Riverhouse!

Swans Attack!


















Kim Russell and Lisa Kloberdanz
Photo by: Jason Offett


After 6 months of working together at Alder Creek Kayak and Canoe, fellow Liquidlogic Lady, Lisa Kloberdanz and I had NEVER paddled together. Read NEVER EVER EVER! How sad is that? We work in the same shop and we both love to paddle and we were both paddling a lot over the summer, but our schedules never worked out for us to paddle together. Bummer!

BUT, Today, November 4, 2006, Lisa and I got a chance to paddle on the local Riverhouse run in town with some friends: John Cramp, John Jordan and Jason Offett. WOHOO!


Some of the Crew:

John Jordan

Photo By: Kim Russell

Jason Offett in his Jefe

Photo By: Kim Russell

Riverhouse is a solid class IV run that only runs during late/fall and winter. In the summer, water is released from Wickiup Reservoir and makes it way down to the city of Bend. When it gets about half-way through town though, the water is re-routed/piped out to various canals for farmers’ crops.

In the winter, these canals “shut down” and paddlers get their water back. The lower runs, Riverhouse and the Middle Deschutes, from Steelhead Falls to Lake Billy Chinook, go from something like 76 cfs in the summer (bone dry) to a fairly constant 500 cfs in the winter. SWEET! By the way, there will be a write up on the Middle Deschutes section sometime soon once we get on it. Anywhooo… today we ran “Riverhouse,” named at the hotel you put-in behind :)

Lisa Kloberdanz in her Mighty Green Liquidlogic Crossriver making her way downstream
Photo By Kim Russell

Today, though, we put-in at “the dam” this super fast, super cool 30 ft slide thing. Just sounds cool huh? While putting in, we noticed a bunch of swans gathering at the lip which brought out some really interesting “attack” stories from everyone. John Jordan told us about the time he was squirt boating and this one swam came over to him and made like he was going to attack. John was able to “make himself look bigger,” and the swan went away. John went back to his squirt boating and eventually the swan came back with four others ready to attack! Talk about feisty animals! Haha. WOW. Anywhoo.. back to the story…

Kim Russell running the dam
Photo by: John Cramp


Lisa took a pass on the dam due to her neck injury L Get better ASAP! Everyone else put in above the dam and took turns dropping over the edge. The second you drop over, you feel like you are going to go over-vert and land on your face. As long as you lean forward, you don’t. As you drop over, you get that feeling you get on a rollercoaster when you are going really fast down a BIG hill. You can feel your stomach rising as you pick up speed and brace for impact. You get to the bottom, and life is SWEET! Today, everyone made it down safely and we were able to make our way downriver to rapids with names such as The Wright Stuff, Flumes of Doom, T-rex, The Ogre. The Wright Stuff is basically a pin-fest. Haha. You either get pinned, flip on your face because of a new log that throws you off into more gnar triangular shaped weird slots between them rocks, or make it down only taking half the plastic of your boat in the process :)Naw. It’s not that bad, it’s just really pinny.

Next up, comes Flumes of Doom, a fun series of ledges, boulder-garden style with a fun boof at the bottom. T-Rex is another boulder garden ledgy type rapid. Super fun!




Jason Offett taking the Right line in T-Rex
Photo By: John Cramp


Kim Russell dropping into T-Rex
Photo by: John Cramp

Lisa Kloberdanz setting up for the next ledge in T-Rex
Photo By: John Cramp

(No pics of John Cramp or John Jordan here :( )

One of the last substantial rapids on this section is called the Ogre. It’s this semi-steep ramp into a funky curler/pillow along the right wall with a giant boulder in the middle of the river just downstream of the pillow and an eddy on the left mid-way between the two. SQUIRT FEST for me and Lisa in our playboats while the guys styled it in their creekers! WOHOO!



Check out the video taken by John Cramp of Jason Offett in his Jefe running the Ogre!

We all had a nice leisurely paddle and did the run in a little less than two hours I think. At the end, we were so stoked on finally paddling together, Lisa and I are planning to do so again tomorrow with another crew! Yee-haw!


Kim Russell