East Fork Lewis Class III-IV (3400 cfs) and Canyon Creek IV-V (2000 cfs)
This weekend was the 5th annual Northwest Creeking Competition held on the East Fork Lewis and Canyon Creek Lewis, 20 minutes north of Portland. This race brings people from all over the Northwest, mostly the Portland and Western Washington area and is a very cool event. It's likely the largest Whitewater race in the Northwest, with sponsors, free shwag, and several kegs of beer all for a $10.00 entry. Oh yeah you get a t-shirt out of the deal too. The race course is on two stretches of river, the E. Fork Lewis and Canyon Creek Lewis, the EFL is host to the longboat, tandem, and multiple other classes for racing. It's a place for everyone to race and participate, from the the Pro-Bro's to the weekend warrior. The Canyon Creek Lewis is host to the steep creek event for advanced and pro classes only.
So Saturday morning Taryn and I loaded up the big-wheel, revved up the internal combustion engine, and hit the road south towards Sunset falls campground. We met up with Jon on the highway and caravaned the rest of the way to Sunset falls. If only it were that simple. The long story is that we got lost on the way there and spent a good 40 minutes back tracking and trying to find our to the proper road. Around 9:40 am we finally landed at the park, a little delayed but not late.
Once arrived I registered and and began the waiting process. When I first saw the falls it became obvious that the river was high (a surplus of water if you will). It wasn't just a little high, or a wee bit high, it was stomping high. As Taryn and I wandered around looking for friends and listening to the buzz of people it became apparent that the race was going to be full-on due to the water surplus. This made me a bit uneasy because I hadn't run this stretch of whitewater in over a year, and the idea of a freight-train of water moving through the gorge with no opportunity to stop after the entrance was making me have to go to the bathroom, and not number 1.
So I geared up and continued waiting for the race meeting to start. As I waited I stared at the falls and watched boaters fly off it with varying degrees of grace and ... and ... the opposite of grace. At 10:30 the race meeting started outlining all the usual rules that need to be followed and observed, and bla, bla, bla. Continue to wait. While I continued waiting, the "safety crew" came back from their recon mission in the gorge and determined that the water was far too high to have a safe race, so they moved the race course up-stream to a class III-IV stretch of river. The course would be twice as long as the original course and with more continuous whitewater and finishing below Sunset falls.
Once the course was finalized and everything was a go, we headed upstream to the start line. I was racing in the longboat class (boats over 9') in my 10'9" corsica S. At the start line 3 other longboats started directly ahead of me, and 4 other longboats had already started in a previous heat. After a brief warm up I took my place at the starting line and waited for the 5,4,3,2,1,GO!
Having never seen this upper part of the river before I was a little nervous, but confident in my skills. I pulled downstream and started pacing myself, unfortunately that pace was too fast for me and about 7 minutes into the race I was getting a little gassed. What really did me in was when Tao Berman and Darren Albright passed me in their short boats, totally demoralizing. Granted Tao is a full time professional kayaker and Darren should be a pro kayaker, the last 3 years in a row Tao has gotten first place and Darren has gotten Second. Needless to say they're fast, real fast. So after getting blown out of the water by Tao and Darren I kept picking my way downstream. There were 4 or 5 good class IV rapids all of which all went well with the exception of one. I came out of a hole and shook off the water and was heading right towards a wall with my bow pointed towards and eddy on river left. So this forced me to choose between two options. A) Try to turn my boat to the right, hit the wall with my bow, hurt my ankles, get flipped and get pushed against the wall upside-down and the eventually roll up in the fast water, or B) catch the scary recirculating eddy on river left, then ferry out in front of the wall and move down stream. I chose plan B.
Now that I'm in the eddy, I have to get out, through a serious eddy line, and then avoid the wall. No problem. Done this plenty of times. Done this plenty of times for fun. Well it wasn't no problem, it took me three tries to get out of that eddy. The first two times I wasn't able to maintain my angle due to my arms feeling like they were made out of cookie dough. On the third try I took a few moments rest, analyzed the line and then charged out of the eddy with the conviction of a baptist minister. I gave a fist pump to the guy who had been filming me during this whole episode and then headed downstream to the finish. I came barreling into the pool above sunset falls, realized how tired I was and caught the eddy. After seeing footage of that guy during the green race nearly kill himself going over the falls because he was too tired and trying to get a fast time, I figured it would be prudent to catch the eddy.
After a moment of focus, I lined up and charged off the lip. I had a great line (thanks to the moment of rest) and when I landed in the pool I hammed it up, pumping my fist and yelling at the crowd. The crowd went nuts, but only because they were yelling at me that the finish was a little further downstream, a bit of information I was well aware of but I figured that since I was already having a slow race I might as well live it up.
After finishing I carried my boat up to the parking lot and drank water feverishly, breathed hard, and let Taryn shower me with compliments. I was super tired and spent the rest of the day drinking beer, eating food, and socializing. By-the-way, kayaking isn't always about the paddling.
The rest of the night consisted of party time. There was a raffle, throwing of free shwag (I got a DVD, which was horrible by the way), awards ceremony, food, beer drinking, fire burning, and general rabble rousing. Some folks brought dry wood, thank god because there was not a dry piece of timber for miles. Jon, Nick, Aly, Taryn, Hans, myself and a seemingly hundreds of others that came to and from our campsite hung out and drank, talked (about whitewater) and enjoyed each others company. An unfortunate part of having the sweet fire in you campsite is that it's where everyone wants to hang out. Luckily beer assists with sleep so all those strangers hooting and hollering outside my tent became characters in my dreams. I'm not sure Taryn even knew there were people around considering how hard she slept.
The following morning was beautiful, I woke up glad that I had drank half a liter of water before I fell asleep. The sun was shining, and the temps were mild, great day for a race. What? It's cancelled? Water too high? Bummer. Want to go paddling?
With the race cancelled we decide to go paddling anyway. As I made breakfast Hans approached me with the proposition of going rafting with him. "Sounds rad" I responded. So after a leisurely morning of drinking water, eating food, and re-starting the fire, we broke down camp and headed over to Canyon Creek. After getting lost (again) for a brief moment we found our way to the take-out. I geared up and Taryn made plans with Kim to hang out while the boyfriends were on the river. After blowing up the raft and getting all the players in place we carried Hans' green raft down to the river.
Once we were floating it was very apparent that the river was significantly higher than I'd ever seen it before. Hans and I got into a rhythm and moved through some fun class III before we came to our first rapid of consequence "Swizzle Sticks". Here the river gorges up for the first time, and picks up some gradient. Normally Swizzle Sticks is a tight steeper drop, but today with all that water, it was more of a flume that leads into the fast moving gorge below. A clean line through this leads into the infamous drop "Terminator". Terminator at this level had much of the water piling up on the left canyon wall, with a bad hole on the right and a class IV rapid 30 feet or so downstream. Hans and I scouted and watched some of the kayakers run it with a variety of lines, as well as several rafts from Oregon Rafting Team, or more affectionately known as ORT.
ORT had a variety of lines, several were clean, but several were also filthy dirty. And I mean that is the sense that they had lines that were not in their best interest. One raft got cleaned out, of the two passengers one swam the class IV and the other got out on shore above the drop and had to make a scary traverse along a high wall that was above rocks and in some places the river. Not a preferred line.
After seeing the combination of lines Hans and I decided to portage, the portage was easy, and there is no glory in swimming a rapid. Once back on the water we jammed down the river running the twin drops of "Prelude" and "Thrasher", on both rapids Hans and I had a good boof and a very clean line. It's very satisfying to lay down a big boof in a 13 foot long rubber raft.
At "Big Kahuna" Hans and I opted to portage again. Big Kahuna is a 15 foot waterfall, at this high water level it was looking ugly. Normally this drop is a gimme in a kayak, but today it was handing out a variety of carnage. ORT, with their typical grace, ran the falls, again with a variety of carnage, some scary. Hans and I shot video and set safety for the anyone wishing to give the falls a go.
Of all the drops "Champagne" and "Hammering Spot" was the scariest. These two drops are separated by a pool that is about 25-30 feet in length with swift moving water. Immediately below these two drops there is a class III+ rapid that leads into "Toby's", and it's the combination of these drops and their proximity to each other that made this combination of drops - that individually are straight forward - a scary proposition. Oh and don't for get the difficulty/impossibility of portaging.
Again Hans and I watched kayakers and rafters run the drops. All the kayakers had great lines wit no real issues, the rafts were not as pretty. The biggest problem was rafts were running the first drop and then getting pushed to the right into an eddy that made it very difficult to approach Hammering Spot with proper speed and angle.
After filming some rafting carnage, Hans and I loaded up. We lined up the first drop and plopped off of it into the pool above Hammering Spot. As we came off of champagne we twisted and upon hitting the pool below we spun counter clockwise and were facing up stream and being pushed to the left side of the drop (the bad spot). We corrected our angle paddled hard to river right, teed up on the ledge and both pulled on a big boof stroke. The boof was the saving grace, most of the other rafts plopped off the drop and ended up getting sucked back into the hole, but our run really projected us down stream and away from the ugly stuff behind us. In my opinion it was the best looking run of the day. We ran the class III+ plus rapid and then caught the eddy. Feels good to get that sort of thing behind you.
ORT took some videos and pictures, below is video of us running Champagne and Hammering Spot.
After this it was a leisurely paddle through the lake and back to our cars. After busting our asses hauling the rafts up a steep and loose gully we arrived back at the car where Taryn was waiting with a PB&J sandwich. What a sweetheart. All in all it was a really fun weekend, seeing old friends, making new ones, drinking beer, kayaking (not necessarily in that order), and enjoying the beautiful sunny Sunday weather.
As I get more pictures I'll post them as well.
