Blue
1. Quentin Creek to Blue River Reservoir
| Difficulty | III-IV(V) |
| Length | 5.5 mi |
| Avg Gradient | 91 fpm |
| Gauge | Blue River Below Tidbits Creek |
| Flow Rate as of 1 hour | 51 cfsbelow recommended |
| Reach Info Last Updated | July 8, 2025 |
River Description
Overview Upper Blue River beginning at the Cook Creek confluence is a high quality, action packed, intermediate run less than an hour from Eugene/Springfield that features a wide variety of rapids and moves in an incredibly beautiful setting. With the exception of a true waterfall, this run has everything! If it ran every day like the White Salmon this would be a destination run - it's that good. This run is roadside, and although the road isn't visible from the river for most of the run, a scramble egress is possible in most places, and you can scout all the major rapids on your drive up.
The Upper-Upper (From Quentin Creek to Cook Creek) features some exploratory boating, lots of wood, and a significant Class V drop. Most people put in a Cook Creek.
The most commonly run section is from Cook Creek to Blue River Reservoir and it can be run in less than an hour by an efficient crew that knows the lines and current wood hazards. Two laps are not uncommon, but most crew's are content with one. This is primarily a rain fed river throughout the winter and runs with most rain storms, but access can become limited by snow on the road late in the season. In years with a good snow pack (which are increasingly uncommon), after work Blue laps on meltwater are a treat in April in May when the days are longer.
Difficulty & Character
The base difficulty of most rapids is III/III+ consisting of bedrock slides and ledges interspersed with significant boulders at a few key class -IV/IV rapids. However the rapids are closely stacked, the riverbed is narrow, and brush or wood is almost always a factor. For these reasons it is not recommended for class III paddlders. That said, this is an excellent 'introduction to creeking' run for folks with solid class 3/4 river skills. The run begins with a bang and if someone is feeling out of their element in the first 1/2 mile, it will only get more uncomfortable and hazardous the
...River Features
Upper-Upper Put In [Includes Food For Thought (V) ]
If you're going to run the upper-upper stretch for an exploratory and wood filled day on the water, this is where you start. Below this put-in is the Class V rapid 'Food for Thought'
Cook Creek Put-In [For the III-IV run]
This is the typical put-in when folks say they are going to run Upper Blue River
First Rapid
A typical bedrock rapid just below the put in. This is the first one. Heads up for wood.
Pincushion
The crux rapid on the run. At medium and high flows the cleanest line is down the left side boofing and weaving some covered boulders and a few holes. At low water this line becomes jumbled with pin potential. An alternative line is to sneak down the right side sliding over some bedorck to arrive at a pool above a large bedrock finger on river right. From there you can peel out into the main flow mid rapid, or hairy-fairy to an eddy river left and pick your way down from there. Some call catching the left eddy below the main pitch 'the whipstich,' in keeping with the rapid's theme.
Pickup Sticks
If there weren't three huge logs hanging over and into the river, this rapid probably wouldn't have a name. It's a class 3 move to set up right, but many folks have swam here by being pinned on one of the logs dangling in the flow. Scout from the road, portage on the right.
Lookout Campground and Boat Launch Take-Out
This access is at the boat launch at the upstream end of the reservoir where Blue River and Lookout Creek end at the slackwater of the reservoir.
Trip Reports
Log in to add a reportHaving paddled Cook Creek to the reservoir a few times, I was curious about Quentin Creek to Cook Creek, a 1.1 mile section which includes Food For Thought, a class five at normal flow. So, Sunday afternoon, 5/18, I paddled it at extremely low water. There is a substantial collection of wood just above Cook Creek and probably six to eight logs disbursed along the mile. But Food For Thought is clear and that entire section is just beautiful. It starts with a massive boulder river left, which is a big undercut at normal flow. That's followed immediately by a long slide, a somewhat less formidable Better Than, which terminates at an 8' ledge drop onto a boulder pile. I portaged that because at the low flow there wasn't enough pillow to run it.
I made a short video focusing on Food For Thought. I would like to go back with a bit more water.
A beautiful spring afternoon on the Blue River with Clinton, Megi, and Tom. A flow of 260 cfs was about the lower limit of the range for this beautiful creek. We put in at Cook Creek and paddled down to the reservoir. We were on the water for about 1.5 hours. We encountered a couple pieces of wood to avoid but all were visible and easily avoided.
A lot of the problem wood was moved with our last big storm. Here are some recent photos of some of the bigger drops.
We had an excellent 1,000cfs on the Pat Welch gauge, and 5.21 feet reporting on the NOAA gauge all on snow melt. It felt similar to 1100 or 1200 during the winter rains. The gauge is downstream from tidbits so in the winter it is influenced more by low elevation rain than in the spring when all the water is coming from the top. At the same gauge reading at Tidbits, it can feel very different depending on the season. All wood was passable in the boat, though we did have one person swim and self rescue due to a pin on the teeter-totter log in pickup sticks. It was Bill Field's birthday and we had an excellent crew with good flows.
Ran this for the first time two weeks ago at about 470cfs and it was a lovely first-timer flow, with plenty of eddies but also clean lines through every drop. Pin cushion was the only one that caused trouble, probably because some folks didn't get out of the car to take a peek from the road. Easy road scout, worth looking.
Feb 2017: Food For Thought was clean and 5 of us ran it at 550 cfs. We had one person swim out of the bottom hole after dropping in backwards. All others came through without issue, the class V rating seems correct at that flow.
There was plenty of wood dodging below Food For Thought and before the Cook Creek put in, though we all thought it was worth it. We had one portage above that lower put in.
The run from Cook Creek down was splashy, fun and portage free.
The location of the upper put in. The overgrown spur road to hike in on is found about 1 mile past Quentin Creek on the right. Schwack down it a short way until it looks reasonable to drop to the stream.
Taken from the bridge over Blue River, at the top of resivour.