My wife Rechelle and I ran the Lower McKenzie last weekend. We’ve worked our way up from running just the Finn Rock to Rennie’s Landing Section, to running all the way down to Helfrich Landing (me in a hardshell and Rechelle in an IK). The last rapid, just before Helfrich Landing, is Martin’s Rapid. I think this is probably a class three rapid but I’ve seen it listed as class four at a few places on the internet. Martin’s can be intimidating for a first timer, but it can also be a lot of fun. When I first started kayaking I swam the Martin’s on my first attempt, and I remember the runout as being pretty benign. At the top of the rapid, after you’ve gone to the right of the large boulder in the middle, there is some turbulent water and a strong eddy line. After that there is a wave train that takes you around to river left, and at the end there is a hole on river right. On our first time down the rapid Rechelle flipped at the top and swam the rest of the way down (doing a pretty good job at self rescue). I think it surprised her the first time, as it did me on my first attempt. On this occasion, though (our second time down Martin’s together), Rechelle followed me down like a pro, and had a big smile on her face when we were safely through. She was quite nervous, having swam the first time, but she did really well. Way to go Rechelle!
On a related note, one aspect of our run was less than ideal. Rechelle’s IK developed a leak — one significant enough that we had to keep pumping up her boat every half mile or so. I had duct tape on my paddle shaft, but it didn’t really help because the area surrounding the hole was all wet. If we were on a different river this could have been a major bummer, but with the highway right next to this run, we felt like we could walk out at any point if we had to. We’ll try to patch the IK, but Rechelle might opt to switch over to a hardshell instead!
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