Another Flood Stage Start to the Winter Season

Sunday, October 24th 2010
Hamma Hamma River, Bankfull/Flood Stage
Class III-IV
5 Miles

All week I had been tracking a large low pressure system that was coming out of the mid pacific, and it had promises of heavy rains.  NOAA forcasted it to hit Friday night or Saturday morning, I had been hoping that it would hit hard Friday so we could go kayaking on Saturday, but even though it came in time the river levels didn't budge, mostly due to the dry land soaking up all the water.  So on Saturday I did school work and prayed for hard rain so we could have an adventure on Sunday.  Sunday came and a lot of rivers still hadn't budged, but the East side of the Olympic Peninsula got pummeled.  So Chris, Jared and I followed the rain.

We had planned to  run Jefferson Creek, but there was a monstrous volume of water pumping down the river valley so we opted for something a little more manageable, a five mile section of river on the Hamma Hamma. Chris said that he had paddled this stretch of river at similar flows so he was confident that it would be fine.  The only concern was the Class IV rapid that he called "U-turn", a short class IV canyon that has a large blind  right hand bend in it.  He initially had concerns that we wouldn't be able to scout it which made me nervous, but once we got there we discovered that there was plenty of opportunity to catch an eddy and get out of our boats.

At the put in the river was cranking, it was easily bankfull and bordering on a food stage.  We all saddled up and peeled out into the swift and serious current.  I caught the first eddy that I saw, and Chris slammed in right behind me and made a comment on how fast the current was moving.  He tried to surf a fast wave that was right next to our eddy, but instead of dropping into the wave, the current grabbed his boat and ushered him down stream with intent.  After witnessing Chris' violent downstream movement I opted to stay away from the wave, too early in the trip to be upside down.

The rapids were all pretty benign, little waves and holes, the occasional large boulder, and a few Class III+ rapids, it definitely had the feel of a flood stage river, no eddies, and some floating wood.  The whole trip I was living in apprehension of the gorge, the prospect of wood jammed up between two cliff walls was giving me a Whitewater Laxative.  Chris had expounded about it's unscoutable nature, and that all the other times he'd run this stretch he had been washed into it unknowingly, and none of this was making me feel any better about the situation.  It wasn't until after the trip that I found out that in all his previous experiences he was a novice and failed to recognize the gorge coming, would have been nice to know before we put on the river, but either way.

We came to a large left hand bend that pointed right towards the gorge, we eddied out and proceeded to have a very pleasant scout of the gorge.  The gorge is tight but there are plenty of ways to get close to the rivers edge, with several ledges and precipices that make it possible to plan out all your moves.  The gorge rapid is actually pretty easy, point right and charge right, stay away from the walls and big crashing diagonals, big pool at the bottom.  While scouting we were clambering over pretty cool terrain, blankets of moss, big bedrock ledges, and what appeared to be some sort of animal path.

After scouting, all the apprehension that Chris had been scaring into me was gone, the line was easy, and there was no wood to tangle with.  The only bummer was that from top to bottom it would only take about 20-30 seconds to complete.  The gorge was a quarter the width of the rest of the river and must have been moving 25 miles an hour.

I made sure to arrive back at my boat first so I could be the first in the water and the first moving downstream, it's fun to be paddling downstream with nothing but the gorge walls and the moving water in front of you. Also if Chris or Jared got tangled up in a hole or eddy I wanted to be sure that I wasn't behind them, for fear of slamming into one of their faces with the conical nose of my boat.

I peeled out of the eddy and cruised past the first hole, over the rooster tail, and leaned hard against the large diagonal wave that pushed me right and towards the exit of the canyon.  Once I had made the move against the diagonal, I was home free all I needed to do was boogie right down the middle.  There was a 10 foot wide pinch right at the exit of the canyon and the water accelerated and shot me out of the canyon.  I looked up stream and didn't see anyone, either I was going way faster than I thought I was, or something goofy happened up stream, luckily it was the former because not a few seconds later Jared comes flying around the corner in a tail stand.  We all collected in the larger undulating eddy and had a good hoot about our experience, too bad it would be such a pain to walk back up and have another go at it.

Before the take out there was one final rapid, a large hole with a small tongue on the left corner of it, the three of us had varied levels of success with it, I ended up tangling with a large reactionary wave coming off the left wall, Jared had another nice tail stand, and Chris nearly did the same thing as I.

We reached the takeout and decided to take a hike down stream a bit and marvel at the unrunnable water fall that marks the beginning of the other unrunnable section of the Hamma Hamma.  At flood it was an impressive geological and hydrological feature.  It was a two tiered falls, a 25 into a pool and then into a 20 into an extremely aerated pool, at lower water apparently there is no pool between the two falls only a crack in the bedrock where the water flows, but at flood stage it was a high volume beast.  Also the water flowed underneath a large undercut section of the wall, and on top of all that there was a massive log chocked between the two walls in the middle of the two drops, and with all the water slamming into it, the tree was flexing and bucking with some violence.

It was another Floodstage start to the winter kayaking season, and there will be many more to come I'm sure. Until next time.