Hot Spot: Gold River; Part 3 / The End

I would have preferred to get the 3rd & final part of this blog post up sooner, but time for quality blogging is in short supply these days. I don't really have much of a trip report to offer for our last day, so this will mainly be a caption-assisted photo dump.

The general overview is that we planned a big "hat trick" day for our last day. That is, on day 3 we wanted to complete 3 different runs -- the Upper Gold, the Upana, & the Heber -- before racing back to Nanaimo to catch a boat back to the mainland.

Sore from the previous day's dealings, we rose early, ate quick & headed out to the Upper Gold, which, according to our minimal beta was short, not terribly difficult, & well worth doing just to float into its spectacular gorge. We anticipated a "hit it 'n quit it" run that would be a good warm-up for the rest of our day.


This was our put-in wakeup rapid ..

The Gold is a river, not a creek. We ran about a mile or two of easy whitewater in a beautiful canyon before an innocuous blind bend sent the entire crew scratching for a surging small eddy at the entrance of a tight sheer-walled gorge. We were fortunate that the eddy was even there, & even more so that we were able to scramble up onto a ledge, then traverse, then up to the rim of the gorge. The rapid looked incredible & a little reminiscent of "Conversation" on Robe Canyon, all big waves & holes compressed between vertical walls. Upon scouting we found that the thing kept going & going into a super tight pinch with a couple bad boils & undercut walls. Problem was the log across the gorge at clothesline-yer-head-off level. There was no real option to run the top of the rapid without being forced into the ledge with the log. So we began the long portage ... Here we go again ...


This is the log that gipped us out of this amazing rapid.


Jakub contemplating the limbo-to-undercut-pinch



Jakub & Bryan decided to do the assisted drop, under the log & into the pinch. Both reported sketchiness with regard to the pinch move & the undercut wall, & didn't recommend doing it .. so the rest of the crew opted for the 30-foot throw 'n go from the gorge rim. We all got to float out through the unbelievably beautiful corridor, just some of us did it out of our boats.


Shertl with the Michael Jackson glove & with the assist




Dealin' with the boily stuff & the undercut


Kato in the pinch..


.. & out of the pinch


On the rim of the gorge, pre chuck, pre huck.







More class IV rapids led us to an obvious big-ass gorge rapid. Nothing about this rapid looked appealing from upstream .. but we dealt with it, just not quickly. We ended up taking so long to scout/run/portage this one that by the time we got off the run, we had to scramble to get shuttle run & head back down to the Upana. Here are some more pics from the Gold.


Me in some random boogie water




Right side = bad scene



















Onto the Upana .. The Upana is a classic creek run with lots of manky boulder rapids, then slidey bedrock rapids, leading into another spectacular Van Island gorge. The first gorged-out rapid came as a surprise & though not very steep, it was a bit plucky with 3 back-to-back ledges/holes to punch. Then there's the perfect 25-footer .. & another big boof with a tricky lead-in .. followed by a bunch of bouldery mank. That's the Upana, & it's a must-do. By the time I ran the waterfall & met Bryan in the eddy below, we were really pushing our luck -- not with regard to daylight hours or the creek itself, but it was like 4 or 5 o'clock & we were still way up-Island, in a canyon, when where we needed to be was in the truck on the way to the ferry dock. Couple of us had to work in the morning. Needless to say, we wouldn't be getting on the Heber on our way out, or achieving our hat trick. Damn. We hightailed it off the Upana & out of the Gold River / Strathcona zone, happy nonetheless with an incredible couple days of exploring Van Island.

Here's some photos from just a couple of the rapids on the Upana .. didn't have time to wield the camera too much.


Wayrad in the first gorge section w/ Shurstle looking on from the eddy


Jakub approaching a nice corner-boof


Kato preparing for liftoff


This is the best view you can get of the waterfall prior to running it semi-blind. It's good, right down the gut.


Kato dropping.


Wayrad from the right..


.. and the left.




Giddy up! Time to drive like hell & catch a ferry!

Hot Spot: Gold River; Part 2

There in our back-o'-nowhere version of a cul-de-sac, in the scrappy remains of what once was a noble coastal subalpine forest, we set up camp, ate, drank & told stories around a raging fire. Throughout the afternoon & evening the cloud cover had all but vanished, leaving us with clear mountain views & a setting sun that painted the snow-laden high peaks of the Strathcona with orange & pink alpenglow.





We drank a lot of beer, celebrating our good fortune & the fact that 36 hours in, Schertzl had somehow managed to avoid sabotaging the trip with some kind of ridiculous injury or accident. Jakub, the Czech, opened & passed around a bottle of hooch. I crept off to my tent & drifted off, listening for the chugging noise of the morning's first whitewater between the frequent howls & cackles coming from the fire ring.

Our morning plan was to expedite shuttle & breakfast & try to get on the river early-ish so we could make quick work of the Lower Ucona before tackling another river objective in the evening. Shane & I ran vehicles down to our takeout at the confluence of the Ucona & the Gold, & came back to a hot breakfast waiting for us. Ryan had done the short hike down to where we'd left boats at riverside & reported that the level had come up.

Our post-coffee wake-up call would be "peel out of eddy, drop into tight mini-gorge".


Bryan Smith about to wipe the sleep out of his eyes.


Shane forgetting all about his bad dream about not passing the Bar exam


Tretwold boofing-up on the right side of the bed

The geology of this first gorge was similar to that of the middle stretch & of Pamela Creek's creamy white granite. It continued that way for maybe another mile, with intermittent class III & IV & occasional vertical-walled sections. Rather abruptly the geology changed, & the appearance of chunky boulder obstacles became common.


Downstream view without "chunky boulder obstacles"


Upstream View with "chunky boulder obstacles"

While studying the maps the night before, Shane had said, "Here's our first red flag," pointing at the topographic feature due south forming the river-left canyon wall ... "Crumble Mountain." Appropriately, the canyon downstream of here, was not only steep, very deep & narrow, but also choked-off in many places with monstrous boulders that had broken off the canyon walls. These boulders lying on bedrock & pinched between walls formed the majority of the seivey rapids. As Jeff R. had mentioned in the comments section on the previous post, parts of the Lower Ucona were very reminiscent of Ernie's Canyon near Seattle .. which translates to "Please try to avoid contact with rocks & walls." We rounded a corner in a flatwater section & the river-right wall soared upward over a thousand feet. "Remember, river-left is our friend," Chris said.


Jakub on a random rapid


Shane about to get all Air Jordan


The author of this here blog post, gunnin' for a slot. Photo by Jakub Drnec, not by me.

We ran a handful of fun rapids before being faced with hideous boulder shut-down. We could have really screwed ourselves here, having gotten a little greedy with a series of fun boofs which lured us into a totally walled-in gorge section. Fortunately, we were able to squeak through the upper bit of this zone in our boats on river-right & portage easily down the rest. This put us deeper into the gorge with no real egress in sight, but everything we saw downstream indicated that it would be manageable at river level .. so we ate lunch & pushed on, which really was our only option anyway.


Shrtl "dusting it off & stomping it out" very much on the radar


Tret threading needles


The view into the top of the gorged-out section .. beautiful & sketchy


Easy portage around sieved-out mess

Slow, safe downstream progress prevailed through more fun, walled-in & sometimes sketchy rapids. Chris had a close call with a gnarly wood/rock sieve while leading through one section. Shane was able to set up midstream safety/assist so the rest of us could fly through the rapid. Several times from upstream rapids would look impassible, but we'd find a narrow slot that would allow us to stay in our boats.


Radley about to clear a big hungry hole


Dig the sidewall design on that Everest! Nice boof in the background ..


Kato driving the Everest through some heavy channelized stuff


Jakub closing the deal

Before long, we could see in the distance the river-right canyon wall of the Gold River, indicating that we were nearing the confluence & the end of the Ucona canyon. Just when we thought we were home free, we came into a section of raging Death Metal -- waterfalling, cascading, sieved-out chaos in a sheer-walled gorge. Sweet.


The calm before the storm. We were able to run the next steep tight slot along the left wall, but then the bottom fell out ...


The bottom of the first part of the nastiness. Chris' little point & shoot doesn't accurately capture the scale of this mess. Believe that it's large & very unrunnable.

Chris, Shane & I volunteered for scout mission, which involved scaling the river-left wall high above the gorge. We looked for an end to the madness below & a way to deal with it at river-level. Failing that, we wanted at least a short up/down route around the (hopefully) short sieve section.

We found neither.

The BS continued for a long way, carving ever deeper into the gorge. We were way off the deck looking down into nasty nasty whitewater. I wish I had taken my camera with me on the scout, but it was a brutal walk that I knew I would be doing twice, so I wanted to minimize the baggage. As such, we have very few images of that chapter in our story. We reached a bit of a plateau with fairly manageable terrain/vegetation for portaging, & we felt like we were beginning to work our way down toward the Gold R. (as opposed to back toward the Ucona). We decided that we would be portaging at least to this point & that it would be best to just get everyone moving together as a group. Chris & I guessed that we wouldn't be back in this spot for at least another 2 hrs. Shane & Chris were the only ones the day before with any interest in "just dropping in" on the lower Ucona at 4pm. Now, faced with a 'Nam walk, we agreed unanimously that a loose decision like that would certainly have resulted in tales of desperation & woe -- at best, a sleepless night spent shivering in the woods trying not to think about bears.

People like us, we ascribe a certain value to suffering. As much as we fear the brutality involved in dealing with hike-in's & bail-out's, nights spent huddled on a rock, crawling through the understory on hands & knees, solo, in a bear tunnel .. or having to knock on the door of a single-wide in Meth Country to beg for tap water .. Hard as we try to avoid those scenarios, we also take a thinly-veiled, sadistic pride in our propensity for colossal failures. The suffering allows one to truly appreciate the fleeting moments of glory that we are fortunate to occasionally achieve. And just as important, these episodes make for great story fodder (add a couple beers to the mix & you'd think half the stories are worthy of being turned into a screenplay) ... & really, who doesn't love recounting the tales to friends & family? Which, ultimately, is the whole reason that The Range Life even exists.


The easy stuff


The not so easy stuff

Merely one hour later, we had the whole group of 7, plus boats, up on the bench looking for the best way back down to water. A long multi-pitch rope-assisted descent ensued, & we re-launched within sight of the confluence. All tolled, we portaged for only a bit over 2 hours .. 2 steep, sweaty, dirty hours.


Two senior citizens .. This Doug fir, at the end of our portage route, was a couple hundred feet tall.


About to finish out the Ucona to the Gold confluence. (((Our run was not a first descent, but it may well be a LAST descent. Construction on a hydro project will likely begin on the Ucona later this summer.)))

Then, of course, we set up camp, ate & told stories around a raging fire. And drank a lot of beer .. celebrating our good fortune & the fact that now, 48 hours in, Schertzl was still with us in good health & without any new black eyes, broken teef, bones, "blisterpacks", "cankles" or "punji stick" incidents. Cheers to that!

Hot Spot: Gold River; Part 1

Throughout our community of whitewater paddleboaters there are certain places that, due to a particularly dense concentration of high quality rivers & creeks, have become embedded in the collective conscience / lore, & are destinations on every traveling boater's life list. These zones have a couple things in common, most notably that there's a large "main stem" river into which any number of runnable tributaries spill, all within a close proximity of some kind of "base camp". Places like Fayetteville, WV, Hood River, OR, & Squamish, BC come to mind. This past weekend a crew of friends from Seattle, Bellingham & Victoria linked up to do some exploring in one such hot spot -- Gold River, BC.

Bryan Smith, Jakub Drnec & I had earmarked this 3-day weekend a while back with a Van Island adventure in mind. Jakub was hot to check out a couple rivers whose life expectancies, due to impending independent power projects, are especially short. As mentioned in recent posts, we've been experiencing a very cold Spring -- more like an interminable Winter -- so flows have remained low everywhere north of the Columbia. Throughout the past month we all kept our target weekend open, & as if on cue, more hospitable weather & more water arrived at the beginning of the week. On short notice, we made some calls & managed to cobble together the rest of our team, the usual suspects, who represent the underemployed dregs of Norfwest society .. but are damn fine boaters & perhaps even more importantly, great company on a long-weekend roadtrip.

One rig got an early jump on the Friday urban-escapee traffic & made haste to catch the boat outta Tsawwassen, while the other went north to Horseshoe Bay to pick up Kato.


We barely made it onto the ferry as the next-to-last vehicle allowed to load.

The plan was for all of us to meet in Nanaimo & formulate a quick strategery over dinner. Once off the mainland we came into rain, which increased in intensity throughout most of the night. Though no one was looking forward to a cold, muddy camp scene after a long day of travel, the rain was a welcome event just the same. The forecast called for sunny & warm for the rest of the weekend. We settled on GR as our destination & were psyched to finish out the remaining 3 hours of travel.

The route to GR takes you up the east side of the island to Campbell River, then northwest through the interior, over a divide in Strathcona Provincial Park, & then back down toward Nootka Sound on the Pacific side.


Hours of windshield time ..


.. leads to delerium.

GR is in the interior of the island, but sits at just 300 feet above sea level near the head of Muchalat Inlet, a great arm of Pacific that stretches deep into the island. From town you can see the big peaks of the Strathcona towering to over 6,000 ft, & in this year of heavy snows & persistent cold weather, they're still caked with big snowpack. It's a zone that's chock full of things we like a lot: big rivers & creeks, polished granite, lakes, rugged coastline, big mountains, big trees, wildlife .. & a very laissez faire attitude.

We pulled into our lakeside camp late Friday night, surprised at how dry it seemed. The rain had subsided long before we crested the pass in Strathcona & to me it looked like the storm hadn't really hit GR. We fell asleep to a chorus of croaking frogs & woke to chilly clear-blue skies.


From our camp on Star Lake



Dorking around with morning reflections on the lake

Within a 15-minute drive from camp, we had access to maybe 7 different runs, hence the "hot spot" title. We crossed the Ucona River & were disappointed to see low flow. We posited that perhaps a smaller, more channelized stream such as Pamela Creek, might be doable. So we continued on, only to find the same (predictable) situation there. But Pamela was perhaps the most seductive put-in I'd ever seen.



Her temptation overwhelmed the group, which didn't want to spend the day driving around looking for water on what was clearly a low-water day. So we decided to just drop in, knowing that we'd likely be groveling for some love on Pamela, but then would confluence with the Ucona, & with the extra flow, we'd have plenty of water for the second half of the day.

To the best of our knowledge, Pamela had been run once & the reports were "waterfalls in a spectacular gorge". The reports were spot-on .. once we got past the weak sauce low-flow boulder mank. In the gorge, the crystal clear water flowed over smooth granite & the mank was all but forgotten.




Tretwold on the first drop of the first one-two punch


The exit drop


Ryan B. on the same series, from below


Kato on #1


And Kato on #2


Stoked!


Another double


Shane coming out of the bottom of the second drop


Ryan in the beautiful gorge/pool just below the double


I took a ton of photos of the gorge/pool & the slide just below. The clarity of the water & the smooth rock were phenomenal.


Erik Schertzl

Below here the gorge ended & we banged down through an intensely beautiful run-out section to the confluence of the Ucona. For future reference, 2 to 3 times the flow would have been nice in there. At this point our plans were to continue boating the entire way through the Middle & Lower Ucona. The 5-km lower stretch would be considered exploratory, as at the time all we knew about it was that a team had attempted/portaged it. The Ucona drains a piece of southwestern Strathcona Park & flows westward to meet the lower Gold. Its final canyon is pinched tight between Ucona Mountain to the north & Crumble Mountain to the south for the duration of its steep 5-km descent.

We confluenced at several km into the upper/middle run(s) & were immediately into a stellar granite box canyon with plenty of water. Seeing the familiar sight of mist billowing up from below a horizon line, we got out to scout & saw an absolutely perfect 20-footer into a deep crack. Looking downstream, we could see another steep horizon line into a massive wide-open pool, but this drop appeared to be blocked by wood.


Chris dropping the first ledge ...




... & throwin' horns in the pool below.




Looking down on the bottom of the gorge. The plan became, get out river-right & portage the log, then put in immediately downstream of the log & run the last waterfall.


Looking up into the first falls


Bryan on the second falls


Ryan


The author .. separation anxiety.


Jakub .. our Island host


Schrtlvision


Afterglow ..

We took much longer than planned on Pamela & the middle Ucona. By the time we got to the point where we needed to decide whether or not to continue on through the lower, it was nearly 5 o'clock. We voted to leave our kayaks at river level & send one group for the shuttle vehicles (requiring a loooooong walk on a lonely logging road), while the other group attempted to scout some of the lower canyon. The scouting didn't work out so well so we dorked around instead. I made Wayrad run the rapid just below our takeout, so I could take advantage of nice light.



And then we climbed out of the canyon & built a fire on the logging road & waited for the other group. We ended up camping there with the plan to drop into the Lower Ucona bright 'n early.


Dinner, being prepared by Kato (& Tret), never tasted so good!

The Big (Low) E

Coming off the excitement of race day on The Robe, a couple of us had it in mind that the warm temps would provide the bump needed to bring the ultra-classic Ernie's Canyon to a good level. Saturday night, we'd decided that a lower flow than normal/fun would be acceptable for the first run of '08. By bedtime, the hydrograph showed signs of responding, but it still had about a 100 cfs to go to meet our minimum. Morning came, but the water did not .. though it was still rising slowly. So our plan became, let's wait til lunch time, let it warm up & then just go for it -- we'll have at least 400-&-rising in there, which we'd consider "runnable, not funnable".

We made use of an alternate put-in trail that leads you directly to the river-right eddy at the lip of Ferryland, the first rapid in the canyon proper. Ferryland appears to have changed (again). The normal line on river-left is a junkshow &, even worse, the eddies are barely there .. even at low flow. So we opted for the main line down river-right, which netted us a kicker-boof into the bottleneck & the main ledge. The large boulder just downstream of the ledge-hole is a lot closer than it looked from the scout & is very undercut. Shane & I both narrowly avoided it. Not sure, but maybe it would clean up or cover up at a normal juicy flow. Scout Ferryland before dropping in.

Other updates .. Samson & Delilah is best run on the left (but it was last year too, so that's not news); Big Nasty is currently unrunnable due to a huge log spanning the channel (pic below). Make sure you grab an eddy immediately after Little Nasty & then portage river-left. Don't take either of the last two slots on river-left at the bottom of Bruce's Boil, badness awaits.

Low flow is interesting in there. The rapids are so channelized that all the same lines exist, they're just much tighter. I generally regard most/all of the rocks in Ernie's as dangerous. At lower flows, you have time to catch your breath between the major rapids, but the sieves & undercuts are definitely more exposed.

Here's some pics from what turned out to be a surprisingly good run down the Big E.


Shane nailing the boof into Ferryland ...


.. & blasting through the final ledge-hole ..


.. fun line! but don't get stuffed.


Johnny in the manky low-water lead-in to Samson & Delilah


... & boofing the main ledge.


Shane at S&D


Downstream view .. yeah, it's low.


The log shutting down the line at Big Nasty .. don't blow it.


Utah dropping into the left side of Vertical Vortex.


Robinson ..


Downstream view.


Utah scouting, with a pretty boulder in the foreground.

The Robe Race '08

I. The Story, In 250 Words or Less
II. The Results
III. The Photo Dump
IV. The Robe Gnome


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I. The Story, In 250 Words or Less

The 1st annual Robe Canyon Downriver Race! All the elements came together & conspired to make our inaugural race successful. 18 racers & scads of volunteers & spectators gathered at Granite Falls under bluebird skies to make it happen. Watching the flow from 5.3 ft to 4.low the day before the race was a bit of a nail-biter .. but Fri/Sat's warm temps helped to stabilize the flow right at a low, but worthy, 5 ft. The day's events went off without a hitch -- no carnage, no terror, fast times, & plenty of sunburn, good times & beer for all. The Robe Gnomes remained more or less at bay. We started out of a eddy at the lip of Tunnel rapid & didn’t stop til after Conversation, on a beach where our timekeepers awaited -- a length of about 5 miles.

Once we'd all made it to the take-out & shuttles had been completed, about 30 people crammed into the back room at Omega Pizza for the after-party. Amanda B. & the timekeeping crew had kept course times a secret, opting to announce times & crown the champeens at the party.

The winners would each walk away with a super cool satin Boxing Robe (robe, get it?), as well as bragging rights for a year. The robes will be embroidered with the winners' names, & next year, will be passed on to the winners of The Robe Race '09. A new tradition is born!

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II. The Results

The spread between 1st & last place was but 10 minutes. The winning time, posted by McKibbin & Hawthorne, was 33 minutes, 10 seconds! Congrats dudes & savor the sweet taste of sweet sweetness!

Rob McKibbin & Ben Hawthorne 33:10
Chris Tretwold & Ryan Bradley 34:08
John Minerich & Shane Robinson 34:43
Scott Waidelich & Nick Hinds 36:01
Erik Schertzl & Bryan Smith 36:10
Todd Gillman & Andrew Oberhardt 36:39
Jon Dufay & Brad Xanthopoulos 38:30
Ryan Terry & Matt Thomas 42:37
Jeff Bowman & Morgan Hutchings 43:46 (Robe Gnome Award)

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III. The Photo Dump

Many friends have submitted photos. Due to space & time constraints, I had to just kind of pick a handful from each. Still though, there's a LOT of pics!


Andrew Oberhardt & Shane Robinson, stoked.


Organizing the shore support & timekeeping detail pre-race


Building out the team list


Most of the racers posing for group portrait at the start line


McKibbin, confident


Brad X. & Jon Dufay, not as confident as McKibbin .. but pretty sure


Devin & Hale, exhuberant


JP running Tunnel rapid


The winning team outta the gate


Glory Boof #1


Bottom of Tunnel rapid, with GB1 in foreground


GB1


3rd place finishers, Robe regulars, Shane Robinson & Johnny Utard


If there's a radar in the area, this guy's probably way under it, stompin' shit out. There's no vision like Schertlvision.


Ben H., impervious shoulders @ Little Miss Sunshine


Nick Hinds' 2nd time on The Robe




BradX @ Lil Miss


Matt "Effigy" Thomas made the trip up from Medford, OR .. & that's cool. Lise-Anne's shot of him ...


& Owen's shot of him ...


Awesome shot of 2nd place finisher Ryan Bradley on the newly-opened right line on Lil Miss


Shane Robinson, globetrotter


Me on Lil Miss (thanks Owen)


Me & Drew in the runout


boogie water


boogie water


Utah & Shane in the boogie water leading into Hotel California


Sequence of me in the manky river-right channel of Hotel Cali lead-in


Love this backlit shot of B.Smith & Schertzl in the main ledge of Hotel Cali .. nice one, Kennet.


Doof Boof


Effigy running the meat @ Catcher's Mitt


Utah, backender


"The 20-foot Waterfall" is neither


Effingham @ takeout


Then we drank beer!




Kyle Kovalick, the voice of Robe Race '08, doing emcee duty at Omega Pizza


Ammen & Stephanie Jordan .. finish line timekeepers. thanks guys!!!


Hilary N. caught in the act.


Wayrad!


Half of winning team, Ben H., donning The Robe. His partner had to take off before the awards ceremony. This robe (& Rob's) will be embroidered with the winners' names & will be passed onto the next winners each year.

For even more stories/photos from our contributors, please follow the links below! Plunge Pool from Owen Callahan; EJ Etherington's Flickr Set; Chris Joosse's blog; Chris Tretwold & B'ham Whitewater.

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IV. The Robe Gnome

Our crew is ruthless about giving each other shit. It's an equal opportunity kind of thing, but when it comes to talkin' smack about kayaking, hiking out of runs, getting destroyed in rapids, being nancies, etc., certain friends tend to take more than they actually dish out. On Robe in particular, any time someone has a bad line or swims, somehow it ends up always being blamed on the pranksterish "Robe Gnomes" that presumably lurk around some of the more notorious rapids waiting for unsuspecting victims. I don't remember exactly how the term got coined or by whom, but it definitely had something to do with Shertzl & me. It was always "Hey Shertl, beware, I hear the Robe Gnomes are feisty today!" .. or "Whoa man! That was UGLY!" "Shut it Gillman, the Robe Gnome got a hold of my stern & pulled me back into the Mitt .." something along those lines.

So, while at the post-race party, that brilliant, inebriated Ryan Terry ("RT") produced a great idea -- A prize in honor of The Robe Gnomes who get the better of the DFL team, and, of course, in honor of the DFL team itself.

So, starting with Jeff & Morgan, each year, Newt The Robe Gnome will go home with the DFL team, will spend the year with the team, & will hopefully become better friends by this time next year. The DFL team will have to take a "family portrait" & have it printed for inclusion in the photo album that will accompany the Gnome to the Race each year.

Yes, we are serious.

Ladies & gentlemen, meet Newt The Robe Gnome.

Updater! ::: Spring 08 Stuff

I. Baby Dotcom
II. Big Weekend, Little White
III. The Main Event -- Robe Race 08
IV. Pounds All Around


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I. Baby Dotcom

Poudre Posse stalwart .. Co-creator of one of the most celebrated websites in the whole history of the World Wides of Web .. Co-author of the river guidebook that redefined river guidebooks .. Proud wearer of the Yamika & observer of the Passover .. Mr. Evan Stafford, along with his lovely wife Nicole, are the elated new parents of little Kaija Michelle Stafford. Congrats & much love from your BFF in the PNW.




II. Big Weekend, Little White

The first ever official downriver race (& slalom event) on the LWS was, by all accounts, a huge success & a good time. Hood River loc Todd Anderson took the top honors. Congrats amigo! And nice work to Austin for actually pulling this off. Info & pics Here and also Here


III. The Main Event

And speaking of downriver races ...



Nowhere near as glam as some other PNW classics, The Robe Canyon of the South Fork of the Stillaguamish River humbly lurks in the North Cascade foothills an hour north of Sea-town. But for those who've been bitten by the bug, The Robe has become a bit of an obsession.

With somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 complex class V rapids & at least that many more class IV's, nearly all of which contain soaring big-water boofs, multiple lines, hungry holes & tons of "personality", this 5-mile canyon stretch is hoisting the "quality" flag high for the PNW. And at its best runnable flows, from +/- 800 cfs to double that, it's not really "creekin'", although there are plenty of creek lines to explore if you're so inclined. All of the rapids, except one, are remarkably clean, perfectly spaced, pool-drop style in a relatively remote, densely vegetated, basalt canyon. The gray glacial water is frequently pinched between polished vertical walls, & with ever present overcast skies, Robe can have an eerie vibe -- especially given the carnage this run has been known to dish out. But the more you get to know the canyon, the more you come to appreciate its dark beauty .. & in its current condition, the quality of the whitewater may be among the best you'll ever paddle.

This coming Saturday -- levels permitting -- we will be hosting the first ever Robe Canyon downriver endurance race. Teams of 2 will launch at 5-minute intervals to see who can make it through the length of the canyon the fastest. The race will begin just above Tunnel rapid, at the start of the canyon, & will include a mandatory portage at Landslide (cuz that's just a part of kayaking), & will finish at the cobble beach at the terminus of Lime Kiln Trail, just below the last big rapid, Conversation. With continuous class V from start to finish, it will be a pretty grueling race. I'd look for winning times to be somewhere around 35 min's. As such, emphasis will be placed on combining downriver efficiency with safety .. hence teams of two & a strong volunteer safety crew.

This is a NON-event -- there are no sponsors, no entry fees, no cash purse (though I did spring for some sweet prizes for the winners!), no red tape, no gapers, no celebs, & no attitudes. The day will be 1 part See-Who-Can-Make-It-Down-The-Fastest, & 1 part community celebration of this awesome resource. Then we'll eat pizza & drink beer.

If you're in the neighborhood, please come out & be a part of our little one-day circus -- For spectating, you can access one of the most action-packed parts of the river super easily from The Old Robe Trail, off the Mountain Loop Hwy east of Granite Falls. We'll be meeting Saturday at the Granite Falls parking turnout / Robe take-out at 9 a.m. for competitors/safety meeting. After party will be at Omega Pizza in cosmopolitan downtown Granite Falls, WA. If flows don't cooperate, we'll shoot for Sunday .. but I have a good feeling about Saturday. If you are interested in racing, please email me your team info asap so I can add you to the list.

To get you stoked, here's a short Vimeo piece on THE ROBE, shot & edited by our good friend Chris Tretwold of Bellingham Whitewater

Robe Canyon from CHRIST on Vimeo.


IV. Pounds All Around

For several days last week, drivers on I-5 seemed a lot less erratic. Bartenders & servers at Capitol Hill hipster hangouts & restaurants replaced their usual sneering or sardonic smirking with legitimate friendly smiles. Passersby on the sidewalks of downtown looked up from their fixed downward gaze & said hello to one another. And the sun even made a cameo appearance for about half a day.


His Holiness The Dalai Lama visited our fair city. Here he is seen showing Adult Contemporary heartthrob / Seattleite, Dave Matthews, the proper way to bump knucks. You'll start seeing this hot new style in all the gossip rags at the grocery store checkout .. but you saw it here first .. unless you actually saw it in the Seattle Times first.