For the first time in many years, the Sol Duc River was too low to run as we traditionally do on Memorial Day weekend. In lieu of that, we decided to head over to the Methow River area in hopes of getting some runs in on the Twisp and Methow Rivers before they get too low. During the few days leading up to the weekend, both the Twisp and the Methow were running at nice levels but rain in the mountains on Friday and Friday night brought the Twisp up high enough to warrant second thoughts. The plan for Saturday was to do the traditional McFarland Creek to Burma Rd section anyway and the rain hadn’t affected the level of the Methow significantly.
For this run, we had 8 boats; Peggy and I were joined by Carol Beers, Jim and Helen (tandem), Jennie Goldberg, Leslie Mix, Steve Lowe and Steve Courtney. At 6640 CFS, this section was big, fast and fun. Did I mention fast? We were at our usual lunch spot beach, which was significantly burned and damaged by last summer’s fires (as was much of the land on river right), in about 20 minutes. We stopped for a long and lazy lunch anyway - just happy to be there. The play wave in the big wave train ¼ mile below the old swinging bridge was in its prime. Continuing downstream, being earlier in the year than usual for us, we admired how the hills to the east were covered with a lovely, softness of green grasses. On the other hand, we also had to absorb the fact that many of the lovely Ponderosa Pines growing in the area were charred and brown.
Afterwards some of us drove up the Twisp River Rd to scout the river for the next day’s paddling. It was still high 1040 but we were relieved to see that there were still a few eddies. We were looking for wood and saw some but everything looked passable. We stopped at the fish weir and talked to the operator. We were glad to hear that some kayakers had gone down the river earlier and had one portage other than around the weir. We were also relieved to see that last summer’s fires hadn’t damaged the Twisp valley. Afterwards, some of us retired to the Twisp River Pub as a reward for a “hard day’s work”.
On Sunday we met at the Cinnamon Twisp Bakery (half the reason to make the trip over there) to run the Twisp. It wasn’t until driving down the hill from Loup Loup that we really saw the extent of the fire damage from last summer with burned trees as far as you could see on the south side of Hwy 20. Seeing the fire must have been horrific.
Joining us were the group from Saturday plus Tom O’Keefe, Cyn Taylor and Boo Turner. We were hoping that the water level on the Twisp had dropped over night but it went up to 1150. Not significant but not what we wanted. Because it was high, we decided to try the lower take-out at the junction of Poorman Rd and Twisp River Rd to add a few miles. Somehow, a few of our group didn’t get the message and went up to the upper take-out at Poorman Rd Cut-Off. After waiting awhile for the stray members of our group, those of us who met at the lower take-out decided to drive up to the put-in. On the way up, we met Steve Courtney and Leslie Mix racing back down the road. Steve yelled something about Leslie’s dry suit still being up at Loup Loup campground and that they were going to get it and would meet us at the put-in and raced off. We collected the folks who went to the upper take-out and headed up to the put-in. Tom, Cyn and Boo needed to get home so and didn’t want to wait for Steve and Leslie to get back and so we decided to break into two groups (which we probably would have done anyway). They, along with Jennie went ahead and paddled off.
The rest of us were pretty well decided it would be an hour before Steve and Leslie showed up but they somehow made it up to Loup Loup, retrieved the dry suit and arrived at the put-in within 15 minutes or so of the first group’s departure. All good! Now we just needed to get down the river safely. The 2 mile warm up went by fast and before we knew it, we hit the first section of 2+ rapids. At 1150 CFS, the Twisp redefines the word “continuous” and we were busy for the next 8 miles dodging rocks, holes, waves and a smattering of wood. The continuous nature of the Twisp at this level makes it a solid class III run. I have to say that our group of Peggy, Carol Steve Lowe, Steve Courtney, Jim and Helen, Leslie, Bob and I was absolutely amazing. We remained pretty evenly spaced throughout the day and managed to stay out of each other’s way and more importantly, out of trouble. A swim at this level would have been a major big deal and I am so happy that no one flipped and swam. We grouped up in the few bigger eddies and everyone was absolutely electric with excitement. Afterwards, we celebrated our fun day on the Twisp by going to the Twisp River Pub.
On Monday, a few of us went back to the Methow to run the class III+ Black Canyon section. It had gone up slightly and we decided to put in at McFarland Creek and run down to the new boater take out which is on river left below the big rapid downstream of the steel truss bridge where we sometimes took out to avoid the long, semi-boring run out into Lake Pateros. This new take-out has several advantages over the one at the steel truss bridge. It doesn’t cut off the good rapid below the bridge, you can park almost at river level, it isn't littered with garbage and there is a toilet.
Putting in at McFarland Creek were Carol, Jim and Helen, who switched to their inflatable Soar IC2, Jennie, Leslie and Bob. Leslie and Carol planned to take out at Burma Rd – just doing the upper section that we did on Saturday. Leslie kept saying she didn’t know how to read water so we gave her a quick primer on how to tell the difference between standing waves, which are generally fun, and hydraulics or holes, which are generally bad. It seemed as though the lesson may have been effective as Leslie was having fun bouncing down the fun wave trains which predominate the McFarland section until she blasted into one of the bigger holes. This didn’t have a great outcome. The huge amount of water that instantly crashed into her boat caused her slightly under inflated bow air bag to explode, tearing a big hole in the seam of the bag. The hole sucked her back in and then spat her and her boat out in a slightly less dignified manner than when she went in.
What followed was an on river, double air bag transplant – Jim Lawton’s idea. Bob Schneider, who for some reason didn’t bring flotation for his kayak (at least he remembered his sleeping bag this year), had borrowed a spare canoe air bag from Jim for the back of his kayak. So we took that air bag out his boat, knotted off the part of the air bag from Leslie’s boat that had the leak and swapped them. It worked like a charm!
Soon after, we left Carol and Leslie at Burma Rd and Bob, Jim and Helen, Jennie and I headed down towards Black Canyon. At @ 6700 CFS, the Black Canyon rapid looked pretty easy if you managed to find the right line down the nice green tongue. It required paddling over some big, fast 8 foot waves in the middle of the rapid but otherwise it was pretty clean. Getting off line would have been not be so nice as the “Black Hole” looked super mean at this level. Everyone did great. We wondered what the other rapids would be like but they all had good lines through them. After only 30 minutes of paddling we passed our traditional lunch beach on river right. There is one drop on this section that goes around a soft left turn in the river. In the middle there is an immense mid-stream boulder which was almost totally covered. Below the boulder was a hole the size of Rhode Island. We were careful to avoid it. All too soon we were at the take-out and our great paddling weekend was over. The only thing left to do was pay a visit to our favorite fruit stand, the Rest Awhile, for milkshakes. Life is beautiful.