Bellingham Whitewater

Vancouver Island paddleboating photo dump.

Posted by Chris on July 18, 2008 at 3:50 pm | In Trip Reports, Rivers |

I have been sitting on these photos since our May trip out to Vancouver Island. Its been such a phenomenal year here in the heart of Cascadia, that I’ve been to distracted by kayaking too sit in front of the computer and write about it. So, I will keep the talk to a minimum and let the photos fly.

Our aim was to go to the Gold River area and explore a few rivers that had, or hadn’t been paddled before. Either way, when we awoke in the morning and started our search for a put-in, we knew that the days would be nothing short of epic.

The camping was easy and pleasing.

Bryan S. starting the day off right. Pamela creek.

After a bit of mank came this fun slide just above a double-falls. Shane R. Pamela creek.

Shertzl stomping out the first of the double-falls. Pamela creek.

Togg G. I think this is the rapid we named “Tommy Lee.”

After “Tommy Lee,” the difficulty eases up to boogie water all the way to the confluence with the Ucona. Just downstream of the confluence we entered a nice canyon with a few fun class 4 rapids untill we arrived at a horizon line.

Let me just say that I love the feel of paddling across a pool, the river all slack and lazy due to some impediment in the river bed, and looking ahead to see nothing but the tops of trees, sky, and maybe some rock. Throw in a log chocked 30 ft in the air and I know why I love the N.W.

So I took a picture.

Bryan from below.

Just below this falls was another fun, stress free falls with a sweet spot that was tricky to line-up for.

Jakub D. boofing the lower of the 2 falls on the Ucona.

Todd. The sweet spot.

Shertzl. U.T.R.

Our stratagem at this point was to paddle the next 4 or 5 km through a lower canyon which we were unsure wether it had ever been run. Most of the group decided that 5 o’clock in the evening was too late to start a exploratory run down a steep, remote, canyon in the heart of bear country. They could not be cajoled, and so a decision was made to leave our boats for the night, paddle the canyon the next day. To be more efficient half of us would hike to fetch the truck at the put-in and the other half were to spend some time hiking downstream for a scout to see what the canyon looked like. Heres how the scouting went:

No scary, class 5 canyons here.

View from camp that night.

Ryan B. finds a clean boof in a dirty rapid.

The next morning as we made our way downstream the nice granite we had been sliding and boofing on the previous day disappeared and some gnarly, sketchy, rock took its place.

We had to get creative to find routes through this.

Big and clean. Bryan stomping it.

From upstream it didnt look like we would make it past this rapid with out going way up and around. Fortunately it turned out to be good. Shane R.

After the rapid with the chock rock the river found its gradient and took off through a total P.O.S. jumble. We portaged -for about 2 or more hours- right down to the take-out basically. All in all the canyon was pretty but the rapids weren’t that clean and portages were to long for me to return.

After the long day on the Lower Ucona we came up plan to paddle the Gold River Trifecta: The Gold river, the Upana, and the Heber. All in one day. This was a pretty audacious goal considering the Gold had only been run once before, and the beta came in the typical B.C. form: “Nice canyon mostly class 4 with a couple 5’s.”

Entrance rapid into the canyon. The must-make eddy is at the top on river left.
The first half hour was fun, boogie class 3-4 until we round a corner and are faced with box canyon and high-speed, wavy, hole filled rapid leading in to it. It was the absolute typical ” Round the corner and barely catch the last eddie,” kinda scene, complete with a micro-pulsing eddy. After a long scout we decided to portage the rapid in the canyon and put-in below it. However the “put-back-in options” sucked.

Option 1: Sketchy seal launch to pinch rapid.

Option 2: 30ft + Chuck-n-Huck.

Decent rapids in the middle of the short canyon. Bryan.

Then a big one at the end of the canyon that was difficult to scout and portage. Those who portaged had to do another 20+ Chuck-n-Huck. Those that ran it made it through but not in style.

We spent most of our day dorking around on the Gold river and knew we weren’t going to complete the trifecta. We were OK with that but we wanted to paddle the Upana since Jakub knew it and it was only 2 km long with a sweet 8 meter falls in the middle. We quickly ran shuttle and made the 10 minute drive from the Gold take-out to the Upana put-in.

The Upana started out manky, then slammed into a canyon and got interesting. We didn’t take alot of pictures here, just the best rapid at the end and the falls.

Todd droppin’ the falls.

And Mr. Bradley.

Todd flyin’ on the super sick sideways boof!

And Bryan.

We go where eagles dare.

Van. Island is absolutely an amazing destination for remote, beautiful whitewater. I’ll be back every year.