Pistol River

Photo: Yann Crist-Evans

Beta

4.6 miles

We ran the Pistol River early in our South Coast tour to start the new year.  We had scouted out a couple rivers the day before and were ready to get in our boats.  We ran into some access issues when trying to reach an upper put in, but found convenient access to this middle section.  After a short walk on an old road, we arrived at a beautiful pool complete with bear tracks.

Access Issues.

Wildlife

Put In

We floated a couple easy miles, this part was mostly pool and riffle with a couple intermediate rapids.  One of the rapids had massive boulders, but an easy line to the left. 

 On the paddle in.

Photo: Yann Crist-Evans

 About the time we started wondering if I had interpreted the maps incorrectly during earlier research, a horizon line between large boulders presented itself.  We scouted from the left, finding shore routes through large boulders.  There was a clear line, but it was a little intimidating.  Priscilla and Anna chose to walk this rapid on the left, while I had success paddling the rapid.

Barrett and Aaron scouting the first large rapid in the Pistol.

 The whitewater portion of this section is shaped like a pistol.  

Running the first significant rapid on the Pistol, entering The Grip at low water.

This was the beginning of an interesting section of river.  It was obvious this stream experiences massive amounts of water as house size boulders were strewn about all over the place. 

Photo: Yann Crist-Evans

 This type of river does not usually channelize well, but that was not the case this time.  We found clean lines through a couple of rapids before reaching our next scout.

This rapid kicks off The Barrel, it is a straight forward lead in 

to a ledge hole.  All three of us ran this one successfully. 

Downstream the Pistol pinched down and dropped over a ledge.  This ledge had a tricky entrance into a significant hydraulic.

None of us were feeling this one and we all portaged, left was a better route.  It was run on a subsequent trip.

Downstream is a pool at the end of The Barrel.  Below here is one more rapid that was tricky at our flow before the whitewater tapers out and returns to riffles.

We found a rope swing that was put to good use.

Just below here was our take out on the right.  Downstream are more rapids, and subsequent trips have run them.

Aaron Koontz lower down.

Photo: Yann Crist-Evans

This was an enjoyable section of water that could be run at a variety of flows.  The river could handle huge amounts of water and still be runnable, but it would be very class V.  It can also be run pretty low, we were near the bottom of flows on Jan 2, 2015 with 1800 cfs on the Chetco gauge and 225 cfs on the Floras Cr Nr Langlois gauge with flows dropping very slowly all week.

The photos by Yann were taken May 16, 2020.  On that trip the Chetco gauge was at 4500 cfs, the Winchuck went from 800 to 600 and back up to 800.  The Floras Cr Nr Langlois gauge dropped from 400 to 300 cfs.  They called that a great flow.

  -jacob