The night before New Years eve, Ryan, Jason and I were trying to figure out what to run. Ryan wanted to run the Little Klickatat, running about 7,000 cfs and I wasn't sure what I wanted to run yet. All this water and so many options. So Ryan came up with the idea of Canyon Creek, WA (Klickatat Drainage), I thought it sounded like a ton of fun, so we made tentative plans depending on water level. Morning came and the water looked good, actually a little high. The recommended flow was 5,000-6,000 on the Klickatat gauge and it was at 7,200 going down. I figured it'd be good. We all talked about it and decided to go. Just before I was leaving Jim Pytel called, I told him what we were up to and he wanted in.
"All right, hurry up, Ryan and Jason have already left."
Jim met me at the park and ride and we were off, on the way checking out all the waterfalls east of Hood River that I had never seen. We finally met up with Ryan and Jason in Lyle and drove up the Klickatat. It was definitely the highest I'd ever seen it, but that’s what we needed. As we were getting near the take out, we were driving up a small stream that looked kind of exciting and really high, I checked out the map and I said, "That's it!" I wasn't expecting something so small, I was thinking to myself, is this creek for real? It's so small and totally out of its banks, with tons of wood. We all got to the take out and decided to go ahead with the plan.
As we got to the put in, the creek didn't look any better. It was flowing through a ton of brush with at least one river wide log across the river about a hundred yards down stream. We looked at the book again and it said we should have around 80-100 cfs at the put in, and when I looked, it looked more like 150, we still decided to go ahead. We discussed it and came up with a plan to leap frog down the river catching every eddy we could, I could tell it would be really easy to get pushed where you didn't want to go.
We hiked down past the log that was across the creek and put in. We eddy hopped for quite a while, each one of us getting out one at a time scouting and telling the others where to go. It was going really well, a few portages here and there and a couple good drops. The canyon opened up a little bit and there was a horizon line going around the next corner. I was the last one getting out of my boat and grabbing my camera. To my amazement there were two huge rapids followed by a huge horizon line. I looked at the first two drops and didn't like the way they looked. I just continued down stream, I met up with Jim who was coming back and he looked at me and said "It's runnable, but not by me!" It got me really curious, I got closer to the lip and met up with Ryan, "It's bigger then I expected,” now I was really curious. Finally I got up to the lip and looked down, the drop that the book described as a 25-30 footer was probably closer to 35-40 feet. As I was walking back to my boat, Jim, Jason and Ryan were already carrying there to portage. Ryan looks at me, "What do ya think?" "I don't know yet, I think I'm going to go for it." As they portaged I studied the three drops, (turns out I had about 45 minutes to scout the drops) the portage looked terrible. Finally they were down and ready to go, all right here we go! I hit the first two drops perfectly and was right on line for the falls, I ended up a little farther right then I wanted to but it was a turned out just about perfect. As I was in the pool at the bottom, I thought to myself, "25-30 feet my ass, that definitely felt bigger than Spirit!"
We continued down stream through some of the thickest brush yet, Ryan kept saying that it was supposed to open up past the falls. After about three quarters of a mile it finally did. The drops got significantly bigger and burlier and the creek got much pushier. It was all good, it was bigger, but at least it was cleaner. Finally we got to a bend and Jason went down and scouted, while Ryan and I talked in the eddy. Jason comes back, "Boof this drop right here, then stay hard right against the wall and right after that they'll be an 8-10 foot ledge. Run it center, it flushes there, then eddy out somewhere down stream." Ryan looks at Jason, "How sticky is the ledge?" "Just run it center and you should be fine." Ryan looks and me and says, I'm going. I watched him pull out of the eddy and run the first two drops and disappear around the corner. I decided to go, I nailed my boof, went right and looked at Ryan sitting in an eddy above the 8-10 footer.
"Can you see any thing?"
"Nope."
Well, Jason said center, I shrugged at Ryan and went straight for it, as I went over I saw it was off vertical, so I wasn't concerned with a hole, but there was brush at the bottom. As I finished the slide, I got pushed into the brush, with the current pounding on me. I kept trying to pull myself out of it but my paddle kept getting stuck. After a lot of cursing and bushwhacking I finally got out of it. As I pushed free, I looked up stream and I saw Ryan upside down coming down the slide, then I saw him bail. I tried doing every thing I could to help, but he pretty much did it all himself. He was on shore and I asked him if he was ok.
"Yep"
"All right then, I'm going after your boat." Knowing that Jason and Jim were still up stream.
I paddled down some manky class four, boofing everything in site and watching so I didn't get myself in a bad situation. Finally I came to a corner covered by brush. I thought "Shoot, the boats gone." I popped my skirt and tried my best to run up the slimy, snotty, loose hillside. I was scrambling as fast as I could to scout the corner, but it was slow going, finally I got to the top of a ridge and walked to the other side of the corner, I looked down to see three river wide holes the really needed a boofing, and Ryan's boat right behind the last one hung up on some branches. I looked up stream and saw Jim and Jason by my boat. I was trying to signal to them what to do so they could hurry and get the boat, I guess there was to many directions and Jim started waving me back, I look back down and the boat's just sitting there rocking back and forth.
"Shoot!"
I looked up at Ryan and was trying to signal to him that his boat was right below me on his side of the river, I found out that he understood what I said, but he could never see it and ended up hiking out. So I hurried and scrambled back to Jason and Jim. "Just around the corner are three ledges, boof them the best you can and eddy out right at the third one, Ryans boat is right there. Jim got in his boat and peeled out, everything looked good from the first two ledges, so I decided to go. I made it to the third ledge and eddied out, the boat wasn't there. "Damn" and we were so close. As I got out of my boat, I noticed it was just down stream a little farther. Not that it had moved, it was just covered by so much brush at river level. We emptied it out and pulled it to shore and left it there. Jim took off down stream, while Jason and I made sure that Ryan was hiking out. I finally got in my boat and pushed off. The brush was worse then ever, it was so bad it was just stupid to be on there. I was doing the Oregon Tuck through tree branches and weeds, but I couldn't eddy out, I couldn't even get close to the shore. Finally Jason and I caught up with Jim, he was out of his boat scouting. The look on his face wasn't good. We all decided to hike off.
Jim had already started hiking downstream before I could get out of my boat, Jason and I got out and started walking straight up the canyon. It was huge, I've hiked out of the Little White and this put it to shame. We kept going up, then taking a break, up and break, up and break. Jim was out of site at this point, I figured he was just farther down and I couldn't see him. Finally we reached the top, noticing that we were in the middle of no where I realized we still had a hike out. We waited at the top for Jim, but he never came. It was finally dark and I told Jason that if I sit any longer I'm going to get Hypothermia. He looked at me and said "me too, let's get walking." I felt bad for leaving Jim, but I also had to be aware of our situation. We started hiking the ridge line, crossing several small streams and many soaked fields, so your feet just sank in the mud. By now Jason had his head lamp on and we were making our way the best we could.
I was exhausted, I could barely keep going, I was sweaty while hiking and freezing when we stopped. We kept going up and down ravines and more mud soaked fields. After about four or five miles, I almost couldn't move any more. I was tripping over everything because I couldn't lift my feet. Jason just kept on going, I couldn't believe it. I was ready to curl up in a snow bank and fall asleep, I couldn't handle it anymore.
"Jason, lets ditch our boats."
"I can make it a little farther, I don't want to have to come in tomorrow."
During the whole walk I couldn’t stop thinking of Ryan and Jim, where they were and were they OK.
Finally Jason got fed up with carrying his boat also. We were next a fence line so we decided to lean our boats up on the fence so we could find them the next day. Jason also left a note with our numbers on it. We started hiking on, in about two hundred feet we ran into a very small road, it was the best thing I'd seen all day. So we followed it for about a half mile and we finally saw a light! It was about another half mile and we finally reached the house, it was so dark we couldn't find the way to the front door, do we started yelling "Hello!". Someone came out and definitely looked confused, as to what we were doing way out here.
We got up to them and started talking to them, they were great, right off the bat they offered us a Rum and Coke, but all I wanted was water. They let us use their phone to make a couple calls and then drove us to the takeout. Jason's truck was gone, someone else made it out, we just weren’t sure who. We waited at the take out for 20 minutes then Ryan came around the corner driving Jasons truck, soon followed by Jim in his truck. All we wanted to do was eat and sleep at that point, so we all went home and did just that.
Overall this was one of my hardest days on the river, but I also know it's going to be one of the most memorable.
Stay safe
~Nate~