Briggs Creek: Middle

 BETA

2.7 mi hike and paddle, no shuttle.  Class III-IV(IV+)

Stream: A short, quality hike-in run not too far from the Rogue Valley.  After hiking in, boaters decide whether to tackle the put in rapid or not.  The top of the rapid is fun, a set of narrowing ledges.

The second part of the rapid is a hallway with an undercut boulder blocking most of the water, the line appears to be to the right of the boulder, but I walked this part when I paddled the creek.

Downstream the creek enters a boogie section with a few fun ledges that pop up amidst the boulder gardens.

When the creek steepens slightly the next notable rapid appears at an island and should be scouted.  The left line is a fast flume that pillows off the left wall, and a right channel that is runnable at higher flows.  This pushes quickly into a small ledge best run left.

Downstream the whitewater continues with read and run, and another ledge or two down to the confluence with Red Dog Creek.

Below Red Dog Creek it's class II-II+ down to the take out.

  

Flows:  Like a lot of the small creeks in the area, flows can be hard to nail down.  Here are the 3 data points I have, using the two most common proxy USGS gauges in the area.

-Yellow bars are dates that were just barely floatable, too low for a repeat trip.  

-Blue bar was from the friendly medium flow day.

Chetco @ Brookings USGS gauge

Illinois @ Kerby USGS gauge

There are some more flow musings on the Lower Briggs report.

Access:   

Put In:  42.40131014049408, -123.73591864665532

Take Out:  42.37701161080251, -123.76343377340532

It's good to mark the take out when dropping the vehicle.  Then, cross Soldier Creek and start following the old road uphill and upstream, a map is nice for the first quarter mile.

Once moving upstream the hike along the road is easy-going (you could drive it with an ATV if you can cross Soldier Creek), eventually reaching a slightly open area and the road starts to drop to the creek.  Don't follow the road, instead head off to the right and find the trail. 

 Follow that trail upstream another mile or so and you will pass the obvious put in rapid.

If you walk another 100-200 yards, a trail will head sharply uphill to the right, stay left and put in when the trail reaches the creek in less than a minute.

Watch out for poison oak, it can be avoided but is often present.

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Story/Notes
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I had run lower Lower Briggs Creek years ago, and while that last section before reaching the Illinois River is the obvious whitewater run, my eye had drifted upstream on Briggs Creek as well.  Up there the gradient was lower, and the access less obvious.  I had written it off as likely class III with wood.

Fast forward a number of years and I'm more interested in class III-IV than I once was, and while visiting Priscilla's parents in Grants Pass decided to have a look.  The first time we checked it out, we thought flows would be too low so just went for a hike.  Turns out the flows looked ideal, and we should have given it a go.

Yann on the scouting trip, shortly before his dog found a discarded diaper full of diarrhea, which the dog found delicious.

The next time we were in the area, we weren't going to miss another opportunity, so when the Illinois gauge (the default gauge for an area without many gauges) showed higher flows than our scouting trip we set out with an ambitious plan.  The shuttle was very roundabout and would have been 2 hours one way, so instead of spending many hours in a car that day, we drove to the put in, with the plan to hike back up the trail from the take out.  I did as much searching the internet as I could to ascertain the condition of the trail, but it seemed people hadn't reported hiking it straight through in many years, so I was worried about the middle section being overrun as many trails in the area are not maintained.

We put on to lower water than we had hoped from, and drifted downstream. 

 The first bit was pretty and intimate, but lacking much whitewater.  There was a log portage or two, but nothing problematic or annoying.  In fact, the first few miles were rather unremarkable whitewater-wise, so we just enjoyed the setting; an unmolested forest with clear water and pitcher plants.

Eventually, we reached the middle section of the run, which turned out to be the good part.  This is the section described on this page in the "Stream" section, and the part I would return to with the better logistical situation and better whitewater.

We worked our way through this section, which I thought was high quality intermediate whitewater with a couple more notable rapids that Priscilla walked and I paddled through.  We wished that flows had been at the level of our scouting trip, but it is often the case that our exploratory trips are done at low water and I'm ok with that.

We reached Red Dog Creek and while we could have started our hike back upstream here for a shorter hike, I wanted to paddle down to the more logical take out "for the sake of completeness" as Pete G would say.

After the last mile of boulder bars we set up our packs and began the 5-6 mile hike back up to our vehicle at the put in.  The first couple miles were easy, and we had done it before on our scouting trip (this is the hike recommended for the run, starting at the take out, and hiking up to the intersection with the Phone Trail).  Once we passed the put in for the middle section, I ferried across the creek to see if the trail still existed on river-right as shown on the maps.  It did not.  So we took the backup option which was to climb steeply uphill on the Phone Trail, we crossed our fingers it connected like it showed on the map and grunted out the 800' vertical gain over 1/4' mile and were glad to see it meet up with a marked road. 

High above the creek.

 It was here that I worried the trail would not continue, but I felt relief to realize that it did, so back down we went as the trail headed upstream, and we completed the bypass of the discontinued section of trail, reaching Briggs Creek near the Courier Mine and Onion Creek confluence.  Here we descended a little further than we should have, and Priscilla did not walk to retrace or route, so we hiked up the banks of the creek for 45 minutes or so until the map showed that the trail was not too high above us and we headed up the hill and regained the trail. 

Orange dots show our detour route.

 It was in a burned area, so we would lose it at times but eventually, we were out of the recent burn and the trail became easier to follow.

The trail became a two-track mining "road" for ATV's at some point, and crossed the creek a couple more times.  We made it back to the put in with light to spare, tired and beat, but satisfied.  

We headed out along Taylor Creek, instead of the Onion Valley route we had come in on, and checked the Taylor Creek gauge as a reference for next time.

Too low for Taylor, too low for a repeat of Middle Briggs.

We had a cool adventure, but I'd recommend any boaters with interested in these parts of Briggs to stick to the middle or lower sections and avoid the upper half of what we did.