Whitewater & Blackberries
Parents Press Article By Peggy Vincent
My husband and I have been taking our children on family-oriented whitewater rafting trips since the year our oldest lost his first front tooth. Now we watch our grandchildren falling in love with the rivers of the West. They strain their ears for the sound of approaching white water, and when they hear that distinctive roar growing louder and louder, we see them shiver with excitement. When they notice the guide standing up in the boat to scout for boulders, they crane their necks and look ahead, too. When we adults sit straighter and grip our oars more tightly, the children reach for the ropes on the sides of the inflatable rubber rafts. I know the thrill they’re feeling. After years of rafting rivers in California, Oregon, and Idaho, I still feel the same way.
So many aspects of rafting have become part of our family memory bank that it’s hard to list them. There’s family time together, uninterrupted by cell phones, e-mail, or carpools. There’s the food, pancakes and tabouleh salad and steak with potatoes that all taste yummier than usual because someone else fixed them and we’re eating outdoors. When a sharp-eyed paddler points out a pair of osprey diving for fish or seven bald eagles roosting on bare branches, we feel like the first humans privileged to see them. Each river is like an old friend with a personality of its own, and even the same river is different from year to year. But one thing remains constant on our trips…blackberries. During the brief summer months when the weather is temperate enough and the rain showers are infrequent enough and the water is high enough to make running rivers a pleasure, blackberries are always plentiful. They ripen over a long period of time, so it seems no matter when we camp, some little patch is ready for plucking nearby.
One year on the Klamath, we camped on a knoll above the river. From camp one could contemplate the river far below, watch the ascending sun light the canyon walls a pinkish-yellow, listen to songbirds in the nearby pines and madrone – and pluck blackberries from the surrounding bushes. They grew just close enough to afford an alfresco snack but not so close that the thorns threatened tender skin.
The next day, when we stopped for lunch, those of us who felt up to what the guides described as “a moderately challenging 
rock-scramble” made the trek up Ukonom Creek to the twin waterfalls that cascade into a pristine swimming hole. As we needed our hands free to aid in crawling over fallen trees and around Volkswagen-sized boulders in the path…the result of the floods of 1997 that rearranged the river’s landscape…we couldn’t gather blackberries for later eating. We just plucked and ate wherever we came upon them.
Lower Klamath
Our most popular river rafting trip. Wilderness canyons, Ukonom Falls, sandy beaches, bald eagles, river otters.
1 to 5-days | May – Sept | Class 3
Special Family Trips | Ages 5 – up
Comments on this entry are closed.