The first ones through

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October 10, 2009

By Mark Freeman

Mail Tribune

We sat in a driftboat parked all morning Friday atop the Rogue River's new Savage Rapids hoping to chronicle history, not make it.

Surely the well-publicized opening of the new channel through the cut-away section of Savage Rapids Dam would lure a flotilla of floaters looking to be the first to row boats through the dam-less rapid for the first time in 88 years.

But no one dumb or well-insured enough to test the unknown rapid showed up, so we had to do it ourselves.

With Mail Tribune photographer Jamie Lusch and videographer Siboney Lusch in the front seats, I rowed my driftboat through the restored free-flowing channel, the first through the rapid since before 1921, when the dam was built.

I picked and powered my aluminum driftboat around rolling boulders and past sloughing gravel banks through the long, steep and ever-changing rapid to come out safely at the bottom with an extra quart of adrenaline pooling in my ankles.

We did it blindly, without a chance to scout the rapids. Just answered a few "I think you can make it" phone calls from people on the Grants Pass Irrigation District catwalk spanning the Rogue who were watching refrigerator-sized boulders pop out of the gravel and tumble randomly down the rapid.

In a way, we didn't have much choice.

After launching early Friday at the Jackson County boat ramp beneath the Depot Bridge in Rogue River, there was no turning back.

The only way my motorless boat would make it out of the Rogue on Friday was either running the rapid and pulling out at Pierce Riffle or hiring a helicopter to hoist my boat to safety in front of several dozen onlookers and television crews.

I still gotta live in this town.

So down we went.

Demolition crews stopped. Flash cameras popped. With the thumbs-up from an excavator operator, we picked through the chocolate water toward the unknown.

The oar blades barely cut through the shallow water, with the only path being one that hugged close to — but slightly to the left of — two huge boat-sinking rocks that moved every few minutes.

Part of my 20-plus years here covering the Rogue was spent writing stories about people doing stupid things like this.

Should the boulders move into our path, someone else writes this story.

The boulders didn't move. They turned out to be the least of our worries, because the last maneuver proved the most crucial.

At the last second, I chose to go to the right of what appeared to be a rootwad near the rapid's base. It turned out to be a tree that would have sunk us for sure had we gone to the left.

And then it was over.

Instead of witnessing the first attempt to navigate a free-flowing Rogue through Savage Rapids, we somewhat reluctantly became part of it.

In short time, the rapid should stabilize and create its new identity that future rafters, kayakers and driftboaters will learn and appreciate like so much of the Rogue's other whitewater features.

But for that brief moment when the new Savage Rapids was its most savage Friday, this fresh piece of the Rogue was all ours.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.

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