Trip Report: Grande Ronde Frustration
Editor’s note 10/17/22: This report has triggered some chatter and I (Teresa) feel compelled to comment. The intention here is not to shame the trip coordinator or the individual who delayed the trip. These things happen. It is not easy for a coordinator to know when a stranger will be competent as vs compromised for any given task. It is also entirely human for a person to have bad days and to make mistakes. Perhaps the most important lesson here is in the need for compassion, because any one of us could make a mistake that turns a trip difficult. Please keep looking out for each other and good luck out there!
Back in May, several club members took a trip down the Grande Ronde in extreme northeastern Oregon. Instead of a three-hour tour, it was a three-day, 39-mile outing with its share of setbacks and successes.
The weather was great and the scenery, as always, was exceptional. But last year’s fires took a heavy toll on the riparian area and much of the final 20 miles was badly charred. The burn was a mosaic, with some spots completely zorched while others escaped with barely a singe.
Like the Yellowstone fires of ‘88, the understory will bounce back quickly, with shrubs and forbs especially vibrant in coming years thanks to carbon-enriched soils. The mature stands of Ponderosa pine, however, won’t recover in our lifetime. The dead trees will rock and sway in wind and rain, occasionally crashing down, and they will remain a menace for years to come.
Just as the landscape was varied, so was the composition of our party. There were five club members, plus a couple of high school girls from eastern Washington who were guests of the trip coordinator.
None of the club members knew one another, so organizing the trip by email was challenging; some folks corresponded in a timely and detailed manner, while others were dilatory and terse.
Launch day was frustrating as one of our members dithered incessantly over his boat. The grumpiness index rose as the hours ticked away and finally, around 2 pm, we began to launch. It was not a tidy or unified launch and somehow our slowest-moving member managed to shove off without a PFD.
We finally got everyone into the same eddy a couple of miles below the put-in, and two people walked back to the launch site where, sure enough, the forgotten PFD was found inside its owner’s van.
So Day 1 ended with the group camped at Mile 2. The second day was much smoother and with flows around 7,000 cfs, the group put 29 miles behind it. Day 3 was a short one, no more than two hours on the water, and the voyageurs reached the take-out before their vehicles. The rolling stock arrived within a few minutes, and the entire party was on the road less than an hour later.