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.

Blessings In Disguise

Saturday, January 8th, 2011
Baker Creek, 200 cfs.
Class III-IV
2 Miles

This Saturday was a beautiful sunny, yet cold day in the Olympia Washington area.  What better activity than to go kayaking. Granted kayaking can be done in any weather condition, but I digress.  Jon and I wanted to try a new river on the Olympic Peninsula and decided to run a section of the Middle Fork of the Satsop, a class III+ - IV section located on the South East corner of the peninsula.

We met in Shelton WA and from there took the short drive to the takeout for the Satsop.  We became intrigued by a gorge below where we intended on taking out which we later discovered was a section of class IV-V whitewater called "Fools Canyon".  We eventually decided that we couldn't find a reasonable takeout for this gorge section and instead parked a car at the confluence of Baker creek and the MF Satsop.

From here we figured that it would be a relatively short drive to the put-in.  I have never been so wrong.  Not only was it not a short drive, we would never reach the put-in for our intended river.  This was due to a couple of things, 1) we didn't have a map that adequately showed the details of the area we were navigating, because of this I had failed to notice the night before that a road I had intended on using never crossed the river. 2) the maps we did have were slightly outdated so many of the roads on our maps were no longer roads in reality. And 3) the road that would have potentially took us to where we wanted to go had a gate on it put there by a private landowner.

So while searching for the elusive put-in we spent a good hour driving around crossing potential options off the list.  By now we were feeling a bit dejected, attempting to go kayaking and not being able to actually kayak is a frustrating affair.  So we drove back to where we had dropped Jon's car and scratched our heads for a moment. Then it hit me, "let's just do Baker creek".  This small tributary shared a takeout with the MF Satsop and there was a road that paralleled the creek for some distance.  So we loaded up again and drove as far upstream as the road would allow.  We eventually arrived at a fork in the road that brought us down to the rivers edge and a dead end.

The Put-in rapid

We parked the car and began the ritual of getting geared up, helmet, PFD, spray skirt, etc.  Once we were nearly ready a man began walking down a side path towards us, saw us, turned around like he was spooked, realized we had already seen him, and then walked out into the clearing.  I gave him a friendly smile, a wave, and a "howdy there", which was immediately responded with a phrase in Spanish that I did not understand.  By now it had occurred to me what his story was, he was a brush picker.  He was dressed in rubber boots, rubber overalls and equipped with a hooked knife and a bundle of ferns.  Brush picking is a typical Migrant/illegal worker employ, they are dropped off in the woods and they gather ferns, grasses, and other non-flower related greenage to use in floral arraignments, and this part of the peninsula is rife with this type or work. I imagine that he was spooked by seeing somebody else all the way out there, as well as any legal implications that went along with what he was doing there.  Luckily Jon and I couldn't care less, and at that moment I really wished I spoke Spanish so I could have better communicated with him.  Maybe that's a new years resolution.

After our inter-cultural experience we shouldered our boats and began what would be a very easy 15 minute hike to where we decided to enter the river.  At the our chosen Put-in there were several things of note, the first being the massive drainage culvert that must have washed out of a side creek that was deposited on the River Left side, and the second being a fun looking rapid with some scary looking wood.

Just on the other side of this wood pile is the first rapid that I ran.

After a brief scout, Jon decided to run it, I decided to put-in just below it.  I'm not a big fan of making sketchy moves in the first rapid of the trip, as it goes we ended up tangling with more scary wood down stream which didn't spook me nearly as much.  About 30 seconds into our paddling experience Jon pinned in a rock jumble, "awesome" I thought. If this is how the rest of our run goes this creek is going to be a bust.

After he became unpinned, I clambered into my boat and ran the first rapid of the day, a double ledge that was run down the right side.  The next 1/4 to 1/2 mile was busy and fun, it also felt crowded despite our small group.  The run has very little eddies, is moving fairly deftly down stream and is full of places that could pin you and wood lurking on the edges.  We eddy hopped and leapfrogged downstream, catching an eddy then yelling directions to each other.  The rapids were fun and left you wanting more.

Jon in the second half of the trip

During the trip we came across two mandatory wood portages that were simple and fast, there was one spot that had the water been much higher would have posed a serious issue.  About halfway through the trip the gradient flattened out and the rapids became less exciting.  We managed to surf a fun wave, and also took the time to stop for a moment to take a picture and take in the special place we had discovered by accident.

A short while later we arrived at the confluence and our take-out.  All-in-all the run wasn't a Washington Classic, but it sure beat the hell out of driving home with nothing to show for it.  Had we not been able to find the MF Satsop put-in it's unlikely that we would have ever paddled down Baker Creek, so we chalked it up as a day well spent.

Typical scenery

After we drove back to the top to retrieve the car, we took a hike back to the put-in to see if there was any rapids up stream that we had missed out on, luckily we hadn't, all the steepest drops were in the first half of our trip.

To finish our day we drove back towards Shelton to stop at the local bar and grab a beer.  This also turned into a blessing, we had forgotten that the Seahawks were playing that day, and when we walked in every Yokel was hooting and hollering about a Seahawks first-down.  The bar was very interesting, it was much like every rural bar I've been too; wood paneling from 1976, a bunch of crappy tables that look like they were bought from the local Middle School when it upgraded its equipment, a pool table that looks like it has been used as a coaster to keep from getting rings on the floor, four tiny TV's and one giant one that everybody is watching the game on.  On top of the general ambiance of the bar, the locals added additional color yelling things like "kill him" and "what the fuck is that fuckin' assholes problem", all responded to with rollicking laughter.  Every few minutes or so someone would wander outside to smoke a cigarette and then gather around the window to watch the action, if Norman Rockwell had been painting during the 21st century that scene would have been on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post

It has been quite a long time since I watched a sporting event in the company of anyone other that friends and family and had forgot how much fun it is to yell, cheer and slam your hands on the table along with a mob of others.  As the Seahawks charged up the field the clamor rose to a crescendo, only to be snuffed out as soon as the Saints made a critical play or the Seahawks failed to make a first-down.  Watching these people was like riding an emotional roller coaster.  The peak of excitement came when Marshawn Lynch embarrassed the Saints defense by breaking tackles like a bull in a china shop, and running 67 yards to help beat the reigning Superbowl champions and bring a team with a losing record further into the playoffs.  The whole room exploded, people were hugging, slapping high fives, and getting more excited than I thought Seattle sports fans ever could.

Now that was a day well spent.