Lyles in the "big rapid"
My friend Lyles finished the quarter at school and he, his wife Stacy, and I decided to head out to the Olympic Peninsula for a trip. The entire week before, it looked like we might get a chance to run the Hoko River, but it came down too low. We had several choices, but Lyles wanted to see the Elwha, and I wanted to try out the lower run down to the ocean. We went into the Olympic National Park at the Elwha and paid our fee, only to find out that Altaire Campground was closed. The other campground didn't look as nice, but we ended up getting a nice site and best of all it was free!
We went down to the put-in for the lower run, and found out something we hadn't heard about before - the trail down to the river is long and steep and slippery. The trail started at the level of the top of the dam and went down to the base. We decided that this wasn't going t work for us, and went back to run the upper run. This was probably a really good idea...
We dropped off my vehicle at the lowest reasonable takeout to make the longest run possible. We got up to the put-in and prepared our boats. The trail down to the river was steep, but short. I let my boat slide down the bank, and then convinced Lyles to do the same. When it got to the bottom, Stacy noticed that there was a hole in the boat leaking air. We quickly tried to patch it with an emergency patch, but the emergency patches I have work best on rafts, which have a lower pressure. On one hand, it was my fault for having him slide the boat down, but on the other hand the bank wasn't that rough - the boat had a thin place that was going to give soon anyway.
In the end, Stacy convinced Lyles to take her boat and we headed out. The Elwha is pretty easy, and the flow was minimal, so it was just a relaxing trip that took a couple of hours. After the run, we went back to the campground and had a nice dinner and enjoyed the evening.
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