Our first major trip of the summer was a 6-day/5-night rafting trip on the wild and scenic section of the John Day River. This is a 70 mile stretch with a put in a Clarno and a take-out at cottonwood. Beautiful central Oregon desert canyon rafting trip. 2 years ago we did a shorter section upriver from here starting at Twickenham and taking out at Clarno which was our put in for this trip. the colder than average variable weather spring we have been having this year continued to play out on this trip with warmer temps earlier in the trip dropping to cold and windy near the end of the trip with a torrential rain storm one night and a major wind-storm another night but thankfully our days were more pleasant.
Like our raft trip to the Grand Ronde river last year we went with our friends the Lovejoy's and the Kerrs. This year the Noah's ran the smaller 'super puma' raft, while Hunter, Jack and Nathan kayaked.
This section of the John day only had one major set of rapids that were in the class 3 range. We hit this set on the very first day but other than that its light class 2 and river float for the most part through a beautiful canyon with some interesting frontier history loaded with stories from early homesteaders, farmers, ranchers, and cattle rustlers. This was the first longer trip with the new raft after its initial voyage in April on the lower Deschutes and first trip with the family.
