Icecicle Creek

In early June my wife and I headed up to the Wenatchee River. She talked about epic play and huge waves on the river that she paddled four weeks earlier. The Wenatchee was running at 3,500 cfs, about 8,000 less then the last time she was there. We expected the run not to be action packed, but it was still fun. Knowing that the Wenatchee wasn’t running high I was hoping to find a creek to run. I loaded up my creek boat just in case.

After two days of running the Wenatchee and playing at about every spot possible at this low level, I was getting anxious to run something bigger, faster and steeper. On Sunday morning we were driving through Leavenworth past a Starbucks and spotted a van with creek boats on top! I immediately pulled over to see if we could find out whose van it was, so we went in, got our coffee and came back outside to stand by our vehicle, acting like we were just relaxing. Finally someone walked up to the van, put some stuff inside and as we were walking over to him he saw us and came towards us. We talked a little bit about what we were doing and where we were from and I asked him if he had ever run Icecicle Creek. “Sure, every day,” he said to my surprise. He said he got off work at 4:30 and we could hook up at the putin. So, me being nervous for the rest of the day I took my Y down the Wenatchee and was catching eddies and blasting through every hole I could find. After the Wenatchee we headed up to take a look at what I was about to run.

After waiting for about an hour John shows up and asks if I’m ready, “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess”. So we start unloading our boats and put our gear on, John pulls down his H3 and starts to put duct tape on the bottom of his boat to seal the small crack. Heather (my wife) says she will take the camcorder along the road and walk down to the river whenever she could to video us. She leaves us to get set up to video and John and I put on. It was a class II with maybe a couple III’s to warm up, until we get to an eddy and pull out. “Lets scout this one, it’s called ricochet and is the hardest rapid on the creek.” We hop out of our boats and he shows me the line, which seems like it goes forever. “Go just right of this boulder, then cut sharp left over these rocks then charge hard right boofing the hole right below it and hit that eddy.” I start thinking to myself “what if” and you always have second thoughts going through your head. Finally I looked at it and was determined to hit my line, and sure enough I did. From that eddy he says, “ok, now were about a quarter of the way through the hardest rapid.” With my blood pumping and a good line behind me I’m like, “ok, lets go.”

I’m following John through all of the rapids, eddy hopping and listening to directions on where to go. Finally we come up to a horizon line (one of about a thousand on this run) and John says, “go down the slot on river right and then go down the left center slot, the current will try to push you right or center but don’t go there, and don’t go to far left.” I look at him puzzled, like are you kidding? I just ask, “what if I don’t, what if I go too far right” (where all of the current was pushing you) and he replies, “don’t go there.” “Well what if I do?” “Well just don’t go there.” Finally, after realizing that I’m not going to get any more information I gave up and said, “ok, lets go.” Scared out of my mind to screw up my line, I made sure I was where I needed to be. As I’m going down my slot I’m looking all around me and see sieves, piton spots, and holes. So we head down river, me following him and scouting very few rapids, and the whole time seeing Heather scrambling down the river banks in order to get the shots. We pass up drop after drop after drop, and I’m getting worn down, too much non-stop action. Then we come to another horizon line. John tells me where to run it and he’s says be careful there is a weird little wave hole that screws up a lot of boaters. Not paying attention to the wave hole, sure enough it flips me. All I can feel are rocks hitting my head. I try to roll but my boat hits a small hole and I didn’t get up so I tuck back under and feel a lot of rocks. At this point, I get to a somewhat calm spot and roll up. Sure enough, my calm spot is in a hole. So I do a little rodeo creeking and get out with no problems.

After that I was exhausted. Luckily we were near the end of the run. We ran a few more horizon lines and took out to scout the last falls, also at the takeout. I looked at it and said no thanks, “I’m to tired to run that.” John smiles, says, “okay,” hops in his boat, and just styles the drop. Walking back up he says, “it’s not so bad.” Me being so exhausted I just couldn’t get myself to hop back in my boat and do it.

Over all it was an awesome run and my second creek I ever ran, so I was stoked. I will go back there this spring and run it again. I have never seen such an action packed run. The longest flatwater stretch was about 200 feet long and it was above the last big waterfall. I was lucky to find such a great guide for that creek, and if anyone plans on running it without an experienced person that has been there before, all I can say is plan on taking a while and scout everything, but have an awesome time!