CATEGORY: CENTRAL OREGON
PHOTO: ONEONTA GORGE

In the summer of 1963, Zach and I took some trips to out-of-the-way places in Oregon.  With Jari and Eric, we went camping in the Maury Mountains and at French Glenn.  By ourselves we went to the Oregon Coast.

On the way home from the coast, we took the old highway up the Colombia River Gorge.  Both of us were intrigued by the view up Oneonta Gorge.  It was a slot canyon, the Oregon version of Antelope Canyon in Arizona which I had seen in photographs.  In Arizona the twisted vertical slot was orange; in Oregon it was green with moss and ferns.  The floor of Antelope Canyon was sand.  The floor of Oneonta Gorge was water from cliff to cliff.  We looked at each other, communicating an instant YES.  It was a hot day, and we were wearing tennis shoes.  We could not see the end, but we didn’t hesitate.  We just walked in with all our clothes on.  The water got deeper and deeper until we had to decide to return to the car or swim.  We chose to swim.  We figured if the swimming-depth-water was too long a stretch, we could always float back with the current.  Where the current had force, we pulled ourselves along with our hands on the cliffs.  We pretended we were in a flash flood in Antelope Canyon.

Our feet hit the bottom and we continued to wade on.  At the end was a spectacular waterfall, high and very narrow and with two parts like a smaller version of Multnomah Falls.  The sun was shining into the pool below the falls.  There were rainbows in the mist from the falling water.  We stayed there awhile laughing and cavorting in the pool.

Swimming back to the mouth was easy.  I thought of Eric and Jari and myself floating down the irrigation canal on the big tube, and hoped there was no barbed wire fence across the water.  I knew there wasn’t, but I didn’t like even imagining it.

From Wikipedia, I just read this: “The U. S. Forest service has designated Oneonta Gorge as a protected botanical area because of the unique woodland plants that grow there.  Exposed walls of 25 million year old basalt are home to a wide variety of ferns, mosses, hepatics, and lichens, many of which grow only in the Colombia River Gorge.  Oneonta Gorge has been described as one of the true dramatic chasms in the state. ”