Kayaking with Calamine
As memorialized by Mick Jagger, poison ivy—and its cousin poison oak—have an insidious way of wreaking havoc on the simplest adventure, be it a hike in the woods or a picnic in a park. Paddling is no exception, with the cursed vine Rhus radicans causing rashes to break out on unsuspecting rafters, canoeists and kayakers taking to ivy-plagued waterways. The damage is usually done while traipsing to put-ins and away from take-outs; and while scouting or portaging, where victims' concentration is more focused on rocks and rivers than rash-causing flora. While countless waterways hide the vicious vine along their shores, some have more than others. Following are a few classics where you would be wise to watch your step—and add Calamine to your equipment list. Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado There are very few Class VI rapids that I regret portaging. Except for the one in the Black Canyon of Colorado's Gunnison River. This mile-long slog bypasses a series of Class VI rapids, but passes right through a jungle of Class VII poison ivy. While the odds of surviving this section of whitewater are not good, at least you wouldn't have go through what I did the week after taking out. Dolores River, Colorado The ivy that inhabits Colorado's Dolores River corridor is unusual stuff. You can merrily float for miles without seeing a trace of it. Yet anywhere you decide to stop—the ivy has anticipated you. It's uncanny...spooky...unnatural. The Anasazi cliff dwellings near Mountain Sheep Point require a steep climb of a couple of hundred feet. All of the routes are infested with ivy. Caressed by the breeze, it reaches to embrace your ankles, shins, to kiss your hands and forearms as you scramble for purchase. At Snaggletooth Rapid, a long Class IV, changing water levels usually dictate a quick reconnoiter from shore. Or a portage for the less experienced. Good luck. Ivy has claimed all the best scout and photo rocks, all the easiest trails. Camp at any of the spectacular sandstone overhangs and commune with the Ancients by studying their rich pictograph and petroglyph rock art. Just don't forget to sidestep the gauntlet of insistent, creeping ivy. Coyote Wash is perhaps the best side hike on the entire river. Guess what? It too is lined with poison ivy. And that goes for the toxic-green explosions in Bull Canyon and Spring Canyon, as well It has not escaped my notice that this part of the Colorado Plateau was a quiet place until somebody discovered carnotite. The towns of Nucla, Uravan and Bedrock sprang up overnight. All to extract the rich, radioactive uranium ore. All to support the nation’s budding nuclear program. Am I suggesting a connection? Suggesting that this particular strain of ivy has somehow mutated? That it glows in the dark and can read human thoughts? Has evil intent? Of course not. It is mere coincidence. The morning I awoke to find my tent completely encircled by tiny, grasping ivy sprouts was decidedly my own fault. I must have been beered-up or preoccupied. Surely, the plants were there the previous evening. Until I find poison ivy secreted in one of my very own pockets, it is way too soon to involve that X-Files bunch. I'm quite convinced that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. Lower Taos Box, Rio Grande, New Mexico While the gorge itself is a dramatic slash in the 30-mile-wide Taos Plateau, the vegetation in this precipitous canyon is limited to a few hardy species that can abide the nutrient-poor soils painstakingly weathered from the black basalt. In short, ivy rules. A few scraggly hackberry trees and some junipers survive rather than thrive. Even the ubiquitous tamarisk is subdued in this environment. Woodbine appears sporadically. Ivy is everywhere. The Taos Box (Lower Box) of the Rio Grande is almost always run as a day trip in deference to the ivy and the infrequency of level terrain. A geologic infant, the canyon has not had sufficient time to provide all the usual amenities. Experienced boaters may not bank-scout any of the numerous Class III-IV drops, but several distinct horizon lines suggest a nature romp to the uninitiated. Hydraulics increase with high water, people have bad days, get intimidated, and decide to scout. Invariably, they eat ivy. I once attempted to mentor a group of six self-proclaimed outdoorsmen down this stretch of whitewater. They flailed, floundered, and generally refused to follow where I led. I made the command decision to land above a couple of the more vertical rapids so they could view the proper lines. By the time I realized that these guys were oblivious to the botanic peril, were literally wallowing on the ivy, I found I lacked the fortitude to further demean them by calling this minor faux pas to their collective attention. Because of my lack of guts, I was forced to put my home phone on an answering machine and ignore the doorbell for two years. (Informants revealed that they failed to renew the contract on my life.) Experience, as always, teaches even the most reluctant, and I have developed a special mantra, applicable to this river only: "When in doubt, don't scout." Stay out on the water—where it's safe. Cal Salmon River, California Don't get me wrong. I love Northern California's Cal Salmon River. In fact, this 19-mile Class IV-V whitewater wonderland is one of my favorite rivers in the West. From the put-in at Forks of the Salmon to the take-out at Somes Bar 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean, the river, a major tributary to the Klamath, drops nearly 600 feet. But every time I think of the river's emerald pools and crystalline falls, I begin to itch. It's kind of a regressive behavior, I know. But if I spend a minute thinking about it, the reason for my itching becomes apparent. The Cal Salmon is notorious for poison oak. They even named one of my favorite camping areas after the stuff: Oak Bottom. Sure, there are oak trees there, but the poison oak shrubs rule their larger brethren. I can't think of a single Cal Salmon trip that didn't send me home with a red, irritating souvenir. Step a foot off the trail while putting in or taking out and voila...poison oak city. Venture into the woods to answer the call of nature and you're asking for trouble. Do both and your skin will light up like Rudolph's nose. I'm now so confident in my ability to contract poison oak at the Cal Salmon that I call my doctor before my trip to schedule steroid injections for when I return. Of course, don't let my babble dissuade you. Maybe your skin is tougher than mine. Maybe you like playing connect-the-dots with your blisters. And maybe you're like me: you're willing to itch a little in order to experience some of the best whitewater in the West. Cherry Creek/Upper Tuolumne, California It's hard to pin-point a run known for poison oak in California. "There's no one run notorious for it," maintains long-time Californian kayaker Lars Holbek. "That's because there's poison oak on every river in California...it just depends on how much walking you do." Nevertheless, at least one veteran paddler in every kayaking clique swears off the Upper Tuolumne's Cherry Creek. "I never caught it there because I'm not allergic to the stuff," says Jim Cassady, owner of El Sobrante, Calif.'s Pacific Water Sports and author of Western Whitewater and World Whitewater. "But when we used to run it in the olden days, everyone else would balloon up a day or two after the run and I wouldn't. It made them all furious with me." The epidermis damage, he says, usually occurs towards the end of the run at Flat Rock and Lumpsen falls. If you don't run the Class V rapids, you have to portage on river left through fields of poison oak. "It's notorious for the stuff," maintains Cassady. "And the portage is at the end of the run, so you're usually tired and not really paying attention to what you're doing and where you're walking." Of course, there's also the option of running the Class V drops, which is perhaps the main reason poison oak cases have declined in recent years: more people are running the falls. "I don't think people portage it as much as we did in the olden days," says Cassady. "That keeps them from catching it—but it's still there, waiting." Blackfoot River, Idaho Before Idaho's John Wasson made the first descent of southeast Idaho's Blackfoot River, he hired a plane and flew over the canyon to give it a cursory scout. What he saw was eight miles of Class IV water with a 79 foot-per-mile gradient. It's what he didn't see that proved more trying. "We couldn't see the poison ivy from the air," he says. "Turns out it was all over the place." That, of course, is a gross understatement. A steep basalt corridor marking the eastern boundary of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the canyon gets its 500 cfs average summer flow from the Blackfoot Dam upstream. The dam, however, prevents the canyon from ever getting flushed, and the result, as one guidebook puts it, "is a huge forest of poison ivy growing right up to and into the river." If you're caught on shore, there's no getting around it. "There aren't any beaches, just poison ivy and brush right to the waterline," says Wasson, who harbors an extreme allergy to the plant. "At first you try to tip-toe through the stuff, but ultimately you end up wading through chest-high fields of it. Making matters worse is that you're always hot and sweaty down there anyway." How insidious is the Blackfoot's ivy? Wasson remembers one story of a kayaker who paddled the section with a wetsuit so he could wade through the ivy fields without fear. The tactic worked okay on that trip, but six months later he pulled out the same wetsuit and caught a severe case of the rash; the stuff had been incubating inside all winter, waiting for an unsuspecting victim. Hells Canyon, Snake River, Idaho They don't call this Hells Canyon for nothing. The various place names—Seven Devils, Slaughter Bar, Suicide Point, etc.—suggest to the aspiring boater that some folks may have found this place a tad inhospitable. Ivy, make no mistake, tops the list. This is a big, rugged, arid canyon. Shade and fresh potable water are a premium to boaters, and lamentably, the ivy has co-opted most of the shade and all of the side-stream water sources. And most of the dense shrubbery that lines the river banks is also ivy at its best. For those who like diversity, the ivy provides it. Both the upright, erect forms, and climbing types are found here. Because of the dry heat, the ivy might be glossy or dull, a lush green, yellow or vivid red. Quite an eye-catching palette. As I grumped about the infestation on a recent trip, a card-carrying botanist friend provided an interesting insight. He pointed out another plant that grew profusely in proximity to the ivy. He identified it as Jewelweed (Impatiens Pallida), commonly called Touch-Me-Not. The juice from the leave of the Jewelweed, it seems, is Nature's antidote to poison ivy. What incredible balance. What symmetry. Just be sure to pack a botanist and a portable-plant-press on your next trip. For those lucky, prudent boaters who manage to avoid the volatile, resinous plant, and in so doing are impervious to the temptations provided by conveniently located Suicide Point, the canyon has other charms—110-degree temperatures in the summertime, with rocks that radiate the heat long into the night, and abundant rattlesnakes, black widows and ticks. It also has a local "mugger" bear population that is fond of, and adept at, raiding campsites. Have yourself one helluva of a trip. Bruneau River, Idaho If a run's guidebook carries a warning about poison ivy, you can rest assured the section has more than a stray patch or two. In their write-up on southwestern Idaho's Bruneau River, Greg Moore and Dan McClaran, authors of Idaho Whitewater, go so far as to put the warning in bold. "I'd never want to fall out of a boat there," maintains Boise photographer Steve Bly, who has made several poison ivy-dodging pilgrimages to the southwestern Idaho waterway. "It's all over the place, right down to the river." The Bruneau likely gets its name from a combination of the French words "brun" and "eau," meaning "brown water." If its early explorers had been paddlers, they might well have named it for a word meaning red skin. The 40-mile trip starts just below the confluence of the Jarbridge River and the Bruneau's West Fork, taking paddlers down a canyon carved deep in a rhyolite and basalt plateau created by volcanic eruptions. If you're not careful along the way, however, your skin will erupt with as much force as the ancient volcanoes. Fences of poison ivy block much of the bank from put-in to take-out, making crawling out of the river after a swim the worse of two evils. Foot-wide trails leading from the river to campsites are more or less free of the stuff, but step off the beaten path and get ready for a scratch fest. When we paddled the Bruneau in 1997, we played "Paper, Scissors, Rock" every morning to see who had to untie the raft's bowlines from their nighttime anchors, pull them through hedges of poison ivy and then coil them. I lost twice, and even gloves and long-sleeves didn't keep my skin from developing the tell-tale Bruneau bubble. Green River, North Carolina "I don't know which is more dangerous," says slalom racer Abel Hastings of Bryson City, N.C. "Running the rapid or portaging it." Hastings, a veteran of countless runs down North Carolina's Green River, is referring to the notorious Gorilla, a Class V waterfall that has itself been known to make people break out in hives. It's the rash caused by plants flanking it, however, that often does more damage. "There's definitely a lot of poison ivy everywhere around the rapid," says Hastings. "Most people say you're better off running it than portaging it." The horizon line to Gorilla shows itself after Chief, a rapid just upstream. At the entrance to Gorilla, those deciding to brave the foliage get out on river left at a tiny beach. The beach quickly gives way, however, to a rocky slope covered with poison ivy. Dodging it, says Hastings, is futile. "Some people take a bottle of Dr. Bonner's with them to scrub-up right after the portage," he says. "But that can be dangerous too because it's kind of slippery." Hastings admits to having never gotten poison ivy on the run, largely because of ritualistic body-washing immediately after every run. Those who don't follow this practice are usually less fortunate than even those who have bad lines through the rapid. Cullasaja River, North Carolina While sightseers come to Highlands and Franklin, N.C., to marvel at 400-foot Cullasaja Falls on the Cullasaja River, paddlers come to boat the two-mile, Class V section just below the falls. The wise ones pay attention to more than the run's 600-foot-per-mile gradient. Those who don't often wind-up with skin bubbling like the run's Class V whitewater. The culprit is poison ivy, which flanks a 300-foot descent down to the river at the put-in. If you're lucky enough to avoid it there, next you have to deal with two Class V rapids called Eclipse and Next Time. At low water, paddlers up to the task can escape unscathed by running the drops. If they're not feeling up to the task, they can also portage along the right bank at river level—away from the tentacles of poison ivy. Those opting to portage both rapids at once, however, face a different hurdle; they have to follow a trail higher on the bank that harbors hordes of the three-leafed vine. The same trail also has to be used during high water runs when the riverside portage is awash. "As soon as we start getting spring rains, the stuff starts coming out like crazy," says the Nantahala Outdoor Center's Bobby Hartridge, who paddles the run regularly. "The poison ivy there can be pretty brutal."
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