Articles (2020)

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” – Norman MacLean, A River Runs Through It

Introduction

At some point in your wilderness travel career, you’ll want to pitch your shelter on a river bar. Maybe you’ve arrived by packraft or foot, or have been allured by the promise of fat trout caught only steps from the porch of your tarp. For others, snoozing next to a thrashing river or bubbling current provides the audio elixir required to detox from a weekday world of honking, text message notifications, and complaining.

Some river bars provide dry ground year-round (or, at least, dry ground most years), while others are washed clean of debris every spring. River bars can exist as vegetated cottonwood cathedrals, sandy willow groves, large cobbles, or fine gravel. Often, river bar ground is rocky, sandy, or otherwise unconsolidated, and in general, rather awful places for titanium skewer tent stakes and the like. Other river bars littered with cobbles or gravel whisper their laughter when you fight them with any sort of tent stake!

Table 1. Tent Stake Holding Power

Reference: Test method is outlined in Tent Stake Holding Power. Notes: [1] The sand anchor consisted of an REI Snow and Sand Anchor wrapped around a 6 in diameter stone and buried 8 in below the ground surface. [2] The cobblesack contained approximately 50 lbs of mixed sand, gravel, and stones with the latter two averaging 0.5 in to 3 in diameter. These are representative values and are not meant to reflect all types of stakes in all types of riverbed soil.

The purpose of this article is to provide you with some insight into riverbed camping challenges, and some techniques to overcome those challenges.

Weather Protection, Campsite Location, and Shelter Orientation

Suffering an exposed camp in a tarp on a river bar during a driving rainstorm is less than pleasant. Buffeting winds, sideways blowing rain, and even spray blown in from the river’s surface is not what I usually equate with “cozy” and “protected”.

So, the first consideration about river bar camping is determining where to locate your shelter in context with the prevailing weather pattern.

Orienting Your Shelter With Respect to Wind Direction

Will wind blow up, or down a river corridor?

This question is best answered by legends and gamblers, but there is a bit of rationale that might explain some trends.

First and foremost, prevailing weather patterns and river corridor topography probably have the most influence on which direction the wind blows.

Where I live in Montana, prevailing winds generally come from the southwest and blow towards the northeast. During a storm, this means I’d rather be paddling the west-to-east trending river corridor of the Yellowstone below Livingston than the east-to-west trending river corridor of the Clark Fork below Missoula.

Narrow river corridors, especially deep gorges, will act as wind funnels. Regardless of their orientation, wind entering the top (or bottom) of a gorge is more than happy to make its way around the twists and turns in the gorge with no care at all about the prevailing wind direction on the flatlands above.

In the absence of the prevailing winds that come with storms, river corridors commonly experience winds as a result of the heating and cooling of the earth’s surface – so called thermal winds. Thermal winds are most common in mountain environments where significant topographic relief amplifies the effects of temperature change.

A common morning (on very hot days) and afternoon wind blows up a river corridor. These are called anabatic (Gr. anabatos, the verb form of anabainein = “moving upward”) winds. In calm, sunny weather, a hill (or a mountain, for you east coasters), heats up in response to the sun’s radiative warming rays. This heats the air at the surface of the hill. This hot air rises and travels up mountain slopes, so this effect causes a pressure differential that draws air from high-pressure lower elevation spots (downstream) to the low-pressure higher elevation spots (upstream). Anabatic winds can last nearly all day and are generally the bane of summer paddlers who have to face them for hours at a time. It’s the primary motivation for hot-weather paddlers to get as many miles as possible completed early in the morning.

Conversely, a common late evening wind blows down a river corridor. These are called katabatic (Gr. katabatikos = “going downhill”) winds. In calm, sunny weather, a hill’s radiative heat layer cools dramatically (especially after sunset) and then starts spilling down into the adjacent river corridors, creating a downstream breeze. Unlike anabatic winds, katabatic winds are relatively short-lived (they often last less than an hour or two in the northern Rockies), and are not as powerful.

The third type of wind worth noting is the Foehn wind. I’m well acquainted with Foehn winds during fall and winter packrafting trips in mountainous regions – because they require a bit of high elevation snow for them to form. Foehn winds form when a warm, dry wind blows down the leeward side of a mountain range. As the wind reaches the snow at the range’s higher elevations, the winds cool and roar their way down alpine valleys. Foehn winds occur during periods of dramatic temperature changes (fall and late winter/early spring), and can be powerful, dramatic, and destructive. They typically blow downstream in valleys that are narrowly confined by two adjacent mountain ranges.

Then, there are days when a wind blows in a direction that is completely unpredictable or unexplainable. So be it, I suppose.

Regardless, winds blow more in river corridors than back in the adjacent forests where trees might provide a wind break, and there are some predictable trends that you might consider when pitching your shelter.

If you are expecting strong Foehn winds, you might think twice about camping on the river beach, or even camping with a tarp. I remember one warm spring day on the Yellowstone River where a Foehn wind kicked up a violent sandstorm that was rather unpleasant for us tarp campers on the beach. In other words, find trees, pitch your tarp in a storm pitch (see Tarp Camping Techniques for Inclement Conditions for instructions) with the foot end of the shelter facing upstream, and hold on.

Otherwise, consider that in the absence of foul weather, especially in the summer, you’ll have a bit of downstream breeze in the evening, little or no wind in the morning, and an upstream breeze in the afternoon. Pitch your tarp accordingly and be prepared for swirling, reversals, and unpredictability. Like I said earlier, predicting wind direction is best left to legends and gamblers, but it’s fun to try nonetheless, and the science is interesting.

Where to Pitch Your Shelter in the River Corridor

Other considerations worth noting include the amount and type of vegetation you have access to and the quality of your guyline anchors.

In tree bottoms (usually found on the floodplain a few feet above the normal high water mark of a freestone stream), tying your tarp to, and using trees as stakeout points and wind breaks probably give you the most security in a river bottom. In addition, since tree stands typically occur a few feet above normal river levels, they provide some protection against the coldest katabatic flows, some overhead protection from falling rain and snow, and insurance from rising waters in response to heavy rains.

As you travel from tree stands towards the river, you might encounter river brush. Where I live, that river brush is almost exclusively comprised of willows. Willows have strong root systems and can grow very dense. They provide good tie-down points, and big willow bushes can provide meaningful wind breaks. Willow stands often grow in consolidated soil with grass that provides reasonable ground stake holding power, but just as often can grow in sand or gravel where stakes won’t hold.

In wide, freestone rivers, willows usually give way to sand or gravel, and then cobbles. Special staking techniques are required for pitching in these areas (read further) and obviously, your opportunity for a wind break is gone as you approach the tempting “beach zone” of a beautiful river.

Staking a Tarp in a River Corridor

Once you’ve selected your campsite, and the direction that you want your shelter to face, it’s time to secure it. I’ve seen many novices pitch their freestanding popups in river corridors only to walk away for a doodie break to find their temporary home tumbling downstream towards the next set of rapids. The chase is on! Don’t do this with your pants down: cobbles are hard to stumble across when you’re doing the pants-around-the-ankle-shuffle.

In short, stake down your shelter very securely in a river corridor. It’s worth the time and effort, and provides an opportunity to engage your mind with a bit of problem solving! Also, you won’t lose your shelter, your shelter will handle wind loading better, and it will be quieter on a windy night.

Types of Stakes

Woe to the ultralighter who packs six inch titanium skewers for riverbed camping! Fine by me if you want to bring a few kiddie-stakes along for securing non-essential guylines if you’re camping in the forest near the riverbed, but don’t rely on them during a storm or are camping in the riverbed between its high water marks where holding power in unconsolidated terra-temporaria is suspect. Certainly an easily-offended ultralight guru will come forth and proclaim his success with skewers for riverbed camping and tell me that I’m cracked for pitching in gravel. To you I say: “Hyas klosh mamook mika!” The rest of you I refer to the valuable information found in Tent Stake Holding Power, as well as Table 1 presented in the beginning of this article.

The closer you get to the riverbed, the more creative you have to be with staking your guylines. Sand, gravel, and cobbles are the norm here, so conventional stakes are out. Long stakes are tempting (8 – 12 in) but can be heavy and difficult to insert into the cemented conglomerate that sometimes characterizes the beach of a freestone stream.

Thus, you should add a few options in your stakeout arsenal. I’d like to discuss three of them here: big rocks, deadmen and cobblesacks.

Big Rocks are big rocks to which you tie guylines (duh). Here, I define a Big Rock as a rock so big that it requires severe back strain to move it, and thus, it’s big enough to hold your shelter stake-out point immobile in a Real Storm (or if you’re a Scot, a “brisk breeze”). Big Rocks that anchor critical stake-out points, such as tarp ridgelines, are generally about the size of beer talus (see Techniques for Talus for a definition). Littler Rocks, which can be more easily picked up, or rolled around with one hand while the other snaps a selfie, don’t qualify. That some bit of pain is required to maneuver Big Rocks into position for shelter pitching should be obvious. The pain is magnified when you consider the number of guylines (which equals the number of Big Rocks required) on most tarps and tents pitched properly for windy environments. Therefore, I employ the use of Big Rocks as part of my arsenal, and seldom as the exclusive mechanism of staking out my shelter in a riverbed. Further, as the proud owner of an aging back, I no longer roll around Big Rocks, so I choose something slightly smaller and more manageable than a Big Rock, for staking out only those guylines that might not be subject to very high stresses during a wind.

Another riverbed staking tool, well known to the mountaineers and skiers who pitch their homes in snow, is the deadman anchor. A deadman is easily defined as “any convenient object to which a cord is tied, and then buried beneath the ground surface.” Living things don’t qualify. The idea behind the deadman is that relatively small (and light!) objects can be used, and one takes advantage of compacted soil between the shelter and the deadman to create the resistance required to keep the deadman in place when tension is applied to the guyline.

Virtually any available object can be used as a deadman anchor in river sand or cobble, but the most important part of seeing that it holds against a strong force is that it’s buried well beneath the surface of the bed. I’ve used tent stakes, sticks and small logs buried sideways, small stuff sacks filled with sand or a rock, and even Really Little Rocks (the size of a grapefuit) as deadmen for successful riverbed pitching.

Snow and sand anchors are marketed various specialty outdoor accessory companies, and are easy and fun DYI projects on your mom’s sewing machine. They are comprised of a fabric patch about six inches square, with cords or thin straps of webbing attached at reinforced corners on the patch. Carabiners or rings then provide a transition point between the anchor’s cords/straps and the guyline. The fabric is wrapped around a cobble (or bundle of gravel or sand) and then buried beneath the ground surface.

I’ve made my own snow-and-sand anchors in the past from various lighter fabrics and materials, including Cuben Fiber and silnylon, and this can save a bit of weight if you are carrying several of them. However, be warned that light fabrics used on deadmen in this manner (being buried in rocks and sand) will suffer some abuse, and a little extra fabric weight can dramatically increase the durability of your anchor. I still use a set that I made in 2002 from 100% Spectra fabric, Samson 2.75 mm Dyneema line, and titanium rings, that are lighter than any commercially available sand/snow anchor I’ve used and far more durable. They are a core part of my stake kit for both wintertime and riverbed camping.

Deadmen anchors have the primary advantage of being able to provide a guyline attachment point very near (or even below) the ground surface, thus making them appropriate for ground-level stake-out points, such as those found attached to the floor of a tent. In addition, deadmen allow for the very low pitching of a floorless shelter, which reduces wind, spindrift, and sand entry into the shelter as sometimes happens in fiercer storms.

Cobblesacks (a.k.a. sandbags) are stow sacks that are large enough to hold several dozen pounds of rocky stuff. This generally equates to a stuff sack in the volume range of 800 to 1,500 cubic inches. Like Big Rocks, and unlike deadmen, cobblesacks are above-the-ground tent anchors. The concept is simple: fill a sack with sand, gravel, or cobbles; secure the drawstring; attach the drawstring to the end of the shelter guyline (via a knot, carabiner, or ring); tighten the guyline.

Cobblesacks have the distinct advantage over Big Rocks in that there is no heavy lifting involved, only the shuttling of small rocks or piles of sand between the riverbed and the sack. Cobblesacks have the additional advantage over both Big Rocks and deadmen in that larger volume cobblesacks can hold an enormous amount of weight (several hundred pounds!) and thus, can be used in the foulest weather conditions and/or for the largest shelters.

Other Attachment Points

Don’t neglect natural attachment points that are (supposedly!) immovable and thus, could provide secure anchors for guyline attachment points. The obvious example already discussed is that of the tree, which I’ve found to be readily available and completely reliable in the lowland river bottoms where I fish and packraft.

Nearer to the riverside, and a bit less robust, but even more ubiquitous than the cottonwood and pine trees in my local riverbeds, is the willow bush. Willows provide wind breaks, fish storage sticks, and skewers for bratwurst. As important, they are usually rooted strongly enough to serve as guyline anchors. Low-to-the-ground anchors can be wrapped at the base of the willow bush, with the guyline encircling several stalks to distribute stress. Higher elevation guylines, as those that might come out the middle of a tarp or tent panel and angle upward, can be wrapped around the more bendy upper willow branches, which serve as a bit of a shock absorber in high winds (perhaps at the expense of some shelter stability).

Driftwood is also common in the river corridors of freestone streams, and logs can be drug into place to provide useful guyline attachment points as well. Logs secured by a few Big Rocks between the log and the shelter provide a strong structure for securing one edge of a shelter.

Staking in a Wind Storm

One bitter and gusty January day many years ago, while trekking in Montana’s Bear Trap Wilderness in the Madison River corridor, I was preparing a pitch just off the riverbed in a stand of willows on a small, but landlocked island. I was a rookie back then, and I made a rookie mistake: I removed my tent from my pack, and knowing that it was light enough to blow all the way to Helena if I let go of it, I grabbed a single stout tent stake and secured one stake out loop into the ground firmly. Then, with the assurance that it was going nowhere, I let go of the flapping lot to retrieve gloves from my pack, and upon turning around, my tent, and the crossbow ammo that used to be my tent stake, was sailing down the river corridor.

The lesson I learned was twofold. First, that the force of wind on a large patch of fabric can be mighty (especially into the open door of a tent, which becomes something like a sail), and easily pull out even a few well-placed stakes. Second, and therefore, the first order of business when staking in a gale must be securing one of the shelter guylines to an immovable object (like your pack!) until several points are staked out and you are confident that the shelter is secure before untying it from your pack and continuing the pitch.

Other Considerations

In addition to the challenges of staking down a shelter on a river bar, you should also consider other aspects and challenges of river bar tarp camping, including sleeping comfort, conservation, river channel property ownership, and risks that must be considered so that you aren’t swept away by rising water in the middle of the night.

Sleeping Comfort

The ultralight ethic for creating a comfortable bed, at its minimalist core, depends on using a very thin and tiny patch of a closed cell foam pad in combination with a campsite located on fluffy forest duff or fresh cut pine boughs (leave no trace considerations aside). These types of pads are no longer used by me, but I know many young men with earth stains on their hearts that do.

The option of using such a spartan mattress does not really exist on river bars littered with gravel, sand, and cobbles. None of these surfaces approach anything remotely related to “soft” and although sand and gravel can be sculpted to provide little pockets for side-sleeper hips and such, sculpting the platform to a “just right” shape is sometimes an exercise in futility that begins with frustration at sunset and a backache by sunrise.

For river bar camping, I carry a Big Fat Pad – a 2.5 in inflatable air mat. This gives me the flexibility to sleep on gravel and small cobbles without actually having to worry about their presence enough to remove them, sculpt a bed, or drag a pack full of forest duff from the pines that grow beyond the cottonwoods. I find myself carrying this pad on nearly all of my trips now, just in case I see a gravel bar that I may want to camp on, think about camping on, dreaming about camping on, or simply camping near.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t prepare a bed, if camping on big cobbles. I do, and so should you! Other than (obviously) picking a reasonably level platform, cobbles can usually be removed in the bed area. On freestone streams, cobbles usually overlie a layer of sand, which tends to settle under the cobbles during springtime runoff. This process requires about ten minutes of effort if done intentionally, and is well worth the time investment.

On sand, a sleeping platform can be carved even from a slight incline, which gives you some flexibility in where you pitch your shelter. In addition, sand tends to accumulate small, poky sticks, so be wary of them before you set down your ultralight inflatable pad. Regardless, a ground cloth or bivy sack is useful for protecting inflatable pads from puncture, but are otherwise (usually) unnecessary for wet ground protection. River bars tend to drain very well and both closed cell and durable inflatable pads can be placed directly on the river bar without a ground cloth and provide plenty of protection from moisture. If using an inflatable pad, beware of camping on gravel in rivers that carve through limestone bedrock and other sharp rocks.

When river camping in a floorless shelter, I find bivy sacks to be particularly useful when the probability of Foehn winds is high. Being able to completely cocoon myself inside a bivy sack to protect my sanity during violent sandstorms is a tolerable reprieve.

Conservation Issues

There is controversy associated with river bar camping. Some leave no trace zealots believe that camping within ____ feet of any water body is irresponsible and shows a lack of respect for nature. They evidently believe that various forms of pollution emanate directly from the walls of a shelter, including litter, noise, visible humanity, urine, and poop.

I’m not one of those zealots. I like to camp by water. But I like to camp by water responsibly, carefully, and respectfully, and I do find myself adopting an increasingly stringent leave no trace ethic as I grow older, and become more practiced at minimum impact techniques. Here’s what to consider when camping in a river corridor with respect to camping, fires, liquid waste, and solid waste:

The sand and gravel of riverbeds may be the ultimate durable surfaces for pitching a shelter outside of the slickrock of the desert and the granite slabs of alpine places. River channels between the high water marks are mostly devoid of vegetation, and in freestone streams, are rototilled and recycled with each minor flood that occurs once or more per annum.

Fires built below the high water mark leave scars and traces only during the time between floods. And at least once a year, all signs of fires between the high water marks are completely vaporized, never, ever to be noticed again. Contrast this to the fire scars and semi-permanent rings found in the forest, which can remain for decades. In canyons where camping is limited, on tailwater rivers that don’t receive regular flood surges, or in very high traffic areas, fire pans are a useful tool for minimizing your impact. My favorite fire pan is a simple turkey roasting pan, which is light, foldable, and has high sidewalls to contain the ashes. I fill the pan with a few inches of sand, then build the fire on top of that. Ashes can be packed out in zip baggies if your’re hardcore, or mixed into nearby soils in an inconspicuous location away from camp if you are an intentional ultralighter.

Liquid waste can be dispersed directly into the fast-moving and/or turbulent currents of high volume rivers. The river flow will dilute it quickly (“the solution to pollution is dilution”). In low-volume river corridors, liquid waste can be dispersed on the ground above the high water mark, in the hopes that rain will dilute its pollution potential. Some notable exceptions are worth mentioning. In desert areas with little rainfall or in grizzly bear country, liquid waste should generally be catholed in a “sump” far away from camp, or dispersed directly into a river regardless of its flow. Consult with the land management agency to see what their preferences are, and honor them.

Solid waste (poop and food) should always be catholed above the high water mark at least 200 feet from the river’s edge, except in areas where that practice is prohibited (especially high traffic and/or some desert river or canyon corridors). Many land management agencies will require some type of human waste disposal system, such as groovers or wag bags. For the DIY’er interested in a lightweight solution, you can poop on the ground, pick it up with an inside-out quart sized ziplock (use it like a glove, then turn it back inside-in), sprinkle some waste gelation “bio-gel” powder into the bag, seal it, and then store it in a second, more durable zip closure bag – some type of tough, odor-proof bag is ideal.

River Channel Property Ownership

Different areas have different laws regulating camping in river corridors bordered by privately owned lands.

In some jurisdictions, the entire river is owned by the property owner and one cannot even float through. In others, the riverbed is owned by the property owner, but the water remains a public right-of-way. Obviously, floating is allowed, but camping (or even getting out of your boat for a shoreline rest) would not be. Finally, some places allow public use of the water and the riverbed between the high water marks of any navigable stream. This is the fortunate case where I live, in the State of Montana, which means there are a plethora of opportunities for river camping here.

One caveat to my local stream access law, however, is where I can locate my river camps. Some islands remain privately owned, so I have to pay careful attention to land ownership. It can be confusing, since islands technically lie between the high water marks of the main channel. In addition, some islands are large enough to harbor permanent tree groves, so they are considered to have their own high water marks. As you might imagine, determining where to camp when river levels are low, some side channels go dry, and various types of islands become exposed, can be confusing. Consult your local river management agency to become educated about stream access in your state.

In addition, Montana has an interesting law that minimizes landowner-river user conflict by requiring river campers to camp at least 500 yards away from (or out of sight of, whichever is shorter) any occupied dwelling.

In short, if you are river camping in a river corridor that is not bound by public lands, be very careful about respecting private property ownership and understand both the laws that protect your rights as a citizen, and that protect the interests of landowners. In the most beautiful and pristine river corridors of Montana and Wyoming, for example, one may find themselves encroaching upon the viewscape of drunken movie stars with guns hanging out on the porch of their trophy home. These encounters are unpredictable. Movie star or not, however, landowner conflict is seldom a reasonable option that ends well, and should generally be avoided.

Rising Water

If you have a desire to camp in a riverbed that is prone to dramatic fluctuations in water levels resulting from dam releases or floods triggered by significant rainfall, consider bringing along a water leak alarm. They weigh a few ounces, are usually powered by a 9-volt battery, and emit an outrageously loud noise when triggered. I find them useful, if not a little bit unnerving when triggered, when camping in desert slot canyons, in river corridors below dams, and in rivers prone to rapid flow increases in response to nightly rainfall. I place them just a few feet from the waterline, between my shelter and the river, so that any overnight rise in water level is triggered well before it reaches my shelter. The only time I had one triggered was while camping on a gravel bar on the Hoh River in Olympic National Park during a spring deluge. The alarm sounded at about 2:00 am as the river started to rise, so I packed up my gear and moved my camp into the trees. During the course of the next four hours, the river’s edge had moved more than 40 ft inland across the gravel bar, swallowing my old camp.

Conclusion

My two favorite types of camps are on open tundra in high alpine areas, and in riverbeds. Neither is particularly comfortable when the weather turns bad, and both lack the coziness of a forest camp in windy or cold conditions.

However, camping in a riverbed is immensely rewarding. It connects you to the land via the motion and sound of the river in a way that cannot be experienced anywhere else.

Being able to enjoy river camping with lightweight gear and techniques that allow me to leave the conventional river camping shelter – the freestanding dome tent – at home, means that river camping doesn’t require me to add a dramatic amount of weight to my pack.