Pilchuck Creek

12/28/06 Well, it was certainly interesting! We had all said previously that we'd never do the whole run (upper/middle) on a freezing winter (short) day...so, we dropped a car at the Hwy 9 take-out at around 10AM and drove to the put-in access on Lake Cavanaugh Road...it was snowing and 36 degrees. :) Flow was low...just over 700 cfs on the DOE gauge. The upper run could not be run any lower, and in fact the lowness made it increasingly more difficult in places. It was a tense float around a lot of wood in places but only one real portage as going under and over some of the logs were Plan A. The 140 fpm Class IV section was the most difficult as the boulders made route picking very difficult, the snow was pounding down and there were so many steathly colored rocks boats took a beating (mine especially - 2 huge gashes in the floor). The bigger ledges are obvious when you approach them and are both run next to large rocks on river right. I had one swim right above one of the bigger ones and tested my helmets integrity in 6' of fast moving water before self-rescuing, checking if all my marbles were still in order than proceeding down through the rapid. Then I blew a line wound up getting side-surfed in a hole WHILE attaching myself to a sweeper. That was a first. Took me over 2 minutes to find a combination of moves that got my out of the hole and the sticks w/o flipping. The 2nd big ledge had Brian for lunch and Shaun and I took chase and recovered his boat. One more fun, big river-wide ledge remained and soon we were at the put-in bridge for the Middle run and we basically bombed down that as fast as we could in search of warm shoes. The Middle still had the same logs it did a few weeks back and should be approached carefully as another big water event might clean some up but also could push many of the sideline trees into the drink as well. Overall: Running both runs together is great. No gate/hike-in issues like on the middle and the PI and TO are cake. I'd like to see about 900 or so next time to clean up the upper run. It is however easy to see how hazardous this run could become at higher flows. That 140 fpm section can become Class V and with the wood in there and less eddies could make it even harder. If you can't see the bottom of a drop, scout!