Lobster Creek

Meghan, Curtis, Yann and I headed over the night before from the Elk River. The day on the Elk was the first sunny day in a while after lots of rain coming down, and it started raining on us again that night. We were moving slow Sunday morning in the rain and headed to the take out around 11:30 to check the flow. Water was lapping up on the first 12' board of the left bridge abutment, which we thought meant that the run would be on the low side of runnable based on what we heard from a Gold Beach local. We headed up to the put in and got on the water about noon.

We had been warned about lots of mobile wood in this creek so we were careful to make sure we had a clear view of the next catchable eddy before heading down anything. We only had to get out of our boats one time towards the top of the run to check this. Other than that, we had one log duck and no other wood in play, but lots of wood and jams in the channel that were easy to avoid.

The whole run took us less than an hour and a half.

At the flows we were at, I think a small 10' raft probably would have been able to make it through okay. There was ample water for kayaks, could have gone a little lower, but this was a great intro flow. We all thought the rapids were pretty quality, and pairing this run with the Elk River was a worthwhile weekend.

The gage for this run is visual and correlations with other gages that read from larger areas aren't perfect, but here are what a few other gages were reading the day we went:

Rogue River @ Agness: 8,000 cfs

Elk River: 4.1 feet

Chetco near Brookings: 5.25 feet/5,070 cfs