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The Oregonian “China Opens the Yangtze” by Terry Richard January 11, 1996 RELATED EXPEDITION: Great Bend of the Yangtze, China Portland attorney Jay Waldron knew a raft trip down China's Yangtze River would be a smashing success even before he reached the river. “We hiked 10 miles the first day to reach a Tibetan guest house,” said Waldron, an environmental lawyer for the firm of Schwabe, Williamson and Wyatt. “Just before we turned the last corner, I turned to Bruce Bergey and said how nice it would be to have a cold beer and a hot shower.” Bergey, 49, a home builder in Hillsboro, told Waldron, 50, not to get too excited. A cot in a crowded bunkhouse was all he expected. “As we approached the house,” Waldron said, “a little girl came out and handed us each a cold beer. When we got closer, people sitting on the porch announced they had a solar shower and told us to use it to get rid of the trail dust. There's not much more to life than that.” The group reached the river the following day and began a seven day journey through the Yangtze's Great Bend gorge. The group's trip during the first week of November was only the fourth descent of the Great Bend. The expedition's leader hopes it will pave the way for regular commercial trips on the river. “The Chinese were the first to run the Great Bend in 1986,” said trip leader Eric Hertz of Earth River Expeditions, a commercial rafting company based in Accord, N.Y. “A Sobek expedition followed in 1987. We made the third trip Then we sent three kayakers through just before our raft trip.” The Yangtze received intense media coverage during the mid-1980s when rafters tried to become the first to descend China's most famous river. The late Ren Warren of Portland drew most of the attention, but his 1986 expedition ended in mutiny after it ran part of the river above the Great Bend. A decade later, Earth River has opened the Yangtze to paying clients. “The Yangtze is one of the great river trips of the world,” Hertz said. "The four gems are the Yangtze, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Colca Canyon in Peru and the Futaleufu in Chile.” Hertz plans to offer two trips next fall during the brief post-monsoon season when the water level makes the river safe to run. With a price tag of $3.600, plus $l,OOO for airfare, the trip is expensive but not outrageous. “If you want a less expensive trip, go do the Futaleufu for S2,000,” said Hertz, who paid $30,000 for permits to run the Yangtze. “It was the best dollar I've spent in my life," said Bergey, one of 13 paying clients on the Yangtze trip. Bergey spent his time in a paddle raft, while Waldron rowed a cataraft. Both were made by White Water Manufacturing of Grants Pass. “The rapids are huge and the current moves at 8 to 9 miles per hour,” said Waldron, who recently returned to Portland after extending his trip to Thailand and New Zealand. “We went down the river with one of the top river groups in the world. They made it look easy because of their professionalism. The river isn't nearly as dangerous as Ken Warren and Sobek painted it.” Bergey didn't agree entirely with Waldron's assessment. He was the only rafter in the group that went for an unexpected swim. "We scouted every rapids, then sent the kayaks through to establish a line,” Bergey said. “They looked like toothpicks going through 20 foot waves. “I don't think I would ever run the river again because the trip was so good. It was like a teen-ager who falls in love for the first time. That's the feeling I had.” |
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