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!