Sitkum

After a storm in November 2021 blew out a couple culverts on Forest Road 29 (the Calwah reached 40,000 cfs), this run has been inaccessible and it was great to be able to get into this river again.

I’ve done this run at a lower flow, but it definitely needs more water than the 775 cfs we had. We dropped a car at the Hyas Creek take-out at 10:00 am, but it wasn’t until 12:15 pm that we were on the water at the North Fork confluence. The hike from the pull-out at the put-in down to the river took longer than expected—about 1.5 hours. We took the route that heads down the North Fork, which involves lowering boats and rappelling down a roughly 30-foot waterfall. Next time, I’d consider trying the put-in just upstream of the North Fork confluence. This route also requires lowering boats by rope but doesn’t involve rappelling.

Once we were on the Sitkum, we had a great run. Several rapids were too shallow, leading to multiple hits and momentary pins. While it was still possible to get through, some rapids were portaged due to the low flow. Only one of us ran Little Pistol, which was very technical at this level. Two of us ran Cotton Candy, which did not have a hole at this flow, making it more of a slide but still technical.

We encountered three river-wide trees over the course of the run, requiring a portage. The pace of the run was slow at first but picked up as we got closer to the end. Once we passed the South Fork Calwah confluence, we finally enjoyed our first rapid with no hits.

We also saw numerous steelhead, present in nearly all the large pools we passed through that had excellent water quality.

The total run time was three hours for the six miles from the North Fork to Hyas Creek. While it takes some effort to get in, this is such an exceptionally beautiful run, with several patches of old-growth forest and large trees lining the banks.