Professor Paddle: The Elwha

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   So Fish had been pestering me all week, "you should read the beta online.  The hike isn't that steep, you can do it."  I knew I was going to have to just man up and put the hurting on an 8.5 mile hike with all my self support gear on my back.  Such are the things we do to explore whitewater that is new to us.

We made it on Friday night to the trail head and camped.  Ian, Jp, Scott and I started hiking the next morning and took our time getting up to one of the nicest camp spots I have had in a while.  After some noodle soup we were huddled around the fire, exhausted.

Sunday morning we launched at 9 am thinking about the possibility of new wood or changes in a very committing canyon with no way to escape.  It is a very real prospect and with the way wood comes down on the Olympic Peninsula, you never know around each bend.  Scott had run this in the Summer of 2006 so let the way down to Eskimo Pie.  

Eskimo Pie was very stout looking, and had some serious pucker factor to it.  With a large entry hole, a boily and grabby looking left wall directly after it, we all scouted for a while.  JP decided to fire it up first aiming for the green tongue.  From my vantage point it looked as if he got hit by a lateral wave coming from the left just at the lip stroking into the hole, subed out, and popped back up paddling hard.  With an amazing looking forward/draw stroke and some hard placed forward "oh sh*t" paddling he got away from the meat.  I fired it up then Ian and we progressed downstream.

As we picked our way down the canyon really provided some of the most unique and stunning scenery imaginable.  The rock formations to the moss to the wood up high.  Seriously, you are in there.   As we hit the eddy above Nightmare we all looked at each other and Scott indicated "You all know the drill we are going to eddy hop down the left side and then run this rapid on the left."  We all remembered from reading about this blind move, it was go time.  For me this was the psychological crux of the run.  Everyone had good lines down thankfully since we were the first group of the season to drop in. 

Below nightmare a short distance we encountered a drop, small but in a canyon where you can not get back upstream at all.  THIS DROP IS DANGEROUS AS HELL.  It looks hard to see at the lip with a tree blocking the right half of the river.   There are small canyon eddies on either side that are feeding downstream but not enough room for more than one boat per little wall eddy.  You can hang out there while your professional stunt man or climber figure out how to get out of their boat on the most sketchy and sh*tty little perch/surging eddy you have ever seen.(You can see a picture of this rapid titled "David swam under this slab", at riverlog.blogspot.com).   There is now wood creating a sieve on top and above the undercut.

JP was in the second to last eddy and watched Scott perform the impossible.  He got out, of his boat in a very small and bizarre eddy with minimal holds.  Put his paddle in his boat and got up on the rock somehow.  We were able to make it through this section only because he did this I believe.  If it was a lot higher you might be able to survive by charging left over a root ball pinch that is not boatable at the level we did it at( maybe 800ish I was told).   As I said on the right a tree comes out that creates a wood sieve.  Directly after the wood there is a slab rock below that is undercut as well.  It worked out that we lined our boats into the sieve spot and pulled em up and over on the right side.  We took some time to carefully portage this and I am not sure I will go back until I hear about a better way to make this move.  We should have in retrospect left a throw bag tied to an anchor with a beaner leading down to the sketchy eddy to help others.  I was too focused on our group to think of that at the time.

We progressed downstream quickly portaging a scary looking Dagger rapid and picking our way down classic whitewater.  Just amazing boulder garden after boulder garden.  The lunch breaks and water breaks helped.  

Most of Rica Canyon is a jumble to me, just a lot of boat scouting and fun.  Except Ian had a nasty wood incident with a huge wall on river right and left marking the entrance to the canyon.  There is wood on the left wall.  Eddy out left and make a scary ferry above some nasty wood.  Ian hit it sideways and his paddle got stuck, for a moment and he let go of it.  It was wedged vertically with everyone else downstream in the canyon.  As we were pondering how to get it out it flushed, I was relieved.  We did have a breakdown just in case though.

We portaged the entrance to Goblin's Gate too just to be on the safe 
side.  It ended up we boat scouted landslide not to realize we passed it until we hit the lake.  Guess we were in the groove and the leader found the line.  It was an amazing trip and I am going to stop here to keep it brief as possible.  The whitewater is committing and the canyon is gorgeous.  But be very aware of the sketchy nature of this one portage I talk about above.  I may not go back in until a rope is set there or some other factor clinches the deal that no member of my group has to attempt a stunt like Scott did there.  It was dangerous as hell and was our only option.  What an fantastic canyon though...