The Carbon river is one of the most classic canyons in washington. Not many paddlers have been down it and it has had a reputation of being walled in and demanding. Our mission here was to rappel in right below the pinched gorge missing three of the hardest drops and paddling the rest of the canyon which was one of the most amazing places I've seen and the coolest gorge I've paddled. I am planning on making another trip in soon at lower flows looking to run the upper gorge and taking more pics of the scenery because these ones just don't do it justice.....
Video on this will be up soon !! just to get a tease of what the experience is like.
Scotty rapping in !
Thanks to Dave for all the rope and rappel equip
Once your in your committed.... So amazing !
Scott climbing out above a boxed in 14 footer
Deer Creek... I never even heard of deer creek until this winter. All the boys around seattle have been charging hard looking for new runs and going back to rivers that were explored but forgotten about over the years. Deer Creek is that one forgotten run that you now know why most folks don't know about it or just forgot about it. On purpose. Deer Creek flows into the North Fork Stilly a sister drainage to Robe canyon on the South Fork Stilly. This run was an amazing exploration for our crew dealing with a personal first descent so close to home. For one it was no creek and ended up being a full day of hiking portaging and boat scouting some great scary class IV-V whitewater. With four BIG
drops that I didn't run the rest was well worth the work and worth going back for. Just goes to show how much Washington has to offer if you just look at your topo map and don't mind putting in a little work..
Rob swimming after his boat after it slid down the hill at the put in. He got it just before the first rapid.
The walls coming in on us and the river lilting down.
This is where we decide that were not on a creek
Deer is full of fun juicy stuff like this in between the big ones
Our fearless probe going in for the team
Yup.. going more right
Scott threading the sneak route to avoid the hole
Rob running unamed Biggy #3
Classic drop on Deer, it doesn't seem to let up the whole trip
Rob making his way through the last major rapid
The best part of Deer Creek.. Beer at the take out !!
After I got back from the Canyon the rivers around seattle spiked high with all the rain on snow and we paddled the green pretty hard for a week getting a top flow of 7,000 cfs. High !!! Some big water fun in what is normally a low water fun class III-IV canyon becomes a non stop big water wave train for seven miles. Some women at the take out bridge took these photos so I thought I would share.
This is me under a 200 ft bridge taken with a really nice zoom
I really wish I had more pics of the green at this level. The river was to high and fast for us to get out and take photos. Plus the ranger was looking for us so we were trying to be stealth and fast. Apparently it's a crime to paddle this river at flood stage. We were confronted at the take out by the ranger giving us the riot act on the river closer and how stupid we were. We didn't get sited and talked our way out of trouble but our stupidity is still undecided.......
Logan Bosket- My buddy Logan over the past two years has become an amazing paddler. Being naturally talented and athletic it's easy to ramp up the learning curve for some folks. Logan's first creek was the top Tye. Bret and I talked him into running his first waterfall here shown at "Boxdrop" just to see how it felt planning on hiking out after. He was nervous but stomped it and to follow it up ran the rest of the run with no problems and caught the bug of creeking..
Your my hero Logan. I would have never let anyone talk me into that so early in my paddling career.....
