Bellingham Whitewater

Robe Canyon

Sunday morning, 11 AM. Amy and I, sitting down to a late breakfast of leftover banana pancakes, were planning on doing a whole lot of not very much after the Trifecta the previous day.

Call from Chris: “Wanna go run Robe? It’s at a perfect first-time level. Devin’s in.”

Well, if Devin’s in… Despite my full calendar, and despite anxious visions of pushy, boiling, milky gray water coursing down sunless black-rock canyons, I found myself hesitantly saying yes. Amy and Jon were game as well.

“Sweet. I’ll be by in an hour.”

So much for a relaxing day. Three hours later, I found myself putting on to Robe, a run that I had never paddled before but had heard plenty of stories about, in a borrowed boat. My own boat had several more holes than it was supposed to have, likely a result of my last excursion into the South Fork Stilly drainage, so Chris lent me his Jefe for the trip. Nothing like running what was pretty much my first class V river in an unfamiliar boat…

After a short bit of flatwater, we rounded a bend and were suddenly there. Robe Canyon lay before us, the river dropping sharply, then rounding a bend far downstream. Doom and gloom abounded. We hopped out onto the trail at river right, the remnants of a long-abandoned railroad bed, to scout. The trail continued along the bank, entering a tunnel at the bend. These first rapids are rather creatively named Tunnel 1 & 2, or T1 and T2.

Looking downstream at T1 and T2

These initial rapids changed dramatically in the massive floods experienced by western Washington earlier this year, pushing huge boulders downstream to form a brand-new 20-foot sliding falls at the bend just downstream of T2. After a quick peek at the new falls, we quickly (very quickly) decided to portage through the tunnel and put in downstream of the as-yet-unrun drop. Hiking down the bank to get back to the river, Chris was asked by a young girl out hiking with her family if we were “going to die.” We spent much of the rest of the trip coming up with creative responses to this question.

Despite this vote of confidence, we continued on downstream, and found all sorts of top-notch whitewater. After a few drops, we fell into a groove, leaving behind our pre-trip nervousness. Robe Canyon actually turned out to be spectacularly beautiful, not the Mordor-like pit of doom that I had envisioned, except for Landslide, which was heinous. There was even sunlight, in a few spots. The river, at 4.9 on the gage, was a bit lower than ideal, but we found plenty of water in the main drops, and us first-timers appreciated the fact that the run was a little less pushy than normal.

Jon at Faceplant

Everyone had good lines, for the most part, though Devin at one point may have perhaps been thinking a bit too much about the difference between what time he said he was going to get home and what time he actually was going to be getting home. I’ll leave it to him to fill in those details. Amy also had a near run-in with a sticky hole at Catcher’s Mitt. I would love to have a picture of the look on her face as she battled to get clear…

As might be guessed, we were not a fast group on the river, so it was nearly dark by the time we reached the takeout rapid. This was an easy class IV drop, but it was dark and we were tired, and with a class VI penalty for screwing up not far downstream, we definitely didn’t want to mess it up. Despite our apprehension, things went well, and we quickly scrambled up the bank and back to the car, where cold beer awaited. All in all, an awesome day on the river.

I’ll leave you with a bit of video and few more pictures from the day…

All photos and video by Amy Brown:

Boofing at Hole in the Wall

Devin about to get up close and personal with a rock

Jon and Chris somewhere mid-canyon

Me looking calm and collected as always