Getting a friend back on the river

Saturday, January 15th, 2011
East Fork Humptulips, 6000 cfs
Class III (IV)
5.5 Miles

Six months ago my friend Nick dislocated his shoulder on the Ohanepecosh river and has not been on the river since.  So when he called me in the days leading up to MLK weekend with intentions of getting back on the river I got excited about getting him back on the rio.  He wanted to run something in the class III range so he wouldn't stress his brand new shoulder, so we decided that we would run the E Frk. Humptulips because it is quality class III and it's runnable at a variety of levels, plus it's a Washington classic in my opinion.  Fun rapids packaged with neat geology and a even neater gorge makes for classic whitewater.

Starting on Thursday a huge warm mass of air came and slammed into the Pacific Northwest, this warm air mass brought with it lots of rain and raised the freezing level to over 6,000 feet in many places.  This system caused many thing, the main one being region-wide flooding, all the river systems in the area were at bankfull or floodstage by Friday night.  On Friday I checked the river levels and the Humptulips was at 11,000 cfs and still rising.  I called Nick with the bad news that it might not be a good idea to test run his new shoulder at such a high level, he was bummed out but being the reasonable guy that he is, he understood.  So we made plans to paddle together later in the weekend when the water came down a bit, it broke my heart because he was so excited about getting on the river again, but it was the sensible thing to do.

Island Rapid

Saturday morning I woke up and checked river levels around 7:30 am, and discovered that the rain had broken during the night and the Humptulips had come down to a reasonable 6000 cfs and falling.  I called Nick up and he answered, "please whisper sweet nothings about rivers in my ear".  I explained the situation, and we decided to go kayaking.

I met him out in Montesano and we caravaned through Aberdeen, where we saw a very scared deer galloping down main street.  I felt like I was on an episode of "Northern Exposure".  After some meandering we arrived at the take-out, dropped Nick's car and drove up to the put-in.  The put-in requires a short but steep hike in to get down to the rivers edge, I was carrying my Canoe so it was a little unwieldy, I nearly fell several times and Nick fell once.

At the put-in the river was big and brown but a manageable looking flow.  After a stretching routine we saddled up and peeled out into the current.  Nick deftly caught an eddy like he hadn't missed a day on the river in the last six months.  We made our way downstream, surfing waves, catching eddies and soaking in the scenery.  The rain came down lightly and dripped off of our helmets and pitter-pattered on our boats as we made our way towards the first significant rapid.

The fish ladder is a straight forward man-made obstruction, it's like running a whitewater staircase down the left shore.  Nick ran it but I didn't feel comfortable running it in the open boat, it probably would have been fine but I figured it wouldn't hurt to walk it.  Once back at the rivers edge I mounted up and started to paddle into the current that was pushing against a headwall. Because of my inexperience in the canoe I didn't lean towards the wall like I was supposed to, but basically bailed out up stream.  Awesome, now I'm swimming. We pulled the boat into a calm and deep eddy on river right and tried to figure out the best thing to do.  Thankfully I have 5 years of Sea kayaking experience, we basically did what a sea kayaker would do and loaded back into the boat  without dragging it to shore, the vertical walls made it tough to get footing and stand so I could get back in.  So Nick held the boat still while I clambered back into the floating craft, after mounting up I paddled the partly full boat to another calmer eddy and bailed the excess water out.  "Well that was exciting" I thought.

Taking a quiet moment

The rest of the gorges were really pretty, vertical walls, large second growth trees blanketed in moss, cool geological formations, and fun rapids.  We played our way down stream making best use of the time we had out there.  The Goforth creek waterfall was a beautiful crystal clear column of water plunging into the river.  It's such a shame that there are rocks in the landing zone otherwise it would be a rad 20 foot water fall, perhaps at the high waterlevels the pool would be high enough that someone could run it.

Just downstream was the class IV landslide rapid, at the higher level it was a pretty sweet looking rapid with two viable lines.  Nick wanting to be easy on his brand new shoulder opted to portage the meat of the drop, and because I was not super comfortable in the Canoe I opted to portage as well, but because of the super high water there was no where for me to get back in my boat.  So Nick and I hatched the plan to do a "throw and go", basically toss the boat into the current then jump into the pool and swim after it.  It worked perfectly, the boat drifted out in front of me, I did a nice belly flop and swam after it and swam the boat into the first eddy. Text book.

Once back in the boat we kept making our way down stream towards the car.  The river lazily wound through the canyon, pouring over rocks and squeezing between steep canyon walls creating funny boils and surges in the compressed ribbon of water.

At the take out we exchanged high fives, and loaded up the boats to make our way back to our respective homes.  It's always great getting on the river, but it felt even better helping out a good friend to get back in the saddle and test out his new equipment.  Six months is a long time to not be able to do something that brings joy to your life, I'm glad that I could have been there for him.  The smile that the river brings is hard to recreate.