Monday, March 21, 2011

Two Creeks in a day!

With clocks "springing forward" giving us one more hour of daylight, I figured it the perfect time to get on two creeks in a day: Cooper Creek and Canyon Creek, Washington. Separated by a forty minute drive, these two creeks are quality.

Copper Creek is a small tributary to the East Fork of the Lewis, located in Washington state. The section typically paddled is very short, and features one Waterfall (2 ftr, 6 ftr, 15 ftr), followed by the Final Five Gorge, five drops in a row, with a stout hole at the bottom.

"Triple Falls" (Photo copyright Dave Hoffman)

Triple Falls, Photo Copyright Dave Hoffman

Canyon Creek is a cclass IV/V creek that was recently rejuvenated by the year's flood.

What do I mean by rejuvenated? Well, it used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

After finishing up a lap on Copper Creek at about 1pm, we decided to rally to Canyon Creek and take full advantage of our newly found hour of daylight. With high water levels, and us running on a fairly tight time schedule, we rallied down through the rapids, and took only a few photos at the falls, a perfect place to throw and go at about 1500 cfs. Wohoo!

John, Myself, Max Blackburn, Seth Swallen and Capo Rettig (Photo by Dave Hoffman)

The lower waterfalls: Champagne and Hammering Spot (Taken in 2007 by Lana Young)

To see more photos by Dave Hoffman: http://davehoffman.photoshelter.com/

April 16 and 17, 2011 is the Northwest Creeking Competition, featuring a downriver race down the nearby E.F. Lewis, as well as a downriver race on Canyon Creek. For more information, check out: http://www.northwestcreekcomp.org/

Thanks Next Adventure, Portland OR for making online registration possible this year: http://shop.nextadventure.net/nwcc.html

Enjoy the rio!

Kim Russell

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