to do it in two days, but this was a really good schedule with extra time on either end for shuttling and travel. Most of the group camped the night before at the state park across the river from the take-out.
The BLM's river maps and descriptions were extremely helpful - having them printed out to check throughout the trip was pretty much essential: https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/permits-and-passes/lotteries-and-permit-systems/oregon-washington/lower-deschutes/maps
I thought the logistics were 5/5, lots of places to camp and we had two excellent campsites that both had toilets (Rattlesnake Canyon and Fall Canyon) all to ourselves, and it's nice that the river is not that far away from Seattle and you don't have to spend a whole day driving on either side of the trip. The first campsite at Rattlesnake Canyon had an apple tree with surprisingly good apples and was a paid BLM site, $25 for the group site. Some folks hiked around a bit at Fall Canyon on the evening of day two to stretch their legs but there wasn't anything too special to see. Both sites were big enough to accommodate the six of us with room to spare.
The water at 4500 CFS was also 5/5, besides the mapped and named rapids there were Class I+/II-/II bits every ten minutes or so to keep you from getting bored. We had three swims, all on class IIs, and all three were resolved without drama. We scouted four of the six class IIIs but they were pretty straightforward at these flows, they each had a good channel and as long as you hit that and stayed in control, you were fine. Wreck Rapid on day one was probably the most difficult of the class IIIs, with a strong current coming in from the right side that threatened to push you over - it was a short rapid but intense. There were a few short shallow sections near the take-out on day 3 that required some care to navigate through without running aground, but not too bad.
The scenery was the worst part, maybe grade it a 2/5. We went past some cool basalt cliffs but the river never felt anything like wilderness, there's a train track along it the whole way and a ton of fishing boat traffic on the river. There were lots of birds and we saw a small herd of bighorn sheep.
The company was 5/5 of course, and thank you to our leader Brian who helped make everything go as smoothly as it did.
Definitely a trip to repeat! I would absolutely recommend it, including to relatively less experienced whitewater paddlers who want to build their class III experience in a safe setting. And where else would you find flows this good at this time of year?