Just about every paddler I know has tried to scout Opal Gorge at one time or another. Until recently, this section was a rich source of rumors, stories, and hair-raising accounts of must-run rapids in an inescapable gorge, a playground for the larger-than-life Corvallis hair-boaters like Eric Brown, Dave Mustonen, and Dan-the-man Coyle.

I remember back in the nineties Dan Coyle used to go up and solo Opal Gorge, and he was always trying to get me to go with him. I was in college at the time, and just getting into creeking. Every time he mentioned it, I recalled the hair-raising tales about unscoutable, unportagable rapids, huge, deadly drops with sketchy portages, and then I imagined trying to keep up with Dan in there.. At that point I would break into a cold sweat and mumble some variation of: "Sorry dude, gotta wash the gerbils this weekend.. maybe next time.."

Spring 2004. How things change. Of course, Dan probably still solos Opal Gorge, and I'm still not (and never will be) in the same league as Dan, but many years had passed and I had paddled through a lot of gorges, so.. when I got the call from Pete Giordano..

"Hey Jason, Let's do Opal Gorge.."

"Heck yeah, that sounds GREAT!!" I said. To be honest, I had kind of forgotten about it after I moved North to the Portland area.

The biggest concern was rain.. I vaguely remembered Dan saying "Don't go in there if it's wet, or you won't be able to do the rock-climbing portage.."

So, after an unusually dry April it started raining pretty good the night before we planned on running the gorge. Of course, the rain continued all the way down to the river, not enough to raise the water levels but definitely enough to spoil our plans. We were joined by James Bagley Jr., Mike Long, and Jesse Coombs, and once we got near the gorge we decided that rather than put in, we would try and find the portage and see how bad it really was with the wet conditions.

"Yup, looks good..."
Scouting Opal Gorge from the canyon rim offers a few glimpses of the good stuff, far below..

We decided to split up. James and Mike hiked down into the canyon and approached the gorge from river level, while Jesse, Pete and I worked our way along the rim of the gorge and tried to see down into the river, over 200 feet below us. After scrambling around for awhile we eased out onto a dizzying finger of rock in the middle of the gorge and peered down into.. the end. Of the river. "Yep." Pete said. "This is it!"

Sure enough, 100 feet below us the entire flow dove under the wall, the upstream side a raging maelstrom, the downstream side a still pool with bubbles rising up from far below.. "There's the portage Dan was talking about." I said, indicating the sloping rock wall on the river left side. "No way in hell I'm doing that when it's wet!" Just as Dan had said, the sloping rock traverse slid at a 45 degree angle right into the rapid, meaning a single slip meant a terrifying final ride to the bottom of the river via the sieved-out mess below..

"Well, maybe we can put in below it somehow.." I wondered out loud as the rain started falling again and we headed back to the rigs.

"Hm. I'm gonna take a closer look." Pete said, peeling off and heading down into an unexplored ravine. The guy is incorrigible.

A half hour later Pete reappeared out of the woods, a little bedraggled but looking pretty satisfied with himself. "There's another portage route, on the right!" He said triumphantly. "There is a ledge along the right wall that will take a little longer than the left, but it definitely goes!"

"Well, lets put in up at Thors then!" Jesse said, all of us grinning like fools. You'd think we'd won the lottery or something, and in a way, we had..

Below Thors the river was busy, lots of class II-III stuff, easy warm-up, with the incredible jade water Opal Creek is famous for. It was a wonderful feeling to be running yet another section of this amazing river, especially after paddling up there for so many years, wondering all the time what lay downstream..

Soon we reached the gorge, and man-oh-man it was pretty impressive at river level. I have been in some pretty imposing river canyons in my time (Oregon Salmon, Grand Canyon of the Elwha, Clear Fork Cowlitz..) and I would have to say that this one was definitely a close second to the big classics, definitely worth mentioning in the same sentence, if you know what I mean.

We ran the boulder garden leading into the gorge, then we were faced with a big horizon line. This was the first of the big un-un drops (unscoutable-unportagable) in the gorge. Jesse committed, entering the drop on the left side, and in true Coombs style he caught the last-second, totally committed, irreversible eddy at the lip on the left and did a kung-fu move out of his boat onto a rock. He quickly peered down over the edge, and then sat there grinning, giving us the thumbs up.

"I'm going." James said, and then he was gone, and all we heard was a whoop from below, and then Jesse gave me the 'go' signal and I dropped in.. great rapid! Mike and Pete followed and we were past the first significant rapid in Opal Gorge.. good stuff!

Note: it is true that Jesse managed to scout this drop on the left, but he had to commit to running it, and at even slightly higher water the rock he stood on would be covered. So, for all intents and purposes, this drop isn't really scoutable unless you commit to running it, and it is definitely not portageable..

Jesse Coombs drops into the first big 'un-un' drop in Opal Gorge (unscoutable - unportageable..)
Pete ran the river-right side the following weekend, but we all ran the left side on this trip.
(This drop was named 'Mystery' by the first descent team).

Immediately below the first drop is a long, bottomless pool that ended with an impressive roar as the entire river dove under the rock wall extending out from the left hand side. As Pete said, we were able to portage around this drop on the right hand side, and to be honest I think that this is probably preferred to the left, which is definitely faster but much more dangerous as a misstep on the steep rock face would lead to a fatal plunge into the churning white death just below..

Jesse gets ready to seal-launch below the river-wide 'Undertaker' in Opal Gorge. (the faster left-side sloping portage route is visible upstream on the river-left side.. impossible under wet conditions, dangerous even with dry conditions. The right side takes longer, but is much safer).

As we were doing the portage we could see a large boulder garden downstream, and it looked pretty good from our vantage point. It turned out to be a great point-and-shoot, right down the middle kind of drop, kind of like the big ones on the Upper Wind, very fun stuff!

Below this rapid Henline Falls came in on the left, and there was a nice double drop. The last time I had scouted the Henline Falls drop was in the summer with no water and it had looked BIG, but at this flow it was all filled in and was a reasonable double drop, not nearly as precipitous as it had seemed with no water in it.

We always run Henline Falls drop with a boof on the far right side of the first drop (pictured below), then we drop through the right-side slot next to the vertically pinned logs. The left-side slot looks tempting (especially if you have a log phobia) but the water pours onto a rock over there, be sure to take a close look if you are considering that side!

Michael Long lines up on the sweet boof ledge at Henline Falls rapid, just below the portage. Only the top half of this rapid is visible in this picture. Everyone had sweet lines here, not counting my roll in the second part of this drop..

Below Henline Falls the river funneled down through a funky slot containing a funky roostertail on the right; Mike Long probed this drop without scouting and hit the roostertail, crashing and banging down through the slot.

"Hm. That looks like it hurt.." I said from my vantage point upstream. But Mike rolled up below with a grin and tapped his head.

Pete, who was sitting just above the slot, called out directions and then Jesse and I ran through without problems, angling left and going deep. James also had no problems, but Pete almost lost his paddle when he dropped through and ended up flipping as he shot through the drop.. This thing was deceptively tricky!

James Bagley Jr. drops into the 'Sierra Slot' (named on the first descent), which contains a tricky rooster-tail on the right that caused some pretty amusing lines and a couple of flips; the best line is to drive left and go deep..

The last big horizon line looked really promising from above, but our hopes wilted away when we got out to scout. Here the entire river dropped onto a huge midstream boulder, then went into a room with an undercut wall on the left and a narrow outlet on the right. There appeared to be the thinnest of lines down the left side, but all of the water was pouring to the right, onto the boulder, so if you missed your line you could be squashed like a bug..

None of us even gave this ridiculous drop a second look, except Jesse, who paddled over to the right and finally gave us the thumbs up.. "He's going to run this thing?" somebody said, half question half a statement of fact..

Jesse walked around the falls on this day, but returned later and ran it. The results were somewhat ugly: He pitoned into the huge roostertail rock with a loud 'thud' and stopped cold, disappearing from sight for a few seconds while everyone held their breath. A few seconds later he was ejected over the rock, doing a front-loop into the hole below. He rolled up quickly and managed to avoid the undercut wall downstream..

EJ Etherington also ran the falls on another trip, but later said he doesn't think he will repeat it..

Jesse Coombs fires up the nasty falls on a later trip, just before pinning briefly on the rock.

Pete Giordano gives the nasty falls long look.. "No thanks.."

Below the falls the river kept up a steady pace with some really nice, smaller boulder gardens, and then we arrived at the take out bridge.

If you are feeling really good you can continue a half mile or so downstream of the bridge to Salmon Falls, a chunky 25-foot split falls. The paddle from the old take-out bridge to Salmon is very flat and boring, but it's worth it when you get to the falls.

Salmon Falls is big and hard. The right-side falls drops onto rocks, but the left-side falls is often run. Scout this one carefully though, the lead-in is only visible from the river-left side and it is pretty tough, especially at lower flows. The left-side falls goes any which way, right, left, center.. it's all good if you've got the nerve to run the lead-in to this beast.

At lower flows paddlers sometimes choose to portage the extremely narrow lead-in slot and launch from a small rock shelf at the lip of the falls on the left. You trade speed for a guaranteed hairy-side up run if you do this, though I'm not sure how much speed matters on this falls because everyone seems to go deep here..

The Grand Finale: Salmon Falls.
Mike Long fires up Salmon on a recent run down Opal Gorge while Jon Fowlkes drains the water out of his nose below..
photo by EJ Etherington

Nicolas takes out at Salmon Falls as the sun goes down on a recent winter run through Opal Gorge.
photo by EJ Etherington

ACCESS:

1) Put in at Thors Playroom or at Cedar Creek bridge. The take-out is more complicated because locals have recently posted no-trespassing signs at the Elkhorn Creek bridge. So, you can continue down another half mile below the bridge and take out at Salmon Falls, or there is a hiking trail above Elkhorn Bridge that has access.

2) A better low-water put-in (more paddling!) would be to put in at the bridge over Cedar Creek and run the last couple of boulder gardens on Opal Creek and then Thors Playroom before the gorge.

FLOWS, RATINGS, and RAMBLINGS: The photos on this report were taken at 550 cfs on the Little North Santiam internet gauge, which was a IV+ flow rapids-wise with a class V 'look and feel'. The following weekend we returned and ran the gorge with 700 cfs, which wasn't any harder, probably a little more fun though. These are medium flows for this gorge, and I know Dan used to do his solo trips around 700 cfs.

Paddlers have been consistently running this section higher and higher. Pete Giordano and Ryan Windsor ran the gorge at about 1,000 cfs, and said the lines changed a little but it wasn't too sketchy. I later received an email from a boater who soloed the gorge at 1,000 cfs and ran every single rapid ( including the Final Falls ). He said that he wouldn't want to go much higher because the hole in 'Mystery' was sticky and he got surfed in it for awhile.

Let me know if you do this section any higher and how it works out.. if I get up there first I'll be sure to post an update..