River of No Return Rafting Trip
troutstreaming
Registered Users Posts: 116 Major grins
Hi all,
Several months back I had posted some questions regarding gear for a long electricity free trip and there were some requests to post images upon my return - so just remember that you asked for it...
Images were taken with a 20d or a Pentax W10. Because of a number of factors (forest fire smoke and wife not wanting to row the fully laden cataraft down a class III/IV river) I did not take nearly as many images as I should have so battery capacity and memory/storage never became an issue. The Pelican case worked flawlessly and provided ready acces to the dSLR on those occasions when I could convince my wife to row. The Pentax Optio W10 got a lot of work as it was around my neck so I could grab it at all times. Even though it is a 6 MP camera it is quite soft and there are a lot of shots that I had wished that I had used the 20D for. It does make up for its image quality shortcomings though by being small and waterproof!
We spent eight days floating about 100 miles of the main stem of the Salmon River in Idaho, famous for being a route that Lewis and Clark did not take on their way to the Pacific Ocean.
Because of the length of the float and the desire of the party to feast on gourmet meals every night dry ice was used in the food coolers (beer was left to hang in the river.) This is what happens when you toss the extra dry ice in to a river:
Underwater image with the Pentax W10
The group consisted of 11 floating craft for 15 people and was a mix of kayaks, rafts and catarafts. The larger boats had the privledge of hawling more gear:
18' cataraft in Devils Teeth Rapid
While the Kayaker's carried little but themselves:
Kayaker entering Devils Teeth Rapid
The river flows were at a pretty friendly level, with most of the rafting challenge being more of one of boat handling through the exposed rocks than fighting through big holes and eddy lines:
Raft entering Salmon Falls
Cataraft pillowing off rock at entrance to Salmon Falls
While this section of the river is a Wild and Scenic River bounded in parts by wilderness areas the use of jet boats was grandfathered in, and they too were confronted with carefully picking there way through the rocks:
Jet boat in Salmon River Falls
One nice suprise was the presence of amphibians:
Underwater macro of a Woodhouse's Toad Eye (I think ID is correct) taken with the W10
The middle of the float was characterized by smoke - lots of smoke, as there were several forest fires burning near the canyon. For several days the canyon received only filtered sunlight. To insure that structures along the river were safe fire crews ended up setting a backfire on the river at Cambells Ferry, although it had mostly burned out by the time we floated by:
Cambells Ferry Backfire Remnants with W10
The Salmon River Canyon is the second deepest canyon in the US, behind Hells Canyon Gorge on the Snake River. Most of the time you do not get a feeling for the relief as the tops of the hills rise above you out of sight:
Salmon Rive Canyon Below Dried Meat Rapid with W10
While the photography did not go as planned, the trip itself was wonderfull (minus the smoke...) We were able to sleep outside on sandy beaches on all but one night and while we occasionally saw the hand of man or other rafting parties it never felt crowded. The river at this time of year is floatable only under permits that are issued by lottery every winter and there is a strict pack it out policy (including microtrash and ALL solid waste) and a good leave no trace ethic by visitors that makes it hard to tell that there are something like 10,000 users of the canyon every summer.
I have additional images at http://troutstreaming.smugmug.com/gallery/1854065/1
Please feel welcome to browse that gallery and leave any thoughts, comments or critiques on technique there.
Thank you for looking,
Andy
Several months back I had posted some questions regarding gear for a long electricity free trip and there were some requests to post images upon my return - so just remember that you asked for it...
Images were taken with a 20d or a Pentax W10. Because of a number of factors (forest fire smoke and wife not wanting to row the fully laden cataraft down a class III/IV river) I did not take nearly as many images as I should have so battery capacity and memory/storage never became an issue. The Pelican case worked flawlessly and provided ready acces to the dSLR on those occasions when I could convince my wife to row. The Pentax Optio W10 got a lot of work as it was around my neck so I could grab it at all times. Even though it is a 6 MP camera it is quite soft and there are a lot of shots that I had wished that I had used the 20D for. It does make up for its image quality shortcomings though by being small and waterproof!
We spent eight days floating about 100 miles of the main stem of the Salmon River in Idaho, famous for being a route that Lewis and Clark did not take on their way to the Pacific Ocean.
Because of the length of the float and the desire of the party to feast on gourmet meals every night dry ice was used in the food coolers (beer was left to hang in the river.) This is what happens when you toss the extra dry ice in to a river:
Underwater image with the Pentax W10The group consisted of 11 floating craft for 15 people and was a mix of kayaks, rafts and catarafts. The larger boats had the privledge of hawling more gear:
18' cataraft in Devils Teeth Rapid
While the Kayaker's carried little but themselves:
Kayaker entering Devils Teeth Rapid
The river flows were at a pretty friendly level, with most of the rafting challenge being more of one of boat handling through the exposed rocks than fighting through big holes and eddy lines:
Raft entering Salmon Falls
Cataraft pillowing off rock at entrance to Salmon FallsWhile this section of the river is a Wild and Scenic River bounded in parts by wilderness areas the use of jet boats was grandfathered in, and they too were confronted with carefully picking there way through the rocks:
Jet boat in Salmon River Falls
One nice suprise was the presence of amphibians:
Underwater macro of a Woodhouse's Toad Eye (I think ID is correct) taken with the W10
The middle of the float was characterized by smoke - lots of smoke, as there were several forest fires burning near the canyon. For several days the canyon received only filtered sunlight. To insure that structures along the river were safe fire crews ended up setting a backfire on the river at Cambells Ferry, although it had mostly burned out by the time we floated by:
Cambells Ferry Backfire Remnants with W10
The Salmon River Canyon is the second deepest canyon in the US, behind Hells Canyon Gorge on the Snake River. Most of the time you do not get a feeling for the relief as the tops of the hills rise above you out of sight:
Salmon Rive Canyon Below Dried Meat Rapid with W10While the photography did not go as planned, the trip itself was wonderfull (minus the smoke...) We were able to sleep outside on sandy beaches on all but one night and while we occasionally saw the hand of man or other rafting parties it never felt crowded. The river at this time of year is floatable only under permits that are issued by lottery every winter and there is a strict pack it out policy (including microtrash and ALL solid waste) and a good leave no trace ethic by visitors that makes it hard to tell that there are something like 10,000 users of the canyon every summer.
I have additional images at http://troutstreaming.smugmug.com/gallery/1854065/1
Please feel welcome to browse that gallery and leave any thoughts, comments or critiques on technique there.
Thank you for looking,
Andy
www.troutstreaming.com
Outdoor and Sports Media
Outdoor and Sports Media
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It's very calming. Looks like someplace I'd like to be.
Nice work!
Great trip
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
Hi Erik,
Thanks all for the kind comments!
I upgraded from the 3.3 Megapixel Optio WR mostly because of the full waterproof rating and the fact that it will do full frame 30/second video so that the Sony mDV can stay home more often (ifonly I could have gotten my wife to let go of the cooler and my daughter and shoot video while we were running the rapids.) I stuck wth Pentax as I have not had any problems with the WR nor with my film WR body prior to it, in spite of lugging them with me on countless fishing trips. A fishing/rafting buddy with the Olympus waterproof has never been as happy with it as I have been with the Pentax products, even though I think the feature set and pixel quality might be superior to the Pentax products. The W10 images are still pretty soft, as one would expect given the sensor and lens size. I doubt that the actual resolving power is anywhere close to 6 megapixels. The W10 images in this post and the gallery have all seen significant time in Photoshop and so should not be used as a point of comparison - other than what can be accomplished with post-processing. If you look at my smugmug site I have some unretouched W10 underwater insect macros that are labeled as such, but everything else should be considered post processed.
All that said, I would buy the W10 again in a heartbeat for what it is. In fact, out of our group of 15 going down the river there were two dSLR, and six point and shoots - four of which were pentax waterproof products, so there is a definite trend towards whitewater users carrying the Pentax products.
Good shooting,
Andy
Outdoor and Sports Media
moderator of: The Flea Market [ guidelines ]
The summer after my high school graduation, we took a jet bout trip up the middle fork of the Salmon River out of Riggins Id. What a kick in the pants fun time it was!!
Ron
http://ront.smugmug.com/
Nikon D600, Nikon 85 f/1.8G, Nikon 24-120mm f/4, Nikon 70-300, Nikon SB-700, Canon S95
Every time I see whitewater shots, I feel the need to post a link to a friend who just happens to be one of the best whitewater photographers in the world--certainly the most published: http://www.eddiebauer.com/FIRST-ASCENT/Team/Darin-McQuoid/index.cat
http://darinmcquoid.com/
Anyway, I just love the river, and appreciate that you took the time to put up these photos!