Down the Columbia

by Lewis R. Freeman

The rather smart team-work which Andy and I had maintained for a while dissolved like the morning mists as we banged in among the walloping rollers at the head of the real cascade. Both of us were in difficulties, but his round-armed thumping stroke seemed rather more true to form than the shattered remnants of my fine straight-armed slide-and-recover, with its dainty surface-skimming “feather.” Nothing but the sharpest of dabs with the tip of an oar can get any hold in a current of fifteen to twenty miles an hour, and the short, wristy pull (which is all there is time for) doesn’t impart a lot of impulse to a thirty-foot boat. That, and the staggering buffets on the bows, for it was solid, lumpy water that was coming over us now, quickly reduced our headway. (Headway through the current, I mean; our headway floating in the current was terrific.) This was, of course, a serious handicap to Blackmore, as it deprived him of much of the steerage-way upon which he was dependent for quick handling of the boat. The difficulty of maintaining steerage-way in rough water with oars makes a bow as well as a stern paddle very desirable in running bad rapids. The bow paddler can keep a very sharp lookout for rocks immediately ahead, and, in a pinch, can jerk the boat bodily to one side or the other, where oarsmen have to swing it. However, Blackmore knew just what he was going up against, and had made the best disposition possible of his available crew.

I was too busy keeping myself from being bucked off the thwart by my floundering oar to steal more than that first hurried look over my shoulder. It was not my concern what was ahead anyway. All I had to do was to take a slap at the top of a wave every time I saw a chance, and be ready to back, or throw my weight into a heavy stroke, when Blackmore needed help to turn her this way or that. My signal—a jerk of the steersman’s head to the left—came sooner than I expected. It looked a sheer impossibility to drive through the maze of rocks to the bank, yet that—after a long, anxious look ahead—was evidently what he had decided to attempt. As it was my oar he called on, I knew it was the right or east bank, a sharply sloping reach of black bedrock littered with water-scoured boulders.

By the way Blackmore was leaning onto his paddle I knew that he needed all the pull I could give him to bring her round. Swinging back hard, I threw every pound I had onto my oar. For an instant the lack of resistance as the blade tore through foam nearly sent me reeling backwards; then it bit into solid water, and, under impulse of oar and paddle, the boat pivoted through more than half a quadrant and shot straight for the bank. Right in where the black rock tips were scattered like the raisins in a pudding he headed her. There was no room to use the oars now, but she still carried more than enough way to send her to the bank. Or rather, it would have carried her through if the course had been clear. Missing two or three rocks by inches, she rasped half her length along another, and onto a fourth—lurking submerged by a foot—she jammed full tilt. It was her port bow that struck, and from the crash it seemed impossible that she could have escaped holing. Andy went over the side so suddenly that, until I saw him balancing on a rock and trying to keep the boat from backing off into the current, I thought he had been thrown overboard by the impact. Thumping her bow with his boot, he reported her leaking slightly but not much damaged. Then, swinging her round into an eddy, he jumped off into the waist-deep water and led her unresistingly up against the bank. It was astonishing to see so wild a creature so suddenly become tame.

We would have to “line down” from here to the foot of the first fall, Blackmore said. While Roos was setting up his camera the veteran explained that he could have run four or five hundred yards farther down, right to the brink of the “tip off,” but that he preferred getting in out of the wet where he had a good landing. I agreed with him heartily—without putting it in words. But if that was his idea of a “good landing place,” I hoped he would continue to avoid bad ones.

The basic principles of “lining down” are the same on all rivers. Where water is too rough to run, it is the last resort before portaging. As generally practised, one man, walking along the bank, lets the boat down with a line, while another—or as many others as are available—keeps it off the rocks with poles. “Lining” can be effected more rapidly and with much less effort if one man remains in the boat and fends off with his pole from there. This is much the better method where the fall is not too great and the water comparatively warm. On the upper Columbia, where the breaking away of a boat from a line means its almost inevitable loss with all on board, it is resorted to only when absolutely necessary, and when a man of great experience is handling the line. It takes a natural aptitude and years of experience for a man to master all the intricacies of “lining.” I shall not endeavour to enumerate even the few that I am familiar with; but the one thing beyond all others to avoid is letting the bow of the boat swing outwards when the stern is held up by a rock. This brings the full current of the river against its up-stream side, exerting a force that a dozen men could not hold against, let alone one or two. As Blackmore was noted for his mastery of the “lining” game, however, we had no apprehension of trouble in this department.

Nothing of the outfit save the moving picture camera was removed from the boat at this juncture. Coiling his line—something over a hundred feet of half-inch Manila hemp—over his left arm, Blackmore signalled Andy to shove off. Paying out the line through his right hand, he let the eddy carry the boat out into the drag of the current. Armed with long pike-poles, Andy and I ran on ahead to keep it clear of the banks as it swung in. This was easy enough as long as we had only the bank to contend with. But almost immediately the trouble which makes Surprise Rapids one of the nastiest stretches on any river in the world to line began to develop. This came from the submerged rocks which crop up all along between the banks and the deeper water of mid-channel.

Pulling her up and releasing her with a hand that reminded me of that of a consummate natural horseman, Blackmore nursed the boat along and managed to avoid most of these obstructions. But every now and then she would wedge between a close-set pair of boulders and resist the force of the current to drive her on. At such times it was up to Andy and me to wade in and try to dislodge her with our poles. Failing this, we had to wade out still farther and lift her through. Andy always took the lead in this lifting business, claiming that it required a lot of experience to know just the instant to stop shoving at the boat as she began to move, and start bracing against the current to keep from getting carried away. I have no doubt he was right. In any event he would never let me come out until he had tugged and hauled for several minutes trying to budge her alone, and even then—notwithstanding his four or five inches less of height—he always took his station in the deepest hole. Two or three times, shaking himself like a Newfoundland, he came out wet to the armpits with the icy water. As the sun was beating hotly upon the rocks, however, neither of us felt the cold much that afternoon. A few days later it was another story.

We made something like eight or nine hundred yards before we stopped—right to the head of the roaring chute that ran down to the sheer drop-off. Roos—always at his best when there was plenty of unpremeditated action going on, so that “directorial” worries sat lightly on him—followed us closely all the way. It was hard enough keeping one’s footing on those ice-slippery boulders at all; how he managed it with something like a hundred pounds of camera and tripod over his shoulder and a bulky case in one hand is more than I can figure. But he did it, keeping close enough so that he got just about everything without having to ask us to do it over again. This latter was a good deal of a comfort, especially in those waist-deep-in-the-Columbia lifting stunts. I had always hated “lining down,” even in the tropics, and I already saw that what we had ahead wasn’t going to modify my feelings for the better.

At the head of that rough-and-tumble cascade leading to the fall, Blackmore decided that we would have to unload the boat completely before trying to let her down. It was always bad business there at the best, he said, and the present stage of water made the rocks quite a bit worse than when either higher or lower. If we hustled, there ought to be time to get through before dark, and then a half mile run would take us to a good camping place near the head of the second fall. Here Roos intervened to point out that the sun was already behind the western wall, and asking if it wouldn’t be possible to camp where we were. He wanted to keep the “continuity” of this particular piece of “lining” unbroken, and would need good light to finish it in. Blackmore said he could manage the camp if we thought our ear-drums would stand the roar.

So we unloaded the boat, and Blackmore leading her into the quietest pool he could find, moored her for the night. As there was a couple of feet of “lop” even there, this was rather a nice operation. With lines to stern and bow, and held off from the rocks on either side by lashed pike-poles, she looked for all the world like some fractious horse that had been secured to prevent its banging itself up against the sides of its stall. It was a beastly job, carrying the fifteen or twenty heavy parcels of the outfit a hundred yards over those huge polished boulders to the bit of sand-bar where camp was to be pitched. My old ankles—endlessly sprained during my football days—protested every step of my several round trips, and I congratulated myself that I had had the foresight to bring leather braces to stiffen them. Reeking with perspiration after I had thrown down my last load, I decided to use the river for a bath that I would have to take anyway on shifting from my wet clothes. The half-glacial water was not a lot above freezing, of course; but that is of small moment when one has plenty of animal heat stored up to react against it. My worst difficulty was from the bumpiness of my rocky bathing pool, which also had a rather troublesome undercurrent pulling out toward the racing chute of the main channel. Blackmore, pop-eyed with astonishment, came down to watch the show. It was the first time he had ever seen a man take a voluntary bath in Surprise Rapids, he said. And all the others—the involuntary bathers—they had picked up later in Kinbasket Lake.