Accrete's June 2013 Quartzville Oregon trip report...

[Accrete]

Greetings,

This is a trip report for Cari's and my 2013-06 Quartzville/Quartzcreek Oregon adventure...

We departed our primary-home-on-wheels after working early shifts on Sunday June 23rd...on the road heading south on highway 101 at 12:30pm. We would take the HWY 26 junction in Seaside east to Portland, then south on HWY 5 to HWY 20 near Albany Oregon. We planed on meeting our daughter in the Lebanon Walmart parking lot at 5pm for dinner at a nearby restaurant. We arrived in the parking lot just after 4pm which was record time for us...Rochelle arrived at about 5:30pm driving from Sacramento California.

After dinner we drove the additional 45 minutes north east out of Sweet Home past Foster Lake, Green Peter Lake, and finally driving along the Quartzville National Back Country Byway.

This part of the river is a first-come-first-served 14 day max-stay off-grid camping area set aside by the BLM for public use. The river is open for seasonal fishing and year round prospecting. I'm not sure of the fishing regs as neither of us fish...we spend our time relaxing, prospecting, and rc-rock crawling.

Here we are from the road at ring #34...our "Bed & Breakfast" set up:

I have a detailed rig-report at _this post_ over at my Parkliner build thread at the fiberglass rv forums.

Here is a shot of the camp looking up from river:

And another looking at the view from camp:

As mentioned in the rig-report we spent most of Monday through Wednesday under cover of tarp/awning/rigs due to steady but pleasant rainfall. Once out and about on Thursday we headed down to river and also hiked some nearby trails as seen in the images below:

The river at ring #34...where Cari spent most of her time looking for all-that-glitters ; )

and downriver:

My daughter and i hiked up a forestry trail and saw some pretty sights:

a small waterfall

a precariously perched tree!

And a spot on the river i visit every trip to the area...just south of a camp spot called "Miner's Medow"...

The camping part of the trip ended on a clear Friday morning. We headed down river and met at a restaurant for lunch. At about noon we said our goodbyes, our daughter heading south on i5 to Sacramento California ~9 hours away, and us north on i5 about ~4 hours back to the Oregon Coast.


Thank you for visiting and we hope you have a happy and safe camping season!

Thom ( & Cari )

 

[craig333]

Very nice. You don't fish but is it a good fishing area? Looks nice from your pics.

 

[highz]

Looks like a real nice place to camp. Thanks for the pics. Hope you found some gold.

 

[Accrete]

On fishing... I do see peeps fishing. Some Fly and others with typical bobber/bait setup. I know right now the F&W crew has snorkel counts going on the sockeye(?) salmon just upstream of the Green Peter Dam...there must be fish to catch upstream at some point!

On finding gold...Yuppers my wife came home with some as usual. Her big & fun find was a small thimble sized piece of quartz that caught her eye...on closer inspection she saw there was gold inside it! A fun addition to her growing collection.

Thom

 

[Riverrunner]

Nice report! Really nice area up there. I make it up to Green Peter Res a few times a year to fish for those Kokanee (land locked Sockeye) and do some boat camping.

 

[DirtyDog]

Looks like a great trip! So that stretch of river is free of claims and anyone can prospect there?

 

[Dughlas Stiubhart]

Nice and green there in my old stomping ground, OR! Not so much here in burning CO.

Where did you get those giant suction cups, Thom?

 

[Accrete]

Greetings all : )

On Salmon...would make a nice meal! The F&W crew was pretty excited about the large numbers at the dam so far.

On Suction Cups... Found them at amazon.com...
"FastCap HOD-DOUBLE Handle On Demand" i think i paid about $10 each. They hold fantastic on the fiberglass (trailer ~4 days), though on the steel van sides they didn't do so well (and were moved to the upper fiberglass roof).

On Prospecting... Yes the ~11 mile area along the river is for public use and is free of claims. There is a sign up stream that clearly marks the end of "Free" area. Then you will see claim signs along the road. There are a couple of GPAA claims and we were once members...but the peeps using the claims we visited in Oregon & Washington were so _clickish_ and non-neighborly we did not renew our membership. Cari's found much more gold along the main _free_ area than the times we used the claims. . . your millage may vary. And i didn't mean to offend any _club_ members, that is just what our experience was. We've met miners along the _free_ stretch and they were eager to take us under their wings and show us their rigs and tips.

The funniest event was one night we pulled up about dinner time at ring 33, just a few yards from a prospector at ring 34. We had one of those two packs of baby-back-ribs from Costco and it was all sealed up. We took it over to his camp (it was he and his adult son working his 2" dredge) and asked them if they wanted half as it was way to much for us to eat. We cut open the package at their RV and we took our half back to our camp. . . ~1 hour later they both came to our rig with smiles on their faces and thanked us for such a nice gift... the father then pulled out two really nice pickers they'd pulled up from the river that day and gave them to cari you never know who you will meet!

 

[ETAV8R]

Awesome pictures and tales.
Your rig looks like a mobile base for stormtroopers.

 

[Accrete]

THX for the kudos and drop by ETA...
"Stormtroopers"... Ha! Emphasis on "Storm" last trip with all the rain we survived. Finally got around to cleaning off the mud and yuk from the rigs today.