Anne Dwyer, a local kayak pioneer who has designed popular kayaks and written books on canoeing and kayaking, came to Guerneville for a book signing. I announced the bookstore event on the BASK calendar and offered to do a flat-water paddle on the Russian River afterwards. Guerneville is near where I live, and I wanted to encourage events like this near home. Ann Dwyer was unable to join me on the paddle, she had another talk in the afternoon. Only one other guy from BASK, Bill, showed up to join me on the paddle. I had announced that I was interested in paddling north from Johnson’s Beach near downtown Guerneville. I had been warned that the summer dam had not been installed at Johnson’s and the water was very shallow upstream, so I brought my Pirouette, a tough plastic river boat, for dragging over the gravel bars.
Then the Parks Department came through and finished the dam the day before and we had plenty of water. I could have taken an easier boat to paddle. The Pirouette has a lot of rocker and is difficult to make paddle in a straight line but I figured the exercise would be good for me. Bill had a beautiful Pigmy design wooden boat that he had built himself. Everywhere we went people commented on how beautiful his boat was and he regally thanked everyone.
Not only was the river deep enough for us but we saw a few motor boats starting up the river from the “dam” which looks like it only raises the water level a meter or two. We paddled hard over some shallow areas and wondered where the motor boats had gone. Then we found them way upstream and wondered how they got over the shallows. Turns out that this is a popular trip and they all got out and walked over the shallow areas towing their boats behind them!
Eventually we got to the summer crossing at the Korbell Winery and found water so shallow that we could not get enough bite from our paddles to keep going. Rather than give up we got out and towed our kayaks past the rapids just to look around one more corner and see what we might see. The river deepened again and had a long straight section, but we decided we had seen enough and turned back.