Bellingham Whitewater

Thunder Creek.

It seemed appropriate. I mean, somebody had to have named it Thunder Creek for a reason.

It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for during our 6+ mile hike into Thunder Creek, but, last time I found myself hiking in this area of the North Cascades on Lightning Creek, what happened…lighting!

Why should this mission stray from what seems to be the norm?

At some point before mile 2, between the bouts of rain, distant rumblings, and the wrenching 70 lbs of kayak hanging from my shoulders, I look over at the class 2 whitewater and wonder if I shouldn’t have asked our T.L. (the “Professor” himself) James a few more questions. I thought there was only a mile of flat water. A few minutes (maybe more) later and we stop for a quick break.

James is pumped. Kinda like a kid who’s finally getting his allowance after mowing the lawn and pulling weeds, he’s ready to hit the candy store! He mentions that this is the lower canyon and he hadn’t scouted this particular zone, he asks if we want to scout it now. The rest of the group: Erik, Jon, and I, all shrug our shoulders, we just wanna keep moving, and after seeing most of the pictures James had taken the weekend before it seemed like we were only going to see some class 4, maybe easy 5, and a couple likely portages around some big sliding falls. On we hike.

The trail isn’t too bad, well kept and moderately steep right up to the put-in. It could be worse. But for now there is some serious rumbling coming not from the sky but from the gorge we have been following for the last few hours. A quick scout reveals a pinch and gradient drop in the gorge just upstream of Mcallister creek confluence, with a few less buckets of water in the creek it seems the whole series of falls could be run, but the undercuts, death pockets and terminal holes caused by the high water send us downstream.

We head to the put-in we scouted just below the falls where the river is more open. I look downstream and see another tight gorge just below us, “Guess this is how its going be today” I tell myself. After ferrying across the river and spending 10 minutes bushwacking through young pines and downed old growth I find that the gorge ends with a big ol’ log jam…start portaging! And we haven’t even begun KAYAKING! Heck, Erik’s not even in the water yet.

We hike back up the trail and head downriver about 10 minutes to another spot that seemed reasonably close to the creek. This time we find ourselves on some swift moving class 2-3 that quickly builds into fun class 4 wavy read and run water. Just below this near a bit of a slide path where the trail is just above the river, James mentions that we have a few drops before we get to the “big stuff.” A few more class 3 and 4 rapids, including one pinch that sends us all skyrocketing into tailstands, and the canyon opens up and and a horizon line appears, “big stuff?”

Sure enough the scout on river left gives us a great view of one riverwide ledge with a big backed-up hole that circulates to the right and falls over another powerfull ledge before tearing downstream through more crashing waves and holes then falls over a 15+ ft tall slide with a log and its rootwad right where a boater would want to find himself paddling…sure enough a portage.

This is where the cursing got real bad. I’ve managed to block most of this experience out of my memory. All I know is over 1 hour later we had portaged yet another drop just downstream and there was James, with a look on his face of “where were you?” as he had managed to make it through much quicker than us and had proceeded to check out the last drop. “Whoa, the river got diverted and made that new channel, I got pictures of the old gorge the creek used to pass through, it looks ancient.” I made a mental note for next time to hike less and put-in below these drops if there was anything at all worthwhile downstream.

Right below the portage the gorge walls begin to rear-up and after 2 fun class 3-4 flume type drops we encouter another horizon line. This time the river drops over a high-angle 20 footer with a chaotic 5 ft lead in slide. The falls looks pretty runnable, one could count on not getting a great boof off of the aerated water and since its sloping you are most likely going to plug it, albeit with speed, it was just the cave behind the falls that led me back to my boat, scurrying to catch up with the others to see what was below the next riverwide ledge we could see just downstream. I’ll be back for the falls later!

Almost before I could get out to scout/film James was back in his boat and pacing around the eddy in anticipation for what turned out to be a sweet cross-current boof off of the “L” shaped 7ft ledge. Erik followed with a perfect line and gave a small fist-pump, finally some pay-off! Jon and I hop back in our boats to get some for ourselves. Afterwards, Erik and I decided that ledge makes-up for the 1st portage. Things are looking up.

The river continues to drop through some more class 4 rapids until another horizon line appears. This time its the wood across the drop that send us packing. No problem, a quick portage on river right. Before we start putting-in we decide to take a look downstream around the corner to see… “Holy Crap” someone yells, or maybe it was me.

Two sweet back-to-back 10 ft riverwide ledges lay before us. The first of the two is a big sloping tongue into a large boil/reactionary caused by the bedrock wall downstream of it, no problem it all flushes. At the second ledge the river gets pinched between 2 rocks so tight that the tongue is forced up in the middle creating the ultimate water-boof! James is chomping at the bit to run this sweet little series, and wants us to stand by and watch. Hell no! besides it wouldn’t be responsible to let him run it alone without safety on the last ledge. I jump in my boat and before I can even catch the eddy across the river James ferries out into the current to lead the way. I see him working for the boof to the left side of the tongue on the first ledge. As he throws his right side boof stroke and falls out of view my level of anticipation rises.

There is something about following another boater over some type of vertical drop, as the boater plants their boof stroke and throws in the correct body english and then poof, their gone, what happened to them? Are they stuck in the hole? Am I going to land on them? Or, did they clean it? Either way its a point of view that I can’t help but enjoy.

I get my stroke in and get spit out of the bottom of the first ledge with a small tailstand, a quick look and I see James paddling hard for the next ledge and disappearing over that one too. I get lined up and I can feel a smile forming on my face already, as the water speeds up to the lip of the drop I lean forward and plant my stroke way ahead of time, wait, wait, wait, NOW. I come through the bottom of the drop laughing as I look over to see James with a huge smile on his face as well. I can’t seem to recall the portages we had eariler, like they had happend on another day, another river maybe? A quick pat on the head “All good,” and Erik and Jon blue angel thier way down to us, everybody has good lines, now were having some real fun.

Below this is yet another constriction in the bedrock only this time there’s a boulder splitting the channel as well. An easy scout reveals a large sloping tongue into a huge hole on the right and a tricky lead-in to a couple sticky ledges on river left. At first we are planning to punch the hole, then after gaining a new perspective we decide the hole is way, way too big and you want to run the left side, then slide past the hole. We get in our boats and head out one after the other. All of us catch an eddy on the left then make the tricky move to get around the boulder and punch the holes. Jon is the last one to go and makes the move around the boulder and runs through the two holes but he comes out of the bottom hole getting pushed right, right into the huge hole in the other channel! As Jon is getting pushed right towards the hole he looks into it, his eyes get huge and he starts paddling HARD. We are all yelling “Paddle, paddle!” For a moment we think Jon is screwed but he keeps that blade wizzing around and makes it over the backwash and out to safety, as he passes by, Jon has that look on his face of someone who has just seen their OWN ghost. “Whoa dude, that was a close one,” he humbly exclaims.

The gorge walls peel away for a very short distance, then we enter the lower gorge. James recognizes the first drop right away, apparantly its an easy sneak from left to right around a large house size boulder then eddy out above a sticky looking riverwide ledge. As I get around the house rock I find myself blasting through hole after hole barely able to focus my energy on getting right to catch the last eddy. I tear into the eddy at full throttle just barely making it. I look up to see Jon and Erik paddling through the holes furiously, they catch the eddy with a look of surprise on thier faces.

Here we find another riverwide ledge, only this one is “V” shaped and the left side is uh-guh-lee and the right has a possible sweet boof that lands you on a seam before rushing you downstream. Jon sets safety and I probe this one. Turns out the right boof is pretty manageable and James and Erik step-up and have one good line, and one so-so line that turns out fine. Jon, our safety, decided to keep it safe and puts in just below the ledge.

While boogeying downriver, Erik and I are in agreement that this run is pretty darn good, and if you just put-in below the big slides it would be worth coming back. Our conversation is interrupted by the resurrection of sheer gorge walls, a horizon line in the distance and the noticeable lack of eddies between us and said horizon line. We stop on river right to come up with a game plan.

We decide to scout the next rapids from the gorge walls and find the next available egress. Alas we find the rapids to be fairly large and continuous and the egress to be even more difficult than the area we are already stopped at…hmmm… its 6:30, as far as we know there’s another 1/2-1 mile of river and it is all contained in this box canyon…looks like we are walking out and up 400 ft to the trail.

The hike out can be called many different things, this time I will call it “character building.”

Off we go down the path, boats trailing behind, when 5 minutes later James exclaims, “This is where I hiked in, its all class 3 or so below here, but its still a canyon.” After checking out the option of hiking back down 400 ft, it only took us a moment to decide that we weren’t going back down right then, instead, we headed down the trail another 10 minutes to the easy access at Neve camp, where we put on the river for some easy class 2 to the take-out.

If you find yourself looking for some adventure this July/August, check out Thunder creek. It reminds me of a more stout, high water Cooper creek with a fairly similar type of east side scenery. I would say look for flows on the guage of 400-800 with 600 likely being optimal. It would be a great weekend trip to mix with a run down the Cascade. Have fun.

from CHRIST

-Chris-