Cayuse Creek

Cayuse Creek is a mild adventure, through a wild place. The hardest part of the trip for us was by far the shuttle. It is 7 miles of road with the bare minimum of maintenance done. There were many places the road was undercut and washing out, but the tricky part was the many channels carved by rivulets working their way down the road, if we had been in a Subaru we would have turned around, it took over an hour in a high clearance, AWD van. We enjoy driving roads like that, but it was also a little stressful since our van was not in the best mechanical shape. The other people we saw were in modified vehicles or ATVs. Biking the road to pick up the vehicle was faster than driving the road. Once on the water, it starts to feel like a wild place, unusual for the typically roadside NF Clearwater drainage. While the rapids are easy, they are high quality and the scenery is good. Parts reminded us of the Sierra's. Boaters comfortable on class III will have a good time, it's one of those runs that makes you glad you took up paddling. We had about 2500 cfs on the gauge which was lower than most in the whitewater community would enjoy, but we were able to get down without abusing our boats and still enjoyed the place. Bring a lunch and find a spot to eat it where you can appreciate the place you are in. Priscilla hiked her packraft up Kelly Creek from the confluence and put in at Bear/Bruin Creek. She found a quality section of class IV section of quality whitewater up there, but also some dangerous wood.