2 hour Road trip from Medford Oregon
Jared Hokanson - Medford Oregon Realtor
Its not every weekend that one gets the chance to go river rafting down the Klamath River, just a short two hour drive from Medford, Oregon to Happy Camp, California. That was the plan for 26 Boy Scouts and 9 leaders today.
We had it all set up with rafts from SOU Outdoor Program and all of the transportation. We spent two nights beforehand at the Dillon Creek Campground, which is a beautiful campground on the warm creek with is great for swimming with its warm pools and pretty mild current. We saw families there with young children, and yet the Scouts from age 14-18 found plenty to do there as well.
After getting to our pretermined launch site about 13.5 miles north of Happy Camp on Saturday morning, we launched off for the rigerous white water of the Klamath River, with plans to interrupt about 4 miles into it and take all of the boats back on the vehicles and relaunch several miles down stream so that we could avoid the miles and miles that were too calm without much white water. We had a blast on that 4 mile or so stretch as we rowed through the rapids, hit several rocks that spun our raft around, and kept everyone in the boat, till we got to the calm spots where a few Scouts jumped out to cool off in the river.
In what seemed like just a short 30 minute raft ride, we landed the rafts on the shore to proceed to the next launch point. We drove till about 2 miles south of Happy Camp and then we saw it....the dreaded Elk Complex Fire sign saying that the launch site was closed to recreation traffic, as they were filling water trucks for the mostly contained fire.
What a dissapointment!
We decided we would continue our recreation elsewhere and find a swimming hold where we could play frisbee football and do some cliff jumping, which we found about 2 miles East of Happy Camp, in Indian Creek.
So...the 2nd 1/2 of the raft trip will wait for another summer, but having rafted on the Rogue River, the Snake River, and now the Klamath River, I would say the Klamath River, although I only experience a small portion of it today, will definately be worth the wait to try again when the fires have cleared!
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