Silver Creek

Although this is a short run by distance it can be a full-day adventure especially during the winter when you have short days. Scouting always takes a long time especially if few in your group have done the run before.

You can start the run with a fun 18' waterfall. The trick here is getting down to a put- in. The creek continues through a narrow bedrock gorge and then plunges through a rapid that can be a little grungy at low water and has a meaty hole at high water. Those who don't run the waterfall often just put-in below this drop which is a short distance upstream from the tributary stream crossed by the old wooden bridge. There is one good rapid before you arrive at the lip of the Triple Drop sequence, aka Huey, Duey, and Lewey. These drops are a ton of fun and as long as there is no wood you can run them pretty much down the center, grabbing eddies on your way. The first one can develop a hole at higher water (boof left) but otherwise the drops are clean and there is a big recovery pool at the bottom.

Fun rapids continue down to the section that parrallels the landslide. Along the landslide, two drops stand out as more challenging than the rest. You can scout them on the hike in but just remember they are bigger than they look from above. Both are generally run along the left side. If things are going well you can continue on downstream but this is also an easy place to exit the river if you've had your fill or flows are at the lower limit. Drops in the lower section develop some pin potential at lower flows, and at any flow there are several drops with class V hazards.

The action continues as you proceed downstream with lots of technical rapids. This section always has some big wood so use caution and expect to make a couple of portages. There are some more fun ledge drops and chutes between boulders before you reach the next significant drop on the run. You'll recognize it by the large house-sized boulder perched up on the bank on river

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