On Sunday May 31st, 5 of us met at the Darrington IGA to run the “middle” Sauk from Whitechuck down to Bachman Park. Ed and Grace Kane paddled tandem, Leslie Mix and I in solo canoes and Cyn Taylor, a friend of Ed’s and Grace’s, in a kayak formed our group. We had a glorious, warm day with some high, thin clouds but there was enough sun to make the river a sparkly, emerald green – just lovely! The level was @4400 CFS on the “Near Sauk” gauge.
There were two other groups of paddlers that we shared the river with. One group was mostly WKC kayakers and we were able to reunite with longtime friends Susan Batchelor and Mike Grijalva among others. The other group of two rafts seemed to wait for us as we came down some of the harder drops. I don’t know if they were just curious, concerned or both. I saw one of them taking video of us coming through the first significant rapid and we didn’t mind having them there as support as long as they weren’t interfering with our fun which they weren’t.
We stopped at the bottom of the island on river right in Jaws and scouted the bottom of the rapid as we often do. There’s a fairly clean line pretty much down the middle which requires negotiating a couple of dicey looking holes and hydraulics but they were all fairly soft and forgiving which made it easier than it looked. Ed and Grace opted to take the more technical river right route. I couldn’t see the moves they made from where I was but they came back into view all smiles.
Whirlpool is the last significant rapid on the river and I was concerned that we might have a tough time. Whirlpool is fast, powerful, rocky and not a good rapid to swim. I knew the line I wanted from a month back but no one else had run it recently. Turns out everyone did fantastic and made it look easy.
Paddling out the bottom of the river is fun as the river eases up a bit. At one point the clouds started hazing over the sun at bit more and made a complete halo (sun dog) around it. I don’t recall ever seeing a sun dog that was a complete circle before.
Below where the rapid Popeye used to be, there is a tree that crosses completely across the main channel. There is a good, large eddy on river left above the tree but the main current is fast and goes straight into tree. If you miss the eddy, you’re in big trouble so if you don’t have confidence that you can eddy out, you can hop out of your boat on river left above the eddy, do an easy, short portage over some rocks and get back into your boats in the eddy. Once in the eddy you can easily paddle under the tree.
Chalk up another great day of paddling. How lucky can we get!?!