Rolling down the Eel River rapids in Mendocino County
Gordon Lehman took to the Eel River rapids on a cloudy Saturday, with the storm-charged, olive-hued water rushing north through Mendocino County.
The veteran whitewater boater brought along his one-man Jack’s Cat, a 14-foot catamaran with two blue inflatable pontoons set three feet apart, separated by a steel conduit frame. It’s an agile craft that knifes through waves hit head-on, while side-striking waves will “flip you over like that,” said Lehman, a Sonoma County vineyard manager.
“Not today,” Lehman declared with a grin at the takeout spot on the Covelo Road about 14 miles east of Highway 101. Having successfully navigated the rushing water, he said, “I was very happy with today.”
So was Christina Woodworth-Powell of Sebastopol, a river guide for 27 years in California, Oregon and abroad who had never been on the Eel before. “It was great to be on a flowing river in the spring,” she said. “It was awesome.”
The winsome Eel River is a springtime favorite of North Bay boaters but a rare treat to catch at a favorable water level in decent weather. She and Lehman were among a loosely organized group that in late March tackled a stretch between Outlet Creek and Dos Rio, a readily accessible piece that is easy to run in three hours without stopping to scout any white knuckle rapids.
The Eel goes up and down like a Super Ball. An inch of rain adds 5,000 to 10,000 cfs. When a severe Pineapple Express dropped 22 inches of rain on the Eel River basin in two days in December, 1964, the river swelled to a monstrous 936,000 cfs, obliterating entire towns. The river also is dammed at Lake Pillsbury in Lake County and shrinks to a trickle by June.
To get on the Eel at its best, you need just the right amount of rain, ideally followed by a few dry days. At the beginning of March, the river had a meager flow of less than 300 cubic feet per second, barely enough for skinny little kayak. Two weeks later, the Eel peaked at 36,000 cubic feet per second after a heavy storm, nearly twice the advisable boating maximum.
By the time we arrived March 26, it had dwindled to a recreation-friendly 2,400 cfs - or?1 million gallons a minute. In just over four hours, 13 Eel devotees in six boats, including a handful of river guides, covered six miles beside the Covelo Road/Highway 162, traveling north from the confluence with Outlet Creek nearly to the confluence with the Middle Fork of the Eel at Dos Rios.
That run is an ideal day trip, less than two hours from Santa Rosa and closer to home than the popular South Fork of the American River in the El Dorado County foothills. It carries about 100,000 people every summer down 20 miles of Class III whitewater, 70 percent of them paying passengers on commercial trips.
There is, thankfully, scant commercial activity on the Eel because it is far from the Bay Area, with an unpredictable flow. You will typically have the river to yourself in winter and early spring, or share it with a few others, tucked in the shallow Eel River Canyon between a lightly-traveled rural road on one side and an abandoned railroad line on the other side, both up a short but steep embankment.
It feels like wild country. House-sized dark gray boulders line the verdant river banks and sometimes split the river, sprinkled with smaller rocks that create nine defined rapids, a Class III run in river parlance, meaning there are plenty of places to get stuck on a rock but not likely in any serious trouble.
In a blunt-nosed 14-foot inflatable raft like ours, built to bounce off rocks and ride through what boaters call “heavy water,” you’re pretty secure. Depending.
We put in on a broad gravel bar about eight miles from Highway 101, just past a bridge over the Eel River where Outlet Creek flows in from the left. No signs mark the spot, and all the gear gets carried down a few short slopes and across the bar to the water.
The run started innocuously, four of us in the boat with two dogs, including one that barked loudly when we bounced over waves. We got turned sideways in the first rapid, Tunnel 1, and took a cold wave over the side of the raft. It was harmless because boats bail themselves out through holes in the inflated floor, but it initiated Patrick Kennedy, an Irishman making his first-ever whitewater voyage. Helped him get over his nerves, he said later on dry land.
“I loved it,” he said. “I can’t wait to go back again.”
We stopped for a lazy lunch on the sand next to one of the small, crystal-clear waterfalls cascading into the Eel. The usual river chow - sandwiches, chips, fruit, cookies and beer - was accented by a jug of “Chateau Gordeaux,” a hearty cabernet Lehman made in his garage.
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