The Life and Times of Kim Russell: Rain, Creeks and Toasters

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Quartzville Creek, Oregon (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Throughout the week, after biking through rain in the morning, rain in the afternoon, and rain in the evening, Todd and I were going crazy watching the river gauges. Every day we would check the internet about 20 times to see what was happening with water levels. Needless to say, things weren't looking very good for a weekend creeking expedition. UNTIL... dun dun dun, we woke early Friday morning to the gauges GOING OFF! EVERYTHING WAS IN! Creeks that were at 500 cfs jumped to 10,000 cfs overnight. Wohoo! We had water! We were dying to go creeking, and we were going creeking TONIGHT... ASAP!

At around 4:30 pm, Todd and I loaded up the car with my Habitat 74 and his 80, picked up our friends, Conor Ross and Glen Dalgeish, and headed out for some wicked gnarly Park and Huck on a local creek known as Sweet Creek.

Todd running the ledges (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Sweet Creek is a class V creek about an hour away that consists of 3 falls and a funky series of chunky ledges, of which you can run laps on... and when I say chunky, it is the definition of chunky......stay upright if you don't want to get your face beat in....

Lead in to Falls 1 (Photo by: Kim Russell)

We left town around 4:45, arriving at the put-in around 5:30pm with 3 boats and 4 people. The idea behind this was to save roof space and trade boats each lap. Anywhoo... First lap was Todd and Conor. Everything went smoothly. 3 waterfalls and a little canyon... sweet. Second lap was Todd, Glen and I, of which Todd and Glen cleaned everything while I proceeded to get worked twice. haha. No swims though. wohoo! Lap 3 was Todd and Conor once more and they kicked ass!

Todd boofing Falls 1 (Photo by: Kim Russell)

After about an hour and a half of some good park and huck, we loaded up and began the drive home through a crazy downpour. Did I mention we almost hit a black bear on the drive home. yea...it was close. It was running alongside the road and all the sudden decided to dart across the road in front of us.... and we thought squirrels were dumb! We made it back in one piece, and so did the car. Friday's are cool.

SATURDAY:

Quartzville Creek, Oregon (Photo by: Kim Russell)

After such an epic Friday evening creek sesh on Sweet Creek, we had to get out for more. Saturday, we woke up to the gauges even HIGHER than they were on Friday! After a few phone calls (try 8), we managed to rally up a crew to hit up Upper Quartzville Creek, a class IV+ creek about an hour and a half from Eugene, Oregon.

Sweet Curves (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Today the crew consisted of Karl Moser, Todd Baker, Kyle Dickman, Conor Ross and I.

L to R: Karl Moser, Conor Ross and Kyle Dickman (Photo by: Todd Baker)

According to guidebooks, Quartzville Creek is a Class IV+ Creek at levels around 2500 cfs. Today the level was primo, reading about 2700 cfs on the gauge. We were fired up for the first true creeking mission of the year, particularly the 30 miles of super curvy road you get to drive to get there. mwuahaha! Sorry Karl...

Anywhoo... we rolled up to what we thought was the take-out, dropped a bike and proceeded to head up to the put-in. After a few miles, we came across about 20 other kayakers who kindly informed us that we were now at the take-out. Oops. I guess we'll get the bike later!

Once we put on, the trip mostly went like this: Wood. sweet. Portage. grrr. Weird drop. Todd probes. cool. Trashing. oops. rain. fun. Crap Karl that looks gnarly. hmmm. More rain. yay. Shuttle. wohoo!

In other words, the trip was rad. We made one lap, hitched a ride back to the top with a crew from Corvallis, and the boys managed to swing a second lap while I ran shuttle and took cool pictures... Needless to say, my photo-taking skills for the day were a little shoddy, so bear with me on the slight blur...

Karl Moser in his Habitat 80 (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Todd Baker (white helmet) and Karl Moser (blue helmet) below one of the bigger holes on the run (Photo by: Kim Russell)

The crew above a broken-down bridge (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Karl Moser (blue helmet) and Todd Baker (white helmet) dropping together (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Karl Moser hiking out (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Sunday:

By the time Sunday rolled around, Todd and I decided we needed one last paddle sesh before the school week started back up, so... we went to Neil's, a play wave on the Mckenzie River, Oregon. Let me say, initially, Todd and I had agreed to do schoolwork all day Sunday, but ended up getting a very persuading phone call from Karl Moser telling us to go kayaking. He was good. Too good. So, we gave in. We had our schoolwork mostly done anyway. Two minutes after the phone call, Karl came and picked us up in the trusted Epicocity Project Subaru, and after a quick smoke break for the Suby (it smokes when you turn it off--we don't know why), we were off to the McKenzie River