South Fork of the Eel River 1994

Ten Mile Creek, courtesy of Bill Tuthill

One of the most difficult and interesting trips I did in my early IK days was the SF Eel in Northern California. 1993 was a big year for me. I ended up running rivers 50 days that year, which is a lot harder when the closest reasonable runs are 3 hours away. I began 1994 with the same intensity, and I had a streak of 12 months where I had over 60 days total.

This run is usually done in the winter when rains bring up the flow, but the run is 16 miles, which makes for a long day. We did the run in February, so we had to get an early start or risk taking out in the dark. Several of us drove up the night before and camped out in a field just off Hwy 101 not far from the place where Ten Mile Creek comes right next to the highway.

There were 4 of us in IKs with one raft for support. I lent Old Bessie, my Sun Runner, to one of the guys and I ran my new Sotar II IK. We put in on Ten Mile Creek and paddled the first 4 miles with occasional class II rapids. After that, things picked up quickly. The last two miles of the creek have a gradient of close to 100 feet per mile, and the rapids are very hard to scout. We chose to read and run the nearly continuous class IV and IV+ rapids. At the bottom of the hardest rapid, I had my first flip - I hit a rock at the bottom of a steep drop and because my boat didn't have thigh straps or a footbrace (nobody we knew was using these yet), I went flying forwards. I hit my nose on my paddle when I put up my hands to help stop me. Luckily, I wasn't hurt and I got back in quickly.

At the confluence with the SF Eel, we had a snack and watched as one of the guys went up and ran the big rapid on the SF Eel upstream. Almost immediately, I flipped in a class III rapid. I waited for the raft to come and get me off a rock in the middle of the river, but he couldn't quite make it to me, so I ended up swimming the rest of the rapid.

During the next 6 miles, we ran several class IV and IV+ rapids. Half of us portaged the class V rapid, and I think only 1 person made it through without swimming. During this section, I swam 5 more times, but none of the swims were hard because they came at the end of hard rapids rather than at the beginning. It was much easier for me to get back into the Sotar II than the Sun Runner. At least I had it better than the guy in my Sun Runner - he ended up swimming 11 times that day.

For the last few miles of the run, there are several class III and IV rapids, but the intensity dropped considerably. At one point, a couple of us noticed some interesting trash in the woods along the river and we stopped to investigate. We discovered a whitewater kayak with gear inside, but no owner information. One of the guys towed the boat the rest of the way down the river. This led to a couple of swims for him, mostly because the kayak would take a different route around rocks and sometimes it would flip over and fill with water.

We made it to the end of the run with plenty of daylight to spare. This was one of the highlights of the year.