Birkenmyhead

So Sat morning Jon and I wake up after a few hours of sleep. Dave who had been up at whistler for a few weeks already was chompin at the bit to get us seattle boys broken in and he did not have time for the standard warmups. After a quick bite to eat, Dave announced that instead of the Callaghan or Cheak, we would need to accompany him with his new GA friends to the Birkenhead a river about 1 hour north of whistler.

With very very limited beta we grabbed our stuff and headed off with the GA crew to see what this Birkenhead river was all about.

The initial word was that it was fun class III-IV for the first 3 km then it picked up to IV with a possible class V at the end. It was supposed to be a step down from the Callaghan and a fun day so we were all excited.

We cruised up to the putin which was a nice bridge and entry area, only to see a river that started much like the Entiat. Brushy Banks with a swift current and wood in the eddies.

The first km was more class IV in my opinion then class III and quickly at around 1.5 km we started to chomp into solid class IV read and run boulder garden.

There were a ton of fun little boofs everywhere and we enjoyed them all
better late than never

What we found next was that the river quickly moved from the reported Class III-IV which we already felt was more class IV into a reported Class IV section which we thought was starting to look more like low end class V or at least IV+. Horizon lines started up and the river was rippin.

Just below this longer rapid was a set of holes that D1 climbed out to set safety over. Thanks Dave but we all opted to go around them in the end to save time. Turns out they were not sticky like we thought as another group reported they went just fine.

After a few nice sized rapids we came to a pretty munchy looking pinch with a hole at the bottom. The GA boys fired it up first and then I ran it. The lines were pretty similar as this one had a hidden little spinner at the top.