Still Creek

This creek is a tributary to the Zigzag River (my favorite river growing up). They converge in view of HWY 26 on Mt Hood.  My dad and I ran a short stretch down to the confluence at one point. I recall it being class III and enjoyable.  There is an upper section that is steep with wood, but appears runnable.  That upper section might be an interesting roadside adventure for the right type of boater.  The Sandy gauge is probably useful, but I never took note of the correlation.  Zigzag runs often from rain on snow and snowmelt, Still Creek needs more rain.

Beaver Creek

BETA

Stream:   Beaver Creek is a tiny little stream that drains the streets of Gresham, OR.   Near the end of it's course, before its confluence with the Sandy River, it enters a half mile long class III-IV gorge bounded by two neighborhoods.  Putting in at Troutdale Rd means you have some brush to contend with but directions are easier.  If you put in further up at Stark Street you will have two culverts to contend with, some may find those obstacles fun.

If you use the cul de sac put in (the furthest downstream), walk down the path to the river.  Put in and proceed cautiously.  When the left wall rises up, start looking for the right wall to do the same.  Just before it does is a spot you can walk up to the rim and walk through a field to scout the gorge.

Cul de Sac put in

Once past this point it's committing read and run, but the difficulty is only III-IV depending on the water level.  It's a unique section of stream that I always enjoy. In 2016 there was a log jam at the end of the gorge that could be portaged over the wood on the left.  Alex N reported in the comments below that the log jam was still there in January of 2017.

Typical scene in Beaver Creek gorge.

After the half mile long gorge the stream opens up and while there were no wood issues in 2015, there have been in past years.  There used to be a foot bridge marking the take out but that got blown out, so be on the look out for a place to hop out on the right, there is a trail that goes up to where you parked the take out vehicle.
  
Flows:  Beaver Creek flows only after significant rains.  Medium levels are 8'-9' on this gauge. 7' was the lowest we ran it and while that floats a boat, its definitely low.  This creek spikes and drops fast so if you don't like the flow, grab a burger at the Dairy Queen down the street and wait an hour for it to change.

Access:  

Click on the map to enhance resolution.

From the intersection of Troutdale Rd and Stark St in Gresham (there is a Dairy Queen here), head East on Stark St (West would take you up-hill).  Turn left at the next light onto Evans St. and stay the course for about 1 mile until you see this location, which is the take out.

Take out:  45.530068, -122.378283

There is access to an agricultural field from this neighborhood, and I like to walk along the edge of it and scout the gorge before gearing up, others may prefer to do this from the river though.

 To get to the put in, return to Stark St and head back towards the Dairy Queen.  Beaver Creek crosses under both Stark St and Troutdale Rd near here, but the put in I generally use has you turning right at the Dairy Queen onto Troutdale road, then right again in just over 1/4 mile onto Beaver Creek Ln.  After turning right, the access is through the first cul de sac on the right. 45.523693,-122.384203

There is a narrow path where the arrow is in the following photo that leads to what is sort of a park.

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Original Write-up
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This creek is a novelty, flowing through the town of Troutdale.  That being said, it is much more enjoyable that it has any right to be. The stream is impounded on the Mt. Hood Community College Campus, flows along through some class II, culverts and wood for a couple miles.  It then crossed under Troutdale road and enters a short class III-IV gorge.  To run this we would hike it in the summer and address any wood issues, then the day we were to run it we would scout the whole gorge from river right on the edge of an agricultural field.  Once you are in the gorge it is strikingly committing for flowing through a suburb.

The best rapids were the first and last in the gorge.  The final one being the trashiest with a barrel and other assorted garbage collected on the left, creating an obstacle.

 Priscilla near the beginning of the gorge.

 Once through the gorge there were a couple small rapids and usually an easy log portage before reaching a foot bridge.  The first few times we hiked out on a trail on the left, the last few times we took the trail to the right.  I would recommend the right side, the left was a mess of mud coming up the hill to Cherry Park when it had been raining enough for the creek to come in.  My dad and Val Shaul did the run down to the Sandy once and decided that walking out at the foot bridge is better.

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 Put in either at Troutdale road or Stark street.  To cut to the chase, use these coordinates to avoid flat water and trees hanging into the stream.  45.523693,-122.384203

The trail to the put in is between these two houses. 

 To get to this cul de sac, turn right onto Beaver Creek Lane off of Troutdale road within a hundred yards of the point where Troutdale road crosses over Beaver Creek. After turning right, its the first cul de sac on the right.  The gorge starts within a hundred yards of this put in and the last point to get out and scout is on the right just before the first bedrock rapid. It is possible to get to the gorge rim and the agricultural field from that point.


Take out:  45.530068, -122.378283

This is the trail we came out on.  It is accessed from the first foot bridge to cross Beaver Creek below the gorge.  We headed downstream, then up on the trail to get to this point on Evans Ave.

For good whitewater, we would aim for 8'-9' on this gauge. 7' was the lowest we ran it and while that floats a boat, its definitely low.

The gorge drops 120 feet in .58 miles.

   -jacob

Sandy

This one is in a lot of PNW guide books and gets run all the time, I grew up near this river and have done countless trips on various sections.  One of the most memorable was an overnight rafting trip starting at Sleepy Hollow and finishing at Oxbow, we camped in the beginning of the Sandy Gorge, which I have also done in kayaks.  Here is a report of my dad and friends running all the guidebook sections in a day.

Sandy River in a Day

Sandy River in a day

            ~as told by Rob Cruser


20 years ago, my friend Scott Heesacker and I first started speculating about the feasibility of running the entire Sandy River in a single day.  5 or 6 weeks ago, after a trip down the newly remodeled McNeil Run on the upper Sandy, Jordan Englert started speculating about it on our way home, reviving my interest.  There are quite a few factors that I knew had to come together to make this possible:  1)  Lots of daylight, 2)  Enough water to get down McNeil and not too much in the Gorge, 3)  Minimal delays, i.e. portages, 4)  Being able to carry or cache enough food and water for 45 miles of paddling and, 5)  A small, compatible, motivated and mission-oriented crew.  4 out of 5 didn't turn out to be so bad.

I started assembling a willing crew of folks I knew and trusted:  Jordan Englert (grew up on the mountain paddling the Sandy), Scott Heesacker (original idea man, firefighter, always up for an impossible adventure), Casey Heesacker (Scott's son, IK'd the Grand Canyon 4 years ago as a teenager), Rod Kilner (smoke-jumper, tough as nails, up and coming kayaker) and me, Rob Cruser.  We started doing the math to see if it was theoretically possible and it appeared to be, barely.  I did a time trial on the upper Sandy above Brightwood, and at a healthy flow, 5 miles an hour looked like the best we were going to do, with everything else being slower, sometimes much slower.  So at best, averaging 3-4 miles an hour divided by 45 miles equals...hmmmm.  Well, it didn't work out on paper, but we weren't paddling on paper, so we decided to at least give it a shot.

In the week prior, I scouted and marked the first few portages on the McNeil section to speed things along as this was going to be our slowest leg (10 portages or so, remember what I said about '4 out of 5?').  I also coordinated with our friend Mitch Williams - who lives at the Marmot bridge - for a lunch-stop and upper river shuttle logistics.  We left a truck big enough to carry all of us and our boats at the take-out at Troutdale airport and another 'bail-out/food and water cache' van at Dodge Park.  My biggest worry was the high level in the Gorge.   It had risen to a pretty beefy flow the week before our run and it was slowly falling into what I hoped was going to be a reasonably friendly range.  I have paddled the Gorge at least 30 times and higher than our level this day a couple of times, but that was a number of years ago and we had one first-timer and three second-timers for the Gorge, so I was a little nervous.

Put-in below McNeil bridge

Nice rapid between first and second portage

On Sunday, June 5th, we put-in just downstream from the McNeil bridge with one hardshell and four IKs (10.8/4000 or so on Bull Run gauge, high 2000's heading into the Gorge).  Our goal was 7:30 AM, but it was more like 8:30 when we actually got on the water.  Our first portage was 200 yards downstream, with the next one 200 yards below that, both of which went smoothly.  We had an IK'er pin a couple of times in this, the most technical stretch, which slowed us down a tad.  Further on, we had another IK'er slip getting out of his boat in a micro-eddy above a nasty log that was followed by a really nasty logjam.  He got to shore but his boat took off and snagged under the first log.  With some heroic work by Jordan out on the log, we were soon able to rope the wayward IK back to shore. Yikes.

Typical upper river scene on a lower water day.

Jordan Englert getting a rope on a snagged boat

Casey Heesacker waiting for a 'go' signal

By the time we got to Lolo Pass, I sensed that time was slipping by too quickly.  We cruised through the Lolo to Marmot leg and stopped at Mitch's house for lunch and water.  When we passed under the Brightwood Bridge, a pedestrian asked us where we were taking out.  I yelled back, 'The Columbia!'  He gave us a 'shaka' and yelled 'Yeah!'  I'm sure he didn't think we were serious, but we were glad for the encouragement anyway!  So, it's about noon, we've covered maybe 10 miles with 35 to go...oh, well.  I didn't think the math was going to work out in our favor at this point, but after a 1/2 hour break, we pressed on.

Somewhere near Alder Creek

The run down to the old Marmot dam-site went well.  As we approached the Gorge, Jordan and I started discussing the wisdom of continuing.  There is a last-ditch bailout spot about 3/4 of a mile below '64 Logjam, so we decided to poke our noses in there and see how everyone felt at that point.  As it turned out, a lot of the rapids were biggish but washed out some at this level, so it was actually fairly friendly and moving really fast.  There were a lot of big holes scattered around, but also room to miss them.  We did the far left cheat at Boulder, portaged Rasp Rock (ugly keeper at this level, the boulder on the downstream side was totally under water and backing up the hole and I had decided well in advance that we would walk this one) and Drain Hole.  If we had just been doing the Gorge, we probably would have run Boulder center and some of us possibly Drain Hole, but we didn't have time at this point for scouting and indecision over who was going to run what and where and how to set safety, etc., so we opted for downstream progress.  This same philosophy came into play at Upper Revenue, which we also skipped.  This turned out to be a good call, since we had a scary event at Lower Revenue.  Scott got surfed a bit at the entrance and ended up flipping in the big keeper on the bottom right.  I had already run it and all I could see were his last few valiant paddle strokes and then his boat getting tossed unmercifully with no sign of Scott.  Jordan, Casey and Rod could see him getting recirculated between the pocket against the right wall and the meat of the hole and were scrambling to get close enough for throw bags - not a good situation.  Scott said he wasn't able to get any breaths in the aeration and violence, so after a couple of trips through the rinse cycle, he tucked and tried to go deep.  Thankfully, this worked and he washed free and was able to get himself out on the left bank just above where I was eddied out under the bridge.  His boat stayed in the hole for what seemed like 5 minutes before getting spit out.  Scott had recovered by this point and jumped in and retrieved it as it went by.

"Scott's Hole"

The hard stuff was done at this point, so now it was just a question of how much daylight we had left.  It turned out we had made up a ton of time flying through the Gorge, so we were actually kind of back on schedule!  At Dodge Park, we treated ourselves to another 1/2 hour break with food, water and chocolate covered espresso beans for an extra boost.  Rod switched out of his IK into his hardshell at this point, nailing his first combat roll at the bottom of Pipeline - nice!

Casey and Rob at Dodge Park.  The horses smell the barn from 18 miles away!

With the sun still pretty high in the sky, we were in good spirits and feeling like we were going to make it.  We still had about 18 miles to go, but without any foreseeable delays and plenty of current pushing us along.  We made good time with minimal effort to Oxbow, but that's where the slog began.  It wasn't exactly dead, but we were having to paddle our way through the flats and the coffee beans were starting to wear off a bit.

Scott and Rod loading up for the final push

At Dabney, the flooding Columbia backed up the Sandy and turned the bottom 4 miles into a lake.  Even at super-low flows in mid-summer, I have rarely seen absolutely no current on the lower river.  At times I was sure it was actually running backwards.  We were approaching 8:00 PM with plenty of daylight, so we knew we were going to make it, so it was just a question of exactly how tired and grouchy we would be when we did.  Pretty tired, as it turned out, but everyone kept their grouchiness in check (even me!), which is one of the signs of a great crew.  We ended up roping our boats up a steep bank adjacent to the east end of the runway at the Troutdale Airport and walked the last few hundred yards to the parking lot where high fives were exchanged and discussions of where to get lots of greasy food began.  The slopes of Mt. Hood to Troutdale in one day...it still seems unreal.

This run would have been much easier and quicker, obviously, without 14 or so portages, but it amazed me that it was still possible with that being the case.  Paddling with Jacob over the years has given me a new perspective on misery, and this wasn't nearly as bad as some of his 3-mile explorations (Gordon Creek or the Lower Little ***** at about 50 cfs for example), so I think I would definitely do it again.  For those who might want to try it, I would say paddle the McNeil run shortly before you go to familiarize yourself with the current conditions there and be very comfortable in the Gorge, especially at high flows.  Without the bigger flows in the Gorge, your trip from Revenue to the mouth would be excruciatingly slow.  Not very many rivers offer you the opportunity to paddle from it's birth in the Alpine to it's mouth near sea-level in one day, so I would love to see more people try it.  It's an epic, manageable adventure in our own backyard!

New "Road Rage" rapid on Upper Sandy

Here is a picture my dad took of the upper Sandy during a trip to bring gasoline into some of the stranded people in the Lolo Pass area who needed the fuel for their generators.

Road Rage Rapid.

(photo: Rob Cruser)

And a link to a story and many more pictures.
 http://www.ifish.net/board/showthread.php?p=3483056#post34830

There was serious flooding and the Sandy hit ~22 ft @Bull Run

Tennis courts that were once about a hundred feet from the river.  I remember taking out here once and hiking up and passing them.  I think my shoulder was starting to feel the weight of the boat by the time I reached these courts.  I doubt that would be the case anymore...

(photo: Rob Cruser)

 Below is a video from the flooding down here near my school.  I have never seen the Little Luckiamute Gauge pass 1,000.  It was over twice that on Sunday.  I headed over there with a couple people from my school with the hope Falls City Falls would be runnable.  I decided it didn't have a line I wanted to take, so seal launched off the 31' (at low water, we have measured it due to a bet) cliff on the right.  The boil from the falls made for a really soft landing and a nice ending to the day.  I then eddied out in the trees and we headed back home.



     -Jacob

NOrTh Boulder

BETA

Stream:  The information is documented here in case AmericanWhitewater or another entity gets interested in making access more reasonable for boaters.

The run begins shallow and builds to pretty continuous slides and boulders on bedrock.  At low flows it is scrapy, at high flows its tough to stop.  The main concern in the first part of the run is a fifteen foot falls.  Sliding bedrock flows right into the drop which is shallow on the left and the cascade on the right has always had wood.  Standard practice is to portage down the center of the falls, but this is tricky even at low flow.  Once below here there are a multitude of rapids, with lots of wood present.  Many boulder rapids, but also a bunch of bedrock rapids.  Much of it can be boat scouted, but plenty of rapids require a look from shore.  Aside from one falls near the beginning, none of the drop are over 10 feet.   After a 2-3 miles a notable waterfall enters from the right, this signals the end of the tough whitewater.

As the run eases off it's about 5 miles of read and run to the take out at a decommissioned structure.  There will probably be a portage or two in this section for wood.

You can hike out about a mile and up 1,000 feet along a road or continue into the lower gorge and the take out at a park.  This lower gorge is class III-IV but has had wood problems from years of being dewatered.


Flows: The Stream has a similar flow window as this stream.  300 cfs is rock boat style.  800-1,000 would be ideal but class V and I'd be worried about being able to stop above wood hazards and a falls near the beginning.

Access:  I can't be sure what the best way in there is, but it might be obvious for those who do their research.

Here is a video from long ago.
~500 cfs

  

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Original Write-up
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I found this trip report from a long time ago, and thought it was worth preserving here.

-editor

The trip was a grueling one, with lots of hiking both before and after. We had both had our eyes on this run for awhile now, but various issues had kept us, along with most others, out of this unique area of whitewater goodness. However, the time had come, so when we got a heads up from the meatball master that this area had water, we changed plans in a hurry and prepared for our new voyage. With almost ten miles of kayaking, and the first part being continuous class V- with wood and small eddies, we really had our work cut out for us. In the end the trip was a great success, even though our boats and gear got a little sandy. Here is the tale of our adventure...

There was some confusion as to which road we should start hiking on. We wanted to be sure because hiking in on the wrong road would naturally lead to the wrong place and end our day. For the second or third trip in a row, neither of us had brought a map, so figuring this out for certain was not possible. However, I was 90% percent positive the original road we were on was the right one. This was correct, and we began the long, steep uphill hike to the put-in. We passed a few people who were concerned we were going to put in on the wrong creek, but we assured them we knew what we were doing and arrived at the put in after a few breaks, with the sour apple tasting clovers (wood sorrel) adding some flavor to our hike. We arrived at the put in and took our time getting ready and eating a bit.

The first mile was fun, with many fun class III-IV slides and ledge drops with some intermittent wood. I believe we portaged twice in this section. There was one boulder garden that looked like it should be ended on the left, I sent Sledge over, then followed and was surprised to be dropping right next to a log! Luckily we both gave ourselves the correct boat angle and went by.  After some more fun boating, we arrived at the biggest drop of the day. It was obviously very shallow, but Sledge decided to buck up and run it anyway. I portaged and set safety, as well as climbed into the landing zone and shoved my paddle into the middle of it where the left blade was touching bottom and the entire right blade was still out of the water. Sledge was not deterred, and paddled off, had his bow drop, pitoned fairly hard, then rolled up in time to evade some logs below.

  My last thought before dropping into this one was "well, modern boat technology should protect me when I piton." Never a good sign, but turns out I was right! -Sledge

We looked at the bow of his boat and it was completely caved in! For the rest of the trip, the concave would catch the many rocks instead of bouncing off, adding a factor of difficulty on what is a rocky run.

Below the big drop, we entered a less open area of stream. The rapids started out as complex boulder gardens with wood bumping the difficulty up. We made it through the first wave of boulder gardens without incident. The first major bedrock formation drop was unique. The stream funneled down and the left side rode up on the wall smoothly, while the right side dropped into a vortex. The drop was about 15 ft wide at the top. At the end, the two sides converged to a few feet wide and dropped another five feet in a slide, then flew out into the pool with an eddy on the left above an ugly boulder pile. We both drove up on the left wall and dropped into the vortex with good lines, it was a fun drop! I wish we had gotten pictures or video, but you will just have to see it for yourself.

Plenty of bedrock in the gorge.

I portaged the first part of the next boulder pile, while Sledge once again stepped up to slay the ugly. He had a good line, and I hit a sweet airplane boof in the part I ran. Below here were many more boulder gardens leading to the next major bedrock drop. This one would be fairly straight forward, however there is now a large log in the right side. We thought, no big deal, we will just run left off a ledge that landed on a shelf that looked like a good transition. However, we neglected to scout the deceptive lead in. Sledge went first and got pushed into the right channel. He rode up on the log and flipped over in the air, landing elbow first, getting a huge contusion through his elbow pad! He then had his paddle pin to the wall and started getting surfed in a hole. He hand rolled in the hole with the log looming above and below. He actually used the log to push off for some momentum to surf his way out of the hole!

I had no desire to make the same mistake, so re scouted the lead in, which upon further inspection, looked as if it would be next to impossible to get into the left channel, we were not very happy with ourselves for making a mistake of this nature. We were sure to take more care the rest of the trip. I seal launched below the lead in, look the left line and the six foot transition to bedrock was a lot smoother even than we had imagined. We dealt with some more wood below here, then a really juicy drop that flushed into a log, but we were both able to crash the holes and drive up on the last one to get left.

In the heart of the gorge.

Below here were a plethora of boulder gardens separated by some bedrock drops. We were having lots of fun, but were beginning to wonder when it would end. We had to be careful as we were starting to get tired and the drops continued to be challenging. There were a few blind corners and drops made blind by wood blocking downstream view. Eventually we came to a signature drop. It was the only truly clean gimme drop of the run. It was fun with a boof on the right, followed by another boof on the right with a pillow.

Signature drop

Below here we thought the gorge would end soon, but it kept coming for awhile. Eventually we saw the waterfall that marked the end of the gorge. It was a relief, we scouted this one, then cruised down below. In the next little drop was an evil log poking up that we had to brace to get under. I got the brace, but I felt my shoulder start to pop out of place! I held the brace for awhile without pressure, but I had to get up because of a sieve just below. I finessed myself upright, luckily my shoulder didn't come out all the way. It was slightly painful, but the rest of my body was feeling it a lot more than my shoulder at this point. Below here we had a few miles of class 3, with plenty of bedrock slides and a couple sweet ledges to spice things up. We only had one or two portages once we left the gorge. Eventually we reached our take out after a long long time running class two. We had a long hike out but chose the right road to hike out on, making it easier for us. We were both very satisfied to reach the car after 7 1/2 hours! We ate some tasty goat meat and headed home after a wonderful adventure.

 

~300 cfs

Bull Run

 

BETA

1.5 miles

Stream: A short, but high quality class III run that flows into the Sandy River at Dodge Park.  The normal section has a handful of quality class III rapids, and is a great place to work on skill development by catching eddies and learning to use currents to your advantage.  The rock is conglomerate, and for the entire run paddlers are in a lush setting with steep, broken walls.

There is even a slalom course in the first rapid.  I once spent a morning following Steve Cameron around the slalom course, and found I had noticeably improved my boat control by the end of the day.  I was surprised to find that at the level we were there, it was possible to attain all the way up the rapid.

  
 The put in area is owned by PGE, and they have historically allowed access to the river.  Over the years people (not kayakers) have shown less and less respect for the place as shown by the left-behind trash and as a result there are now "no-trespassing" signs up.  Though kayakers are still allowed to use the access point, thank you PGE.

The rapids are all class III and are either open with lots of route choices, or there are two rapids where large boulders pinch the river down into the center of the river, which is also where paddlers want to go.

One of the open rapids

 

One of the pinch rapids.

The last notable rapid is Swing-set, named for the cable high across the river here.  This rapid changes a lot with water level, but is most notable for the large waves it develops when levels are up.

At low water the line is more technical, I usually drive right, then back to middle.

Downstream of Swingset it's easy floating down to Dodge Park, with the opportunity for skill building still available.

Upstream of the put in the river maintains it's classic character with miles of class III-IV and China Shop (a portage-able class V) set in a conglomerate gorge all the way up to the outflow of Reservoir 1 (45.445303, -122.158096).  However that section is off-limits with heavy consequences for disregarding the closure.



Flows:  The river has been run as low as 50 cfs, and as high as 10,000 cfs.  Here is a story from a raft trip at 6,300 cfs.  Most people shoot for 300-1,500 cfs for a III-III+ experience. 2,000-4,000 is fun class IV.

Use the Bull Run @ Bull Run gauge.

Access:  Take out at Dodge Park(45.4447, -122.2487), about 3.5 miles north of the town of Sandy, OR.  North on Bluff Rd for 3.2 miles, right onto Hudson for 1.1 miles, then right onto Lusted Rd for 1.3 miles.  Just after crossing the Sandy River, turn left into Dodge Park.  The Bull Run is at the back of the park, and is where you want to park vehicles.  The stream with the bridge over it is the Sandy River.

To get to the put in (45.4281, -122.2326), coming out of Dodge Park turn left onto Lusted Rd for 1.8 miles and turn left onto Ten Eyck Rd.  Follow for 0.8 before turning left down onto Bull Run Rd, which leads down to the put in bridge in 0.6 miles.  Just before the bridge turn left into the PGE parking area, and take one of the steep trails down to the river.  Note the access concern mentioned below.

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Story
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 The Bull Run has a special place in my heart, I grew up ten minutes from dodge park, and made the transition from only boating in a raft with occasional IK time on multiday trips once or twice a year to seeking out day-trips kayaking in the Sandy drainage (the Bull Run flows into the Sandy).

The first "hardshell only" trip I ever did was with my dad on the Bull Run when I was 13. My dad had acquired an RPM Max and borrowed a Redline for me. We decided to try the Bull Run River at a flow of 56 cfs.  My only time in a hardshell had been on the last half hour of the Main Salmon in Idaho.  And my dad had spent most of his time in either a raft or inflatable kayak.  Given that combination of experience, I don't think either of us had ever even hit a rock with a hardshell before.

There was no one there to tell us how bad of a time we should be having at a flow that low, so we had a blast route finding and pulling ourselves from channel to channel.
Swing-set channelized at this flow and was the first "creeky rapid" I had scouted and ran.  This was the day that got me hooked on kayaking.

I went on to have many more runs on the Bull Run, and some firsts including my first flip (resulting in my first swim), then my first combat roll.  My first high water runs were on the Sandy and Bull Run, as well as my first trips without my dad, just the Hymels and I.  We also did a couple exploratory descents on a tributary of the Bull Run, including one I did my senior project on.  There is plenty of nostalgia for me when I go back to the Bull Run.

My dad running the first part of Swing-set at 700 cfs.

Soaking it in below Swing-set.

          -Jacob

Gordon Creek (Sandy Drainage)

On a couple of occasions in the past I had driven over Gordon creek and noticed that it had the amount of water needed to be considered boatable. I spent some time driving around the area trying to find access points. Google earth came in handy along with a topo map from GI Joes. After a couple months of roaming around the area, hiking down a few logging roads, and one close enough to get frightened encounter with a bear I felt ready to give it a try. The take out was easy enough, right upstream from Oxbow park on Gordon Creek Rd. The put-in we eventually used was down a gated road, that required close to a mile walk down a gravel road, only the last 30 yards or so required bush wacking. I found out later that this creek has been run, but we thought it was a first at the time and treated it so.  Today My dad and I would be joined by Dave Sacquety. The put in was right at the top of a class 2-3 rapid that went around a blind corner into a class III+ bouncing down a few boulders with a log duck that only Dave ran while my dad and I portaged on the right.

 Put in rapid

Bouldery drop.

border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5061209897166642322" /> The next 75 yards was fun, class III-IV boulder gardens that were a little pinny. After the first section of rapids was a log portage. The rapids cooled down a lot after this, which was nice for the first 1/4 mile until we started wondering if we would ever see another rapid. This section was also full of logs, a situation that got worse the farther we went. After a while it got very tiresome. After the fourth or fifth log portage we started to give up all hope on this run. Here is what much of the middle of the creek looked like

And a typical log portage.

Every once in a while we would get hints that the creek would start moving again, but we were continually dissapointed. Eventually we got to a 200 yard section that was filled with logs and devils club. We portaged three log jams through forests of Devils Club and eventually found another creek that was easier to portage down, this is the one in the video. This creek had about 15 cfs and had portages of its own but was the easiest route. After this was a sketchy portage that included paddling as hard as you could at the right bank in order to ride up on it. My dad went first and had no one to catch him, but still made it just fine even though he had a small log and a rock to clear that neither Dave or I had to deal with. Without an IK this move may not have been possible and the portage would have been at least another twenty minutes through devils club, one of the many reasons not to repeat this trip. My dad still trying to be happy after a fun day of portaging After this awful section we passed under some power lines that were supposed to mark the beggining of the 210 fpm section at the bottom. This seemed unrealistically steep since most of this seemed to drop closer to 100 fpm or less. After a while of class two (better than the middle section of the creek). We arrived at the first and only pool of the trip. Below this was a steep rapid that was different from all the others. It would have been fun, but it had a couple logs. Below this was another class three and then a quick eddy on the right before a rapid we almost ran blind but my dad volunteered for the tough scout on the right. Good idea because it had a small log seive on the bottom right and a log extending into the middle(both right next to unavoidable). This class four turned class five required catching an eddy half way down before things got really nasty. At this point we seriously considered hiking out. With the overgrown road (at best) a couple hundred feet above us and since the move was only class three to the eddy, we decided to go for it. I went first and made the eddy, as I took my hand of my paddle to give the Dave and my dad the thumbs up, my edge caught amd I had my only flipof the day in a really bad place, I had a super quick role and stayed in the eddy, thankfully. The other two came down and had no trouble. Then we had a somewhat difficult portage left of the nasty bit of the rapid. Below this was a somewhat interesting rapid that required a log duck. Below this was some almost worthwhile class three rapids before our last log portage and the take out. The view from the take out Copy paste this link to see the video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4832483548562207619