Yacolt Creek

This is a creek you may have noticed if you paddle the EF Lewis very often.  Just passed Moulton Falls, and right as you are turning onto Sunset Falls road you can catch a glimpse to the left of a waterfall.  The creek upstream and downstream of here is pretty tame class II, but Yacolt Creek Falls offers a challenge when in the area.  The drop can be run as a 20' waterfall down the right, or a double ten footer down the left.  The right side is tricky and goes under the right wall a bit so take a good look before running.  After the two sides merge the creek drops over one more 8 foot spout and it's a short class II ride down to a bridge next to Moulton Falls.  The  EF Lewis gauge needs to be flowing over 1,000 cfs for this to be worth a look.

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Story

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After a run down the EF Lewis, we headed over to Big Tree Falls on Yacolt creek. We looked at it for awhile and while it looks easy at first glance, on closer inspection, you begin to notice problems with it. We decided the two biggest problems were glancing off the boof flake on the left and getting launched head first into the wall on the right. Matt mitigated this issue by running from right to left and melting the drop. The second issue was the undercut immediately after the drop. I thought there was a pretty good chance a boater would get shoved into this so I set safety there after running the left side boof which is easy and low stress.

Matt went, and as predicted, got tractor beamed into the undercut. He caught some downstream current as he flipped over and pulled himself out as he was beginning to sink.

Then he hopped into the raft with Dan for round two.

(All photos by David Riess)

A couple clips of Yacolts Falls at the end of this video.

 
EF of the Lewis river from Jacob Cruser on Vimeo.



 

On another note. We met Steve Cameron on this run, who is just getting into boating again. We found out the interesting tid-bit that Steve was on the first decent of the Truss section of the white salmon! They put in below double drop and went down through Husum either 25 or 35 (i forget which) years ago. He was also the third person ever to run Husum falls.

  -Jacob

Canyon creek; From afterwork run to mission training and back again

I started writing this post a couple months ago but never finished.  It seems relevant now so I will finish it up.
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Canyon Creek Washington used to be the go to run. When the water came, people went there. After work run? Canyon Creek. I remember I never really like this run because I would always want to go do something new, but I would get duped and sucked into going to Canyon. I always had fun, but would feel I was always missing out on other runs. Why take a risk when you have such a great go to run right there I would hear(a reasonable question). A couple years ago however, the logjam arrived. Most kayakers were devastated. However, secretly I was happy with the situation. Now I could get on all the runs I wanted without Canyon Creek foiling my every move. I have gone the last couple of years without thinking too much about Canyon Creek. I knew some people went in there and portaged the jam, but that didn't seem like a bunch of fun to me, so I steered clear. Late October, 2010, the rains we had been hoping for finally hit. Extravagant plans were made to head up into the mountains in search of unseen waters. We waited for the 3 inches of rain that was forecasted to come. Friday...Saturday...still not more than a tease. Finally, Saturday evening it began to happen. The solid rain came. It was decided to wait to morning to make the call given the total uncertainty about water levels. Morning came and it was apparent the rain had begun about 8 hours too late to make Sunday a great boating day. People started heading back to the summer runs, or not going at all. Nate and I, however, were determined to get on a creek.
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We ended up on Canyon creek and I had fun.  I thought the new version was great because it was nice training for harder exploratory missions, while at the same time had some guaranteed good drops and was a known entity.  We finished the day stoked on a good year to come
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Now the Jam is gone and everyone is ready to pounce back on the local gem.  I must be the only person disappointed by this turn of events.  

Goodbye my friend, you tried your best.

(Nate Merrill photo)

   -Jacob

Disclaimer: Obviously Canyon Creek is an awesome run and I will enjoy getting on it a couple times a year.  It is the consequences of it being such a good run that led to my bitterness towards it.  This was just a satirical version of the recent events on the creek.

Copper Creek

BETA

Stream: Copper Creek has two section, an upper and a lower.  The lower gets done more often, as it has more picturesque drops.  I like the upper just as much since it is action packed read and run the whole way, with a couple notable drops near the beginning.  The roads into Copper can be driven by most vehicles, but something with clearance is definitely preferred, especially for the upper.

      Upper:  Upper Copper Creek starts at a foot bridge, Andrew Bradley have hiked upstream to where the creek forks and paddle down from there.  It's not bad, but also not interesting enough that I
  
Flows:  You can run the lower section as low as 1,000 cfs on the EF Lewis sometimes.  Sometimes that is too low, and there really isn't a way to tell the level without driving up there.  1,500-2,000 cfs will always be in.  People sometimes complain about how the stuff between the named drops can be rocky, but at the flows needed to pad the in-between, the named stuff is class V.  If class V sounds great to you, look for 2k+ on the EF Lewis gauge.  The upper section does not paddle well at low water.

Access:  A flows are low-ish and you are just running the lower, I prefer taking out at the Dole Valley Road Bridge.  If flows are up I would probably choose to skip the secret stash and take out at King Creek.

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Original Write-up
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After getting foiled by high water on Eagle Creek, we ran Copper Creek again.  It has become our go to creek.  We had a decent flow with 1500 on the EF Lewis and rising.  This was a great level, felt pretty full for the creek.  Once again we used the upper put-in for the run.  This is definitely the best choice in my mind.  The Upper has a couple solid drops, and a lot of really fun boogey stuff.  Matt was the only one who ran the Weir this day,  it had a tree limb in the center that he avoided, but everyone else decided it wasn't worth the trouble.  He missed the log, punched the hole, and paddled away upright.

Matt on the Weir.

(photo by Nate Merrill)

From here to the lower bridge was fun read and run class IV.  No real wood issues in this section.  Once below the bridge, you will run a narrow ledge on the right, then eddy out immediately on the right to portage Certain Death.  If you want to run it I guess you could go a bit lower, but we all knew we weren't going to run it before we got there.  Then find somewhere to seal launch.  There was a log in the water , but Matt fixed it so it isn't much of an issue anymore.  Below here, the really clean class four continues for awhile.  Eventually it tapers off, before too long you come to Triple delight, one of the sweetest drops in the area.  It starts with a two foot ledge that you want to run leftish, because the right side funnels strongly into the slot on the right that is hard to stay upright through.  I took Matt over blind his first time, and I just said make you are left, left, left.  In the second(crux drop) Two of us hit the boof on the left, one hit the boof pretty far right, and one of us got sucked into the slot, resulting in a pretty interesting line down the rest of the drop!

Here is Eric Foster-moore dropping the final drop in Triple delight.

(photo by Nate Merrill)

Below here were a few more bedrock drops, some fun slides, ledges, and flumes, all with good sized holes at this level.  One sent Eric airborn!  He was able to pull off a catlike move to keep it upright though.  This section was lots of fun and before too long we rolled into the eddy above Final Five.  After taking a look at the headwall drop, I decided I wasn't in the mood and joined Nate, and eventually Eric in the portage.  This left only Matt, who decided to fire off the entire canyon.  To complicate things, the landowner was firing off gun shots.  Not sure whether he knew we were there, we kept a low profile and seal launched in above the final double drop to keep out of his land, but the gunshots were still a little unnerving given the problems that have arisen here in the past.  Matt didn't let the nerves get to him and fired off the entire series, with a roll in the third drop against the undercut wall in the left eddy.  Then finished off the series with an awesome line in the final double drop.  

Matt attacking the headwall.

(photo by Nate Merrill)

Matt in the Canyon above the final double drop.

(Photo: Nate Merrill)

Myself seal launching below the headwall drop.

(photo by Matt King)

After the seal launch, Eric and I decided to take the easy line and ran the final double drop left, left.

Eric driving left at the first ledge of the Final Drop in Final Five Canyon.

(photo by Matt King) 

Myself ducking some branches while getting where I want to go in final drop

  (photo by Matt King)

 I might add that the bottom hole on the right side of the final drop was looking like it could do some serious damage, so consideration of that would be wise.  

    Below here we joined the EF Lewis, which was really fun at this level.  We cruised down to Horshoe falls and scouted to find the funnest line.  We decided to do the triple bounce on the left and it was actually pretty exciting!  We all went deep into the airated landing. 

Below here was uneventful, and we finished the run happy with another great run on Copper Creek!

  -Jacob

King Creek

Theron Jourdan and I ran King Creek last weekend. The small tributary of the East Fork Lewis that comes in at the take out for the waterfall run/Copper creek. I used google Earth and mapquest to figure out the put in and that worked great. The logging roads we where using were suprisingly not gated and things went pretty smoothly. Our first put in choice turned out to be down a private road so the next option required a 3/4 mile hike in.

   

When we arrived at the put-in, there was just enough water to float a boat. Our first portage was just downstream, then we where able to run close to half a mile of whitewater without another portage. Somewhere in here a tributary bumped the flow and made the eddies more defined. The next mile was class two with about three easy portages (all the portages in the first half of the trip where easy). There where often signs of bedrock and a few class two slides presented themselves, enough to get us excited, but no real drops occurred in this section. We passed a couple more bridges and were pleased by the low amount of wood for such a small creek.

Theron after our fourth portage.

Before too long we could see the clear cut high up on the right that signaled the last mile, the 200+ foot per mile section. Right about here the wood started to pile on. The creek got steeper with some bouldery class four, most of which we had to portage because of wood issues, and the eddies got tough to find.

Theron in the runout to one of the class four rapids we ran, just downstream was a log jam.  Standard fare on obscure creeks of this nature.
We had a couple tricky portages in here, one included throwing the boats from a log across the creek into an eddy. A couple times in this section Theron had his paddle almost ripped from his hands, this was scary because of how challenging the eddies were to catch. A couple times I thought I had seen an eddy from about, but it turned out not to be and I had to scramble to shore and grab on to rocks to keep from getting swept into a log. When there where no eddies we would just drive our boats onto some shallow areas and hop out. The final couple hundred yards held the most challenging section. Theron was in the lead and was reading and running down a class four section that was starting to be pretty fun when he broached himself on a rock to see downstream. I couldn't tell what he was looking at but when he un-pinnned himself he charged left and drove into a tough eddy and signaled me down. I saw him take his throw-bag out for the first time so I was a little worried about what might be downstream of this eddy should I miss it. Luckily I stayed in control and boofed into the eddy. I looked downstream and saw the only real horizon line of the day. We got out and looked and were both glad we had caught the eddy. Some people have hiked up the creek a ways from the takeout, including a group of boaters we bumped into at the take out and from what we could tell, this drop is what people call "the waterfall" on this creek.  It drops about 10-12 feet over two steps. The second step has a log that would require a rail slide and boof to avoid a aerated room boxed in by wood.

The room

The drop looked doable in a video game sort of way, we chose to take a sneak route down the left.  Below here where a couple logs to dodge, then we dropped over the ledge visible from the takeout on the left. From here we flowed into the EF Lewis then ferried across and we where at the take out. The logistical challenges and puzzling were more interesting than the whitewater, and I had a good day on the water. I won't be back, but I'm glad to have had this little adventure.

King Creek as it enters the EF Lewis
March 16, 2008

EF Lewis River Near Heisson gauge

The section of King Creek we ran is highlighted in yellow below.

      -Jacob