On our third day we started out with breakfast at the Black Bear diner in Klamath Falls. Didn’t know it was a chain when choosing it, but the food was good and a decent price. Afterwards we started our driver down to the boarder of Oregon and California to paddle the Klamath. The trip down to the access points was definitely an adventure. As you get closer the road gets progressively more difficult and eventually you’re slowly making the descent from the canyon rim down to the river. Anyone who thinks the road to the Cheat is bad needs to reconsider. The trek is truly to the next level. I would not want to try to drive down this road during the muddy season.
We put in at Frain Ranch to cut off the first 5 miles, and about two hours of total shuttle time. This also puts you in immediately above the first rapid, Caldera. It’s an impressive rapid, quite long, and busy the whole way down. There was a stoppage up top to scout and I decided to bounce down and find a good spot to take photos from. Even though I went a decent length, it was still only half way down the rapid. There were two nice big rocks that made pour overs for you to thread through and big holes to dodge. Thus we were right into the meat of the run, with plenty of excitement to be had. All of us decided to dodge the rocks except Matt, who thought boofing the top one was a good idea. I wish I had, but I was still off put by the sharp rocks on this coast.
As we headed down, the beautiful canyon and difficult rapids continued. All were fun and the excitement kept up. We eventually got to Hells Corner, a nice large multi-stage class IV rapid. From the top where it drops off you are unable to see down the rapid as it’s blocked by a large boulder/pourover on the left and a smaller one to the right. I eddy hopped down as far as I could without entering to see if I could see a line from my boat. The lower position allowed me to see a between the boulders from right to left, that I could chain with what I saw slightly higher. I dropped in and threaded through the boulders to see a nice line to an eddy river right. Made my way over to it and jumped out to grab some photos.
Upon getting out of my boat I found that the rapid continued for quite some time, and I was probably only about a third of the way down at most. The river turned to the left at the bottom of this segment, with the busy water continuing until it turned back to the right and out of sight. No where in this did it seem like the rapid was beginning to let up. Matt came down after I had set up to grab photos and joined me on the shore to set safety. Once David had finished scouting, Todd came down to join us. Then David ran the rapid and blew right past us. We had no idea what the rest of the rapid looked like, and Todd continued on with David as Matt and I jumped into our boats.
Around the next corner was some nice 3/4ish run out and a nice eddy or two before the next rapid. The good class 3+ rapids continued as we went further down the river. In one of the rapids I ended up finding the FU rock. The river gave me the finger. I hit a nice pointy rock why rocketing down a rapid, giving my boat a little extra rocker. Eventually we came to the end of a very awesome run, thoroughly enjoying it. Before fetching the car from the put in we went further downstream to hunt for a hot spring we saw on the map. We eventually found it, but all that was there was a bunch of tall grass, and a concrete cap.
While the hot spring was a bust, there were plenty of blackberry bushes in the area. We also learned that taking out at access point 5 or 6 would probably be better. You get to paddle a couple more good rapids and there is no drive off the “road” to the river. We then made the trek back up out of the canyon and to Klamath Falls. On the way back we did some searching and discovered that the falls the town got its namesake from had been flooded under a dam. When back in town we stopped at Klamath Basin Brewing Company, which had a nice selection of beers on tap.