John Day, N. Fork

Amazing river.  I did it 5-27-24 and the flow was 2300.  I think the flow was perfect because I had a lot of control.  Very dangerous, it was all whitewater until a little bit after the class five spot.  Starting at the campground, it took me 3.5 hours to get to the class five spot.  There were 5 spots where a tree blocked the entire river and you have to get out and go around.  All 5 of the tree spots were about 2 to 3 miles up river from the class five spot.  This is a rough estimate of couse.  Very noticable difference when the two rivers join at the class five spot.  The river now has more volume to it.  More volume = more power.  Eventhough the river is much wider and faster at this point,  the river is not as steep.  If you want a challenge, you got it with this river.  Amazing beauty, wild and senic.

This is a really cool and beautiful section of river worth doing - especially if you like scenery, solitute, and challenge. It's incredibly continuous and has a good amount of wood requring Class IV-V skills. If there was no wood a confident Class IV boater would have a good time but being on red alert all the time takes a toll.

Here's a descrioption I wrote: Upper North Fork John Day Description

We came with intent to do this run on May 13th but were informed the Forest Road 52 out of Ukiah (the preferred route on the north side of the river) and Forest Road 10 (alternate route on the south side of the river also accessing Granite Creek access) were still snowed in. Tollgate Campground was a good place to meet and spend the night--just two groups of boaters in the campground on a Wednesday evening. We arranged a drive with the Dale Store to take us up to Oriental Campground and boated the segment from the campground and continued on down the run on the Dale to Monument run. In a future year we might try hiking up from the bottom with packrafts. The Forest Service said the river corridor itself was free of snow but the roads go up over elevation through areas of snow. The section from Oriental Campground down to Dale was mostly class II with no major wood hazards. A short basalt gorge, just over a mile downstream of Driftwood Campground, had some fun class III whitewater.

The NFJD in a nutshell: Scenery, intermediate whitewater, wood present.

May 28 (Memorial Day Weekend)
3,200 cfs

Approx 2900 cfs @ monument

May 20, 2017

Canoe trip on the Upper North Fork of the John Day.