North Umpqua Weekend

This past weekend we headed down to the area near Roseburg to do some boating and biking on the North Umpqua River. I have procrastinated all week on getting this pictures up, and not it's LATE Sunday of the following week - so captions are going to be short and sweet!

It was our friend, Matt's, birthday weekend - so he headed down early on Friday to snag everyone campsites at the Boulder Flat campground on the Umpqua. Thor, Becky & I drove down Friday night - and we had a wonderful campsite right on the river - it was so peaceful to sleep to the sound of the rushing water.

Our view from the campsite.

Looking into our campsite - the 'ol reliable Stevenson tent, bikes & a boat!

Becky - cooking an amazing hash brown/cheese breakfast feast on Thor's B-day camp stove.

Loaded up and rolling out to the ride! We had the 'Dread and Terror' segment of the trail on our agenda for the day.

A shot along the ride - we had gorgeous, sunny weather - such welcome break from the dreary spring we've been having in Portland.

Me - riding up onto a bridge. What you can't see are all the jumbly rocks on the other side that I had to make it over in order to get on the bridge - I was pretty stoked not to fall over!

On an overlook along the trail.

Becky and I have a great ability to take VERY bad pictures together. I know the one before this was pretty good - but what are we doing here? (especially me. what face am I making here?)
Our original plan was to ride 'Dread and Terror', the 'Hotspring' segment, and then 'Deer Leap' (for a total of about 35 miles). But about 200 yards into the Hotspring segment Matt took a header over the handlebars (he's totally okay) - and cracked his helmet AND his bike frame! It's hard to see in these next two shots - but both his top tube and down tube are cracked. Very lame - but we were thankful that Matt was fine - so we called it a day and headed down to the river for a beer and a swim!

Our lovely swimming hole.

We had already planned to get some boating in over the weekend - but with Matt's frame malfunction it sealed the deal, and Sunday was devoted to river pursuits. Becky had never been packrafting before - so we were excited to get her out on the water. We ran the Boulder Flat to Horseshoe Bend section of the North Umpqua - there were a couple fun class III's in there - but nothing too crazy.

Becky & I before putting in. Still dry. =)

The next couple of pics are of me - one just in an easier stretch of water - and then running Cardiac Arrest - which is a pretty chill class III towards the bottom of the segment. Sheri sent a Witchcraft to us to try out - which is a new Alpacka Raft prototype specially designed for whitewater -it was great! The new back rest is awesome - and it's really stable going through rough water, you feel a little less 'cork-like.'