I am planning another BASK campout on the Russian River this spring, for a full moon weekend in May. I stopped by the District Office of the State Parks Department and asked them if there would be any delay opening the Willow Creek Campground this year. They said there would definitely be delays due to the millions of dollars of damage done by the harsh storms this winter. Willow Creek was mentioned in an article they gave me at the office, but no specific details were listed. I am suspicious whenever anybody mentions storm damage because I lived through the middle of it. Almost all of the storm damage I saw was media hype. I drove past the entrance to the campground and the gate was locked shut so I couldn’t drive in and check for myself. This beautiful campground is right on the edge of the Russian River, so they cannot keep a kayaker away. I set off to do some more tests with my parafoil kite, assess the campground for damage myself, and get some exercise. I plan to be in good shape next week for my trip to Baja.
I launched from the river bank in front of my brother Ralph’s house. From there it is an easy three kilometer paddle down to the campground. Here, more than at Jenner the day before, it was easy to see the river was still moving a lot of water downstream. In summer the Russian River is a twelve kilometer lake between Guerneville and the ocean, but on this day there was still a strong current. I figured I could paddle up against it if I had to but I expected some help from the wind and perhaps also from my kite. It was a bright sunny day and I hugged the south shore to stay in the shade from the steep cliffs on that side of the river. Sooner than I expected I recognized the campground and pulled up for a landing. I took my kite with me and went for a walk around the grounds.
The picnic tables were all missing, and the trails were still muddy and slippery from the flood. However, when I came up onto the meadow behind the campground I found all the picnic tables lined up there. Apparently the rangers had carried them all back to the meadow so they couldn’t be washed away. Allthough the meadow is a floodplain, it apparently wasn’t flooded at all. More evidence for my hypothesis that the great winter of ‘97/’98 only happened on TV, not out here in the real world. One thing that worried me about camping here was the toilet facilities. If these had been flooded and the pits filled with silt, then the campground would be unusable (in good conscious) by a large group of kayakers. But the toilets were placed up on the edge of the meadow and did not get flooded. The pits were clear of mud or water, but were still full of last years shit! Apparently the Parks Department had not bothered to have them pumped out last fall when they closed the park. On reflection I find this to be criminal neglect. If they were expecting a bad flood this year they should have pumped those pits out rather than waiting for the flood to empty them into the river.
My assesssment of this campground is that it sustained no damage whatsoever. If the rangers have not “opened” it by the time my camping trip arrives, we’ll just park somewhere else. We’ll paddle in and help out the rangers by moving the picnic tables down to my favorite two campgrounds. The assesment task completed, I walked out into the middle of the meadow to try out my parafoil as a two-stringed kite. The performance of the kite was much better with two strings. I was easily able to stabilize it without a tail, and when it went into suicidal dives I was able to pull it out of them. Allthough it did function OK, it did not work as well as a real stunt kite. For example I was never able to make it do loops, but it could do reasonable figure eight’s (sideways) in strong winds. Pulling on one string partially collapsed the wing shape on one side and made the kite lean over and limp in that general direction. But it was definitely moving under human control. Launching it continues to be a problem. With the strings completely wound up, I can jiggle the air intakes open with one hand while holding the strings in the other. Once it inflates I can let out as much string as I want. But if it crashes I cannot get it to inflate again without someone at each end of the strings. The only way I can do that by myself is to wind the strings back up until my arms are long enough to reach the end of the string and the top of the kite at the same time. But the extra control of two strings allowed the kite to stay up longer between launches so I had some fun.
The next step was to try this out from the boat on my trip back upstream. The Bodega Buoy (replaced at last! Hooray for the NOAA!) was reporting 30 knot winds yesterday and only 25 knot winds today. However, this far up the river the wind was much milder and intermittent. Out on the water I would have times of dead calm and be forced to pull the kite in. When there was a wind the two strings allowed me to keep the kite up. If I managed to get out of the current the wind actually pulled me upstream. But it was never enough to counteract the main current. I never had a steady enough wind to try running the strings through the brass hook farther up on the bow, so I spent a lot of time drifting sideways with the kite trying to pull me over. Afterwards, it occurred to me that running the string down to the hook and back before the launch might be a way of extending my reach and launching the kite with a little more line out. Something to try next time.