Redwood Creek

With recent nonstop rains, a group of 6 intermediate packrafters set sail from 299 on an ill-fated attempt to do the full Redwood Creek run. Not a quarter mile in, our lead boater had a long, consequential swim and learned quickly we were unprepared for this run, at least in medium-high flows with its lack of eddies. With the rain still coming down, we made a safe call to abandon the trip at the first bridge. Good thing, too, in hindsight – the rain ended up pushing the gage over 3,500cfs later that day, which is the threshold we were told where the mandatory Rocky Gap portage becomes near-impossible. Nevertheless, it was a good lesson in many aspects of group trips for the lot of us and just how important it is to establish good communications and if necessary, a boating order.

From Elektra: My memory at 4700 cfs in Orick: Good smaller boofs throughout the run, with the first good big one in the center of the channel around 1.3 miles in. On the fly waves throughout with some that had some service. The biggest rapid is a class II+ and is over half way. Start right and paddle left through the rapid, or start left and punch the hole. A bit after that there will be a tributary on the left with a big bedrock bank forcing the creek right. Down this section there is a boof/hole on the left ¾ of the way down. At the flow we ran it at it was a boof, at higher flows it can be a grabby hole (Darryl knows). Nearly perfect flow. Any more water and lots of little boofs would be covered and and much less the boofs would be dry. At this flow it took around two hours of paddling with play time. In total there are 4 bridges. 1-you put in at 2-chezem 3-a metal abandoned one 4- the lowest bridge/takeout. There is a hazard before the halfway point (I think). It is a cable coming off of the left bank and going into the channel about midway. I think it is after a large tributary on the right and the section has multiple houses in the riparian. There is a greenhouse on the left bank just downstream of this hazard. Parking is fine at takeout, but respect the landowner and maybe park on the left bank. To take out go under the bridge on the left bank. There is mountain biking and hunting/hiking trails on BLM land if you keep going down Bair Road past take-out. That would be a fun thing to do to fill out the day.