How Far Do You Go?

One common question I get is about the length of a typical whitewater boating trip. There really is a lot of variation. I've done runs as short as 1 mile and as long as 120 miles (on a multi-day trip). A lot of it depends on how far I have to travel. It's not a lot of fun to drive 3-4 hours only to do a single 3 mile run, so on a short run with lots of travel, I will tend to do multiple laps. But, if I'm doing a local run, I might do as little as 2.5 miles and call it a day.

The most I typically do in a single day is around 18 miles. I have done as much as 28 miles in a day, but that's a very long day. If I had to pick an average, I'd say 8 miles.

48 - 7/19/09 - White Salmon

As usual, we did a short run on the second day at the White Salmon, taking out above Husum Falls. I had a great run. There's not much more to say about the day.

47 - 7/18/09 - White Salmon

It's mid-July and time once again for the annual WRRR White Salmon trip. We had a good-sized group, but the river was relatively uncrowded (no problems finding parking and no big crowds at the put-in and takeout). I ran my IK and had a good run. I portaged Husum Falls because I had heard that it had changed for the worse.

46 - 7/12/09 - Sauk (Day 2)

When we got up, the sky was clear and it started to warm up. The sun came over the mountains and helped to dry out our gear, but this didn't last long. We got going at about 10:30AM and the sky was cloudy and the temperatures had dropped into the mid-60s.

We got to a place where there was a log across the river. We had considered trying to move the log, but that proved to be too difficult, and we found that some of the boats could make it under one side of the log. We carried the other boats around. About a mile later, we came to a place where there were two trees in the river with their root balls facing upstream. This looked bad, but it turned out to be fairly easy to deal with. Interestingly enough, this was next to the camp we had been looking for. We had made a good choice to camp where we did, as the beach we were looking for no longer existed. A little further downstream, we went around an island and the rain really started coming down. It felt almost like hail, but it was just big raindrops.

We pulled over for a break just above Rocky Road, which is the last rapid on the Upper Sauk. The end of this rapid can be seen from the bridge going over the Sauk, but people are often fooled into thinking that this is the entire rapid. Below this is the confluence with the Whitechuck River, which brings in more water and a lot of glacial silt. After this point, the rapids get more difficult. Because I was paddling with most of my camping gear in the boat, I went a lot faster than the rest of the boats. I took conservative lines to avoid flipping because any swim I took could be a long one.

We took out at the new takeout near the lumber mill in Darrington. On the shuttle, we found that the weather had improved on the Upper Sauk, and it was sunny and hot up there. It stayed cool and cloudy on the lower section.

Overall, it was a great weekend!

45 - 7/11/09 - Sauk (Day 1)

I had been looking forward to an overnighter on the Sauk all year. We ended up with 8 people on the entire trip, and 3 more people joined us for the day. It was a good mix of rafts and catarafts with 2 IKs. We met at noon and got on the river at around 2PM.

The trip started on the NF Sauk at Bedal Campground. The first 1/4 mile is very shallow and ends at an easy class III rapid. After this, the SF Sauk comes in a increases the flow. As we wound our way down the valley, we enjoyed the hot, sunny weather. The temperature was in the mid-80s, but it was cool down at the river.

We were aiming to camp at the beach where some of us had camped the year before, but we found an even nicer one earlier in the trip. It had a huge beach with both soft sand and firm gravel, and it had a great view of the mountains. We cooked dinner and enjoyed the evening around the campfire.

At around 2AM, there was some rain. An hour later, we had a thunderstorm with lots of lightning. It was cool outside, but my tent stayed warm.

44 - 7/4/09 - Middle Middle

This was my 100th IK run on the Middle Middle, though oddly enough it was only my 99th run of House Rocks. On my first run of the Middle Middle, the person who led me down wanted to scout the rapid. The scout was tiring and mostly useless. When I started down to my boat to run the rapid, I slipped on a wet log, fell, and bruised some ribs (I ended up sleeping on my couch for 5 weeks to relieve the pressure on my ribs). We ended up portaging House Rocks and then I kayaked the rest of the run.

This was a much less eventful run. We had 6 IKs, including a first time solo IKer, and the flow was around 1000 cfs. We put in at First Island Drop.

43 - 7/3/09 - Middle Sauk

I had originally hoped to do a weekend trip on the Upper Sauk and Middle Sauk, but things never worked out, so I opted for a day trip instead. Even though the flow was on the low side (under 1200 on the Upper Sauk gauge) I decided to take my cataraft. There were lots of people, and we split up into several groups.

It was a beautiful sunny day. The rapids were easy and fun, and we didn't have any problems on the run. We ended up going down to the new access at the mill in Darrington. This adds a couple of class III rapids to the run, and extends the run by about an hour at low flows. On nice days, it's probably worth extending the run this way, but most times I think we'll still take out at Bachman Park.

42 - 7/2/09 - Middle Middle

The Middle Middle can be run down into the 500 cfs range without it being too sticky. We had 830 cfs, which was plenty for a small group of IKs putting in at First Island Drop. It was sunny and hot, and some of the rapids had bright sunshine in our faces. Luckily, we know the run well, so it wasn't hard to run parts of rapids blind.

This will probably be our last Thursday run. By next week, the flow will be under 500. We'll get chances to run after work when we get freak summer rainstorms and when the fall rains start.