White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1931-09-24
Donald Wheeler Tells of
Exciting River Trip

"A light breeze ruffled the surface of
the river as we passed out of the
slough into the main current. We
were off on a great adventure, Robert
Nitzsche and ]; our destination was
Portland; our road three hundred
odd miles of more or less unknown
river; our craft, an 18-foot sea-sled,
powered by Sea King 81. The motor
banks slipped upstream and our wake
spread out in v behind us. We
made KenneWick in less than two and
one-half hours. We ate little, made
a pair of crude oars, and pushed on.
"The mouth of the Snake was some
thing of an outpost to us. I sat for
ward at the wheel; Nitzsche watched
for depth under the propeller. We
held consultations about which chan
mel to take in passing an island, or
rocks.
"About ten miles below Kennewick
we struck our first rapids The water
was shallow and swept over too many
nasty boulders to please us, so we
tilted the motor and went through
with the oars. We considered them
to. be bit exciting, but hardly dan
gerous. About this time the hills
along the river became somewhat
higher and farther south the river
swung toward the west in slow curve,
thanked by cliffs which marked the
eastern limits of the Columbia Gorge.
The walls of the canyon did not, how
ever, rise very high until we were much
farther into the Cascades.
"Our first big surprise was in store
for us. We had rounded the broad
curve which forms the southeastern
boundary Of Benton county, and all
of Umatilla rapids. At last an undll-
lating, white-flecked line ahead warned
us that we were nearing them. They
did not look very rough but devilishly
shallow so we pulled the motor aboard
to avoid danger of raking the propeller
| or shaft housing on the rocks. We
| drifted down very slowly, as a strong
west wind had sprung up which had
| the effect of almost neutralizing the
current as far as we were concerned.
At last the first crest was just ahead.
1t was not much; just a broken reef
across the river, where the water was
swift, shallow and quite rough. We
picked likely channel and slipped
through without mishap. Another one
was ahead, and another and another;
we narrowly missed some of the rocks
1t was very tricky navigating with the
wind blowing and an unusually deceit
| full current. We thought we were
through, when suddenly last reef APP
peared ahead of U.S. The drop was sc
sharp that the whitecaps below, the
fall had not been visible from above
We hurriedly glanced over the situa-
ton and picked the least menacing of
the channels, but the river paid no at
tention to our attempts to get the boat
to follow it and we discovered our
selves being drawn sharply toward the
Washington shore. We saw a sheer
drop of six or eight feet rushing to-
ward us, a thin sheet of water Shoot
Liz oVCl u lava ollCll lIlUO u utGDCI,
rougher, channel beyond. We had time
to bring the boat around to hit it
head on The bow dropped; we felt
that elevator feeling; the nose struck
the comber below, pitched up, threw
the stern down against the shelf where
it slid forward and off, with grating
noise, and we were out! No, the chan
n On fnr ,,t FL
lava wall on the other side-it recoiled,
and plunged off to the left in the OPP
posite direction, boiling and frothing
through trough with perpendicular
J walls about 10 feet high. But we
came through, somehow, to the calm
water below the rapids, where we
paused to wonder how any boat could
still have one board hanging to an
other.
1--WE camped near Umatilla that
night and nearly froze stiff. We could
find no place better than the boat,
which proved pretty hard. During the
night, Nitzsche broke his leg while try
ing to climb into his Ford from the
wrong SIDE; piece OF Spllntered bone
worked it's way trough the skin be-
low the knee-cap, but after he woke
up it felt much better.
"The next day we were cursed by
an upstream wind that not only
made the river difficult to judge in
the matter of rifles and shoals, but
kicked up such heavy waves that we
had great difficulty in navigating. We
and all our equipment were thorough
ly drenched with spray. We got a
square of canvas at Arlington, and that
kept our blankets and duffle boxes
from further shower baths but the
seas finally got so high that we had
to pull in to a sandy beach on the
Washington side. We made a fire near
one of the huge willows that fringe the
river for miles along here They re-
semble the weeping willow but are not
| quite the same Some of them NAV