Grande Ronde float trip?

if I can get the vacation, I would be game for any of the above.  the only limiting factor I see would be what I have read about needing to carry a portable toilet --- how often/where can those be dumped?  or better yet - how strictly enforced is that rule?

the only limiting factor I see would be what I have read about needing to carry a portable toilet --- how often/where can those be dumped?  or better yet - how strictly enforced is that rule?

Crabbycabby, I'll send you a PM with a description of a poop acquisition and transportation system which I have used for many years on unsupported kayak trips, including a 13-day unsupported kayak trip through the Grand Canyon.  It works really well, and because it works really well, you won't have any temptation to cheat.  And please don't cheat.  I remember running the Grande Ronde many years ago, before the BLM imposed its carry-out-the-poop requirement, and around every campground was a disgusting ring of discolored toilet paper.  The river is far nicer as a result of the carry-it-out requirements.

With respect to where you can dispose of several days of poop which has been neatly packaged in accordance with my suggestions:  DO NOT dump it in a dumpster or trash can at the first business you encounter after you get off the river.  It will piss off the owner of the business, and the BLM officials who manage the Grande Ronde will hear about the incident.  Wait until you are a considerable distance from the take-out, triple-bag the poop, and dump it in a dumpster or trash can at a convenient business.  Or better yet, dump it in your own trash can.

^^^ Do you use something like the Travel John?

All I know is that the "blue bags" are shitty (pun intended) at keeping smell under control.  The inside of my Predator still stinks from the John Day trip.

-Allen

... the only limiting factor I see would be what I have read about needing to carry a portable toilet --- how often/where can those be dumped?  or better yet - how strictly enforced is that rule?

These amount to a doubled up garbage bag with desicant in the bottom.  They're not hard to use but your kayak will stink to high heaven if you don't seal them well.  I just use them for solid waste and let the yellow mellow...  If you've ever found yourself trying to camp in a field of "snowballs", you'll really appreciate the fact that people usually follow this rule.

I'm leaning toward joining this trip if it two of the days can be a weekend.....

-Spot-

All I know is that the "blue bags" are shitty (pun intended) at keeping smell under control.  The inside of my Predator still stinks from the John Day trip.

-Allen

I'll second that!  Don't get downwind of Allen when he cracks his hatch.   

-Spot-

What are the thoughts/concerns/plans about the class III rapids?

-Allen

What are the thoughts/concerns/plans about the class III rapids?

-Allen

I'm not averse to portaging/lining my yak around big water.  That said, I'd love to hear/see some intel on how skirtable those sections are.

-Spot-

Do you know how many CFS the river had during that trip?  what time of year was it?

May 4-7, 2013, and river levels were 4,000-5,100 cfs.  At that level the "rapids" were trivial, nothing more than Class II.  Some years ago I did a three-day trip on the Grande Ronde in an open canoe, but don't know the river level on that trip.

There seems to be some interest and concern about how to manage your poop on a kayak trip.  So at the risk of offending the delicate sensibilities of users of this forum, here is a description of a poop collection and storage system which I have used for many years on multi-day unsupported kayak trips, including a 13-day unsupported kayak trip down the Grand Canyon.

I love multi-day wilderness river trips.  They offer days of scenery, white water, camping, and hiking on beautiful and remote rivers with your boating buddies.  However, one of the challenges of doing multi-day river trips in the lower 48 states is that on most suitable rivers, federal or state river regulations require you to carry your poop with you down the river. 

There are a number of commercially available hard-sided toilet systems which you can use to carry poop down a river.  However, they are too big to fit in a kayak.  You need a raft to carry them.  I'm not aware of any commercially-available hard-container poop systems which are small enough to carry in a kayak.  You can use the "Wag-Bag" system and other plastic bag systems, but they're pretty expensive.  As a result, we developed a do-it-yourself system for carrying your poop down rivers in a kayak.

An inadequate poop transportation system is bad news.  You do not want to spend days on end with coliform bacteria sloshing around your legs and gear.  You do not want your kayak to smell like something died in it.  You do not want to come back from a trip into the bushes with stinky fingers after wrestling with an uncooperative poop system.  You do not want a system which takes up a lot of space in your kayak.  And, you do not want a poop system that works so poorly that you're tempted to cheat.  A good poop transportation system is easy and quick to use, doesn't leak, doesn't make you nervous every time you look at it, and works so nicely that you're happy to use it and have no temptation to sneak off into the bushes without it.

I do a lot of unsupported multi-day white water kayak trips.  After the Forest Service and other agencies which regulate river use began to require boaters to carry out their poop, which was many years ago (I'm dating myself), my buddies and I gave the subject of poop transportation a lot of thought.  In fact, there were a couple of years where it seemed like about a third of the conversational content on our kayak trips had to do with this subject: how everybody's current poop system was working, mishaps with current poop systems, ideas for new and better poop systems, the character of everybody's latest bowel movements, etc.  There we could be, surrounded by wilderness and scenic beauty, and all we could think about was poop.

We tried a lot of different poop transportation systems.  Most of our ideas were not particularly successful, and some of our ideas were pretty hilarious. You need an efficient and tidy way to capture your poop, which is a challenge, and you need a container for the poop which is really water-tight and air-tight, and which has a mouth which is big enough to readily admit the poop.  In my experience, the typical bowel movement is about the size of a baseball.  This requires a pretty wide-mouthed container.  If you test various kinds of jars and bottles with big mouths, such as plastic peanut butter jars, you'll discover that most of them aren't really waterproof.  This is bad.  A one-quart Nalgene water bottle is only big enough for a two or three day trip, and the mouth of those bottles isn't quite big enough to accommodate many poops without some massaging.  And a major disadvantage of rigid poop containers is that they take up a lot of room in a kayak, even when they're empty at the beginning of a trip, when you are also carrying all your food.

After a lot of trial and error I developed a poop system which works well, and which has been adopted by a lot of the kayakers I know.  The poop system, as originally developed, consisted of three elements: (1) a Stearns "Sea Safe" screw top dry bag, (2) a ziplock bag which contains some heavy-duty paper towels folded into quarters, some one-quart plastic food storage bags, a small squeeze tube of hand soap, and a container of bleach or some other disinfectant, and, of course, (3) toilet paper.

The Stearns "Sea Safe" dry bags were awesome, and I still use one.  Unfortunately, Sterns no longer manufactures them.  They were made of standard dry bag type material, but instead of a roll-top system for sealing the mouth, they had a large screw-on lid with a gasket inside it.  The mouth of the bags was 4.5 inches in diameter, which was big enough to handle any reasonably foreseeable bowel movement, and the lid was water-tight and air-tight.  The bags were 7" in diameter and 14 inches long, which was big enough to handle one person's poop for two weeks, or several peoples' poop for shorter periods.  The bags were yellow, which made them hard to misplace, and kept them from heating up too much in the sun.  A major advantage of the bags is that because they were flexible, they compressed down flat and didn't take up much room when they were empty, and they could be squeezed into a corner of your kayak even as they filled up.  As the volume of poop in the dry bag increased, the volume of the gear bags in your kayak would decrease more quickly as you consumed food and other supplies.

Unfortunately, as I said, Stearns no longer manufactures the "Sea Safe" screw top dry bags, so you'll need to find a substitute.  A hard-sided bottle is adequate, but takes up more space.  When my last "Sea Safe" bag finally craps out (so to speak), I'm going to try to manufacture a similar bag by attaching a small-diameter kayak hatch to a similar-diameter dry bag.

I keep my toilet paper and the ziplock bag which contains my poop system supplies in a small dry bag behind the seat of my kayak.  I also put the screw top dry bag behind my seat, outside the stow bags which contain all my gear, clothing, food, and so on.  When nature calls, I grab the screw top dry bag and the ziplock bag with toilet paper and other supplies, and retire to the bushes.  I lay a single heavy-duty paper towel down on the ground and stand over it with the front of the paper towel level with the arches of my feet.  Then I squat down and proceed to void my bowels.  With a little practice, you can score a bullseye every time.  When I'm through, I sprinkle some bleach or other disinfectant over the poop, pick up the paper towel by the corners, drop the towel and its contents into a one-quart plastic food storage bag, squeeze the air out of the bag, and tie the top of the bag shut.  I've found that if I just use a single bag, a tiny bit of odor may ooze out through the plastic, so then I drop that bag into a second bag, and tie that bag shut as well. Then I drop the plastic bags into my screw top dry bag, or some substitute, and screw on the lid.  After you wash your hands with the soap, you're ready to hit the river again.

The system is quick and tidy to use, it's reliable, it doesn't take up very much room in a kayak, and if you put your poop in double plastic bags it's odor-free and easy to clean up.  I routinely carry this poop system even on rivers where there aren't any regulations which require boaters to carry out their poop.

What are the thoughts/concerns/plans about the class III rapids?

-Allen

I'm not averse to portaging/lining my yak around big water.  That said, I'd love to hear/see some intel on how skirtable those sections are.

-Spot-

+1  rapids were a concern of mine as well.  i'll be in a Malibu stealth 14 - aka barge.  from the map this section gives us 5 rapids, two at class 3, and three at 2-3 depending on flows.

Pmmpete - Ty for the advice on the pota-pooper.

Having floated this stretch a bunch....the rapids are almost all skirt-able. I'd recommend portaging around Martin's Misery. It's worse during low water IMHO. There's a nice gravelly / rocky beach on river left that makes the portage manageable. Really, MM is the big show. The others have nice rollers which, when there's flow, up their rating.

If the flows up, you can stay pretty dry 'high siding' the river bends. I've been on it when it's been over 10,000 cfs. That's when it warmed up, rained, and coupled with a big overnight melt, blew out. Makes for a quick ride! But as long as we hugged the high sides of the bends, we avoided debris and the big stuff.

It's a good 3 day float with fishing time thrown in. I wish I could get away for it. I'm not sure about now but you used to be able to arrange a shuttle with the Minam store.

P.s.

While this float is very manageable and great fun, it's also necessary to be mindful that part of what makes the float great (besides the fishing) is its remoteness. Once you get below Red Rock, you're pretty much on your own until the bridge. The weather can be beautiful or spitting snow and cold. So, it's not a great place for a first time float in a yak on whitewater unless there was a support raft. Just my honest opinion. 

Thanks pmmpete for the poop tips - I have been thinking about a John Day trip and dealing with waste was a concern. The Grande Ronde is a wonderful trip and I have done the canyon in a day on a raft at high water. It was beautiful but very remote. I hope to see some great pics later this year.

All I know is that the "blue bags" are shitty (pun intended) at keeping smell under control.  The inside of my Predator still stinks from the John Day trip.

-Allen

have you tried  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZKLnhuzh9uY  to remove the smell?