Six of us (four adults and two kids) spent most of a week tripping up- and down-lake from the Leslie Gulch access on Owyhee Lake this June, dodging the heat and sometimes the wind. A fascinating area for sea kayaking, but perhaps not ideal for use of a downwind sail rig. Noel Collamer put us onto Owyhee, with a trip report last year. His description proved irresistible, and accurate. Many side-canyons, some lovely, others desolate. One, a still life fusion of an open-air sit-upon toilet seat next to a campfire ring and a pair of deer skeletons. Another, a lovely aspen-filled creek bed under a boulder-generated waterfall, sustaining two lonely trout. Many ... unexplored! The Leslie Gulch launch ramp is 20-some miles of good gravel road off US 95, just over the Idaho border, maybe 40 miles south of Interstate 84. This is a major powerboat access point for the 52-mile long lake, and the main exit for rafters, etc., who have floated the Lower Owyhee River from Rome, OR, to slackwater (11-12 miles south of LG). Almost all the power boat traffic at this end of the lake is due to serious bass fishers, so there is little or no PWC/water skier annoyance to diminish the "wilderness" flavor of paddling. We were spread out, two per Folbot double, each equipped with a Twins sail rig to exploit downwind assist. That only worked two of the six days. One day, the wind was too strong to paddle (or sail). Three days, it was too light to sail, so we paddled. On our last day, a 10-knot tail wind goosed us back to the ramp. At spring lake levels, camping is limited to sage-covered bars and points. Although more "beach" is exposed later in the summer, we all agreed the 80 - 90 F days of June were warm enough. Anything hotter, such as July or August, would require individual refrigeration! We first spent a day working our way some 4 - 5 miles up-lake to a crowded point-camp across from a minimally-developed hot spring. Two smallish tent sites would allow camping near the pools, but I'd judge there would be crowds on weekends. Strong wind on day two kept us shorebound. In lieu of a soak, we wandered up a nearby peak, some 800 feet above lake level. Spectacular! The surrounding weathered volcanic tuff, interspersed with harder basaltic (?) intrusions, makes for a myriad of shapes and pinnacles. Lea, our Utah expert, likened its appearance (but not the geology!) to the sandstone canyons of Southern Utah. The BLM brochure for the Leslie Gulch Area of Critical Environmental Concern (18 sq. miles) describes the formation as a 15.5 million year old "rhyolite air-fall tuff," ejected from a volcano in the Gulch, and sculpted into "steep slopes and vertical, pitted ('honeycombed') towers and cliffs resulting from differential erosion and chemical weathering." Aside from the geology, the ACEC also features a large herd of California bighorn sheep (we saw none) and is 30 years into recovery from grazing. This year's very wet spring made for a profusion of plants, many in flower. My favorite was the evening primrose. The hot spring beckoned on day three, but we had to skedaddle down-lake. After an overnight water refill from vehicle stores at the spartan campground back at Leslie Gulch, we continued down-lake on day 4, following another pair from NW Oregon. All eight ended up some 5 - 6 miles down-lake on the shores of a side-inlet popular with the fishing crowd. The kids played dust games, the adults cooked, ate and pitched an elaborate shade-shelter, the coyotes serenaded, and a loud cicada-like noise kept the paranoid ones in an X-files mood both nights. (I thought it was a bull frog in heat, but was pooh-poohed by everybody over the age of 6. Ethan was hoping for a Klingon visitation. Claire was on MY side!) This inlet was the prize, featuring as lovely a desert canyon as any. Canyoning must not be understood by the powerboat crowd. The bassers at the creek mouth were stunned to see us emerge in our folding doubles -- popeyed stares complemented with stuttered queries on how we managed to get our boats down the canyon! Becky and I used the afternoon to paddle against a strong headwind two miles to the Pelican Point airstrip, complete with landing log, fistfulls of business cards from the pilot crowd, and an Ernest Hemingway-style fishing shack between strip and shore. Naturally, the wind quit as we erected our sail to fly back to camp! Friday saw strong, favorable wind early, hurrying our pack-up, completed in time to catch the tail of the mid-day northwesterly, which petered out as we came in sight of the takeout at Leslie Gulch. Next year, I'll put in at the dam, and ride those northwesterlies all 52 miles up-lake, hitting every cool place and evanescent canyon. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Jun 22 1998 - 10:08:22 PDT
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