The Sanpoil (or San Poil) is a river nobody has heard of except for the locals. Some parts of the river go through private land, and the landowners do not want people kayaking through it (and some will threaten you with violence if you try). The section we kayaked is on tribal land and the local kayakers have informal permission from the natives to do the run. So, we got a group together and headed out.
The Sanpoil starts out swift and splashy with lots of easy class II rapids. The road is nearby, but with hardly anyone on it, it's hard to notice. On river left is a basalt mountain range, with small cliffs sometimes coming up to the river.
One of the weird things about this river is the color. I've run lots of muddy rivers, but they tend to be a light, silty tan color. The Sanpoil is a dark brown, almost like root beer, but it doesn't seem to be very dirty. The river comes out of the mountains and spends a lot of time meandering through a swamp. Our theory is that the color comes from the plants in the swamp - kind of a river "tea".
About 2 miles above the takeout, the river becomes significantly more active. There is a fish fence to prevent an invasive species of bass from coming up the river. When this fence was originally installed, it made a river-wide hazard that required special attention. Luckily for us, the fence was not made all that sturdy, and part of it had fallen down.
As we worked our way down the final, fast portion of the run, our group spread out a bit. This made things a bit confusing for me. I needed to follow the leaders so I wouldn't miss the takeout, but the people behind me were trying to slow down to make sure the last person was OK. As I came around one corner, I saw some sort of mechanical monster in the river - I would soon find out that this was a fish trap. I also soon found out that the takeout was above the fish trap, but I just barely made it to the proper channel.
A few moments later, I saw that the last person in the group had flipped. He made it out OK, but his kayak headed downstream and was caught on the fish trap. We took out and went to try to retrieve his boat. After a bit of examination, we realized we weren't going to be able to extract the boat, so we ended up leaving it there.
On a happy note, the boat was extracted a few days later. It wasn't in perfect condition, but it did survive.
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