5 - 1/23/10 - EF Humptulips "The Narrows"

Brian in the Narrows

About 5 years ago, I had the chance to run The Narrows on the EF Humptulips, but I was concerned about the flow and didn't go. The flow turned out to be perfect and I always wanted to get a chance to do this run. This was finally my chance.

The first obstacle of this run is the put-in. Never mind that the road might be blocked (we were able to drive under a tree across the road, but just barely). You drive to a place by the woods that really isn't distinct at all. If you don't have someone with you who has been there before, you're just going to have to guess and wander into the woods. We had some experienced people, but it still wasn't easy to follow the trail. The hike-in is a little over a quarter mile, and the plants are not very friendly.

The first half mile of the run has a few easy rapids, and then there's a big waterfall. When we got there, we found a huge tree in the falls, but we had planned to run the fish ladder. Most of the group had a pretty easy time of this, but it was work. Being heavy, I had to work hard to lever my boat over each drop, and it was pretty tiring. Luckily, when that was over, it was just floating and running rapids. The rapids are easy, despite the gorge being very tight.

There were waterfalls all over the place, and there was one especially nice one at Goforth Creek:

 

 

The Narrows gorge goes on for most of 4 miles and never really lets up. At points, it is as narrow as 8 feet, and it rarely gets wider than 30 feet. There were trees in the river and above the channel in many places, but there weren't any that caused us any real problems.

The most exciting part of the day came when we came to a new rapid that was caused by a recent landslide. The leader of the group pulled over to scout, and we got everyone to stop upstream. The landslide had created a steep drop into a big hole with a rock in it. We all had to paddle up to it fast to get over and through the blind drop. Everyone made it with no problems.

 

There were a few more nice rapids as we got near the takeout. We took out a little too soon, which made things tougher than they should have been. What looked like a trail was a false trail and was a ways from the river. We should have trusted our knowledge from past trips, where we put in just below that point. But, a few minutes bashing through the woods, and a little help from friends, and I was out.

Despite the hike in and the tough takeout, I think this run is well worth it. I hope I get to run it again with a little more water and some sunshine.

4 - 1/18/2010 - Green River Gorge

My company gave us Martin Luther King Day off as a holiday. The Green was down to just below 1800, and it looked like they might drop the flow, so I chose to take my IK. I took a lot of alternative routes through the easier class III areas.

I had a tough run in the main gorge section. I was fine through Mercury, but I got too far right at The Nozzle and had to push off the right rock. This put me farther left than I wanted to be, and a pair of holes slowed me down and threatened to flip me. I went for Door #3 in Let's Make a Deal, but #2 sucked me in and I had to make a hard balance move to stay out of the undercut. That put me further right than I wanted to be, so I had to paddle hard to avoid the big hole. I made it, but just barely.

At Deja Vu, I decided to take the right route, which turned out to be the wrong route. There were two big logs at the bottom, and I had to find a route back to the left channel. Just above the wall at Grand Canyon, I was thinking about how I hadn't flipped in a while. That was my cue to flip in an easy little wave. It took 2 tries to get the boat back over, but I kept hitting rocks, so it took a little time to get back in the boat. The scariest part was floating by the wall backwards with no control, but I made it through fine.

The weather was great, especially considering we had been expecting hard rain. Instead, it was sunny and 55 degrees. Winter may actually be over...

3 - 1/16 - Green River Gorge

I had originally planned to run the Middle Sauk, but the rain brought the flow up pretty high and I wasn't feeling confident. The Green was running 2000, which is a great fun level for running the cat. There was a huge group of boaters. The weather was relatively warm (high 40s) and the skies were sunny. It was a fun day, and I had a solid run.

There has been a big change at the Green. Most of Flaming Geyser Park is closed, possibly for as long as 2 years, so we have to float another mile. At higher flows, this is no problem. I don't know what it will be like when we start doing the run down in the sub-1000 levels.

2 - 1/3 - Middle Middle

Recent rains brought the Middle Middle up enough for a nice run. We had a group of 3 IKs and a raft, and a flow of around 1500 cfs. The side creeks were kicking in a lot, so we had a bit more water in the House Rocks section of the run. I took a lot of alternative lines through the bigger rapids.

Things got a little weird at House Rocks. We had originally planned to stop at the bottom of House Rocks, but instead we stopped in the middle to talk to a group of IKers who were having lunch at the beach. One of our party went back up to surf and flipped, but I didn't realize he was not with us until after I had been there for about 10 minutes. When I realized he was gone, I jumped in my boat and chased after him. I went pretty fast, but I didn't catch up with him until the takeout. He had assumed that we were in front of him and hadn't stopped, so he had paddled hard down the river to catch up with us.

1 - 1/1 - Cedar River

IKs on the Cedar

It's January 1 again, and time for the penguin on top of your television to explode. It's also time for the annual WRRR New Year's Day trip on the Cedar River. For some reason, the Cedar is one of the few rivers that always has enough water for a trip on this day, so it has become a tradition. We meet at noon, to give everyone a chance to wake up and recover a little from the night before.

This year the group had 10 people, all in IKs. The temperature was around 45 degrees. The rain started near the end of the trip, and it really started coming down on the way home.