7 - 2/13/2010 - Middle Middle

One of my friends had just gotten her new drysuit and wanted to try it out. Very little was running, but the Middle Middle was running 800 cfs, so we decided to do a quick run. We put in at First Island Drop and had a fun trip.

I run the Middle Middle so often that I have started playing a game on the run. Every time I run it, I try to come up with new lines through the rapids that I've never run before. In some cases, this means weaving back and forth across the river. In other cases, it means taking a route that is just barely wide enough to get through (and sometimes not quite wide enough).

6 - 2/6/2010 - Clackamas River Three Lynx

 

Heading into Hole in the Wall

With very little recent rain, there wasn't much running in Washington, so it was time for a trip to Oregon. For some reason, Portland boaters prefer to run the Clackamas on Sundays, so there were very few people on Saturday. We ended up with a group of 4 catboats, and this was my first catboat run on this river, having IKed it just a little over a year earlier.

The flow was a little higher than the year before (2000cfs, as opposed to around 1700), but that made most of the rapids easier. One thing we didn't realize, and it would hurt us later, was that we had ordered ourselves wrong. I typically boat with IKers, so I row forward a lot and go kind of fast. As a result, I often caught up with the other boats, and I really should have led the group.

When we got to Hole in the Wall, this had a bad consequence. The boat I was following slowed down in the main drop and in order to avoid hitting the boat, I had to pull back. This slid me into the place I didn't want to go. Within a few seconds, I was stuck in an eddy on the wrong side of a powerful headwall. This is a well-known trap for boats, and there is even a chain ladder attached to the rocks to allow a stuck swimmer to climb out rather than drown.

The first thing that happened was that I went up onto the pillow wave which tried to flip me and pulled my left oar out of the oarlock. The oar tether held and I was able to get the oar back in place, but it had stretched the oarlock open, making it easier to come out again. For the next 10 minutes, I was bounced around as I tried several times to row myself across the current. I looked to see if help was coming, but I couldn't see very well and the other people in the group were still formulating a plan. I checked out the chain ladder and other options for climbing out, and examined the shape of the eddy. A huge log sticking down into the upper part of the eddy made it tough to get any upstream momentum, so my only good option was to try to get positioned so I could get 2 solid strokes into the current. The fourth time I tried to row out, I was able to get enough pull to go up on the pillow just past the mid-point, and the river dropped me into the main current. I was free!

Not long after this, we had lunch and then enjoyed the rest of the run without any trouble. It was an exciting day on the river.

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.